‘Yes, I know the work. But Berthe was not really what I was going for.’

‘No, you don’t understand what I mean. I remember seeing that painting for the first time in the Musée d’Orsay and I had one of those little sound recording devices that tells you all about the painting. The guy on the recording kept talking about the light and the gauzy curtains and the greys and greens and all that. But I kept thinking, She’s having a dig at the status quo. Because, at the time, femininity was all about confinement. Women were either stuck in the house, looking out windows, washing the femininity off them in the bath or in the garden close to nature. But the women in that painting are free. They’re outside. It’s the man who is inside, behind the bars of a picket fence and the barrier of a window. The roles have been reversed. I fucking love that painting.’ I pause. ‘And that’s why I love yours. It’s the girl ignoring the guy, not vice versa. A role reversal.’

I pause again for breath. But now my cheeks are getting hot in the dark. Insecurity is taking hold. Have I said something stupid?

‘But then you’re the artist.’ I backtrack. ‘Am I reading too much into it?’

‘No.’ He shakes his head. ‘Not at all. I like the way you think.’ Then he takes another drag and as he holds his breath he asks: ‘How do you know so much about art?’

I shrug, watching him exhale as I think of all those galleries I wandered through while Harrison was fucking ‘her’. All those long conversations with gallerists. But I don’t want to get into that right now. So instead I say, ‘I studied it a bit at uni,’ and shrug. ‘So who’s the girl in the pictures?’

‘Sabine? She’s an artist’s model.’

‘Is that an actual thing? Being a model for a painter as a proper job?’

‘Well, it is for her – now at least. She used to work here.’ He bangs gently on the wall of the gallery. ‘That’s where we met.’

And that’s when the weed hits. There’s a blessed barrier between me and anything harsh in the world now. My lips feel big and tingly and my mouth is dry, and I’m very aware of the fact that Noah is standing close to me. That he’s pulsing warmth and I want to giggle and melt into him.

‘You must pay her well,’ I say. ‘Paris is expensive.’ I don’t really care what he pays her. I’m just filling the silence because it’s thick with tension and I can’t stand it.

‘Not really, but she still lives with her mother. Cheap rent.’

The joint has burned down to his fingertips now, and so he drops it to the ground and stomps it out. And we stand there, both leaning against the wall, looking at each other. I’m toying with my necklace the way I always do when I’m a bit nervous or flirting, and I’m not sure which one it is right now. It’s a gold coin pendant with my star sign on it: Virgo. Camilla got one for me before I left London. She has one just like it but hers is Pisces.