It was meditative and soothing, the push and pull of the saw through the wood, the hammering of nails into crates, ticking off each artwork on her list. As the sun ran warm fingers over her shoulders, she managed to forget all of her worries and fears and questions about her mother, forget everything except the artworks.

She reached for a set of images, her favorites of the photographer’s works, a series showing children doing distinctly unchildlike things: two boys aged about ten, with curly blond heads and brightly colored T-shirts, one smoking a cigarette, holding it in a way that suggested much practice, the boy beside him with his mouth wrapped around a lollipop; a boy lying on the ground, curled up in pain, holding his stomach, a girl in a white dress skipping away with a smug smile on her face; the child in the candy-striped dress, tights and patent Mary Jane shoes, head lost in the big seventies dome-shaped hairdryer, her mother beside her, oblivious, reading a magazine with a picture of the Queen on the cover; a group of adults at a protest march, bearing banners with uncensored slogans, the focus on the mouths of the adults, open in rage, screaming out their protest, and a child smiling beatifically beside them.

D’Arcy knew from her studies that the photographer had never tried for the iconic shot, that she preferred to gather a series of images that each spoke to the other, posing questions in one, answering them in another, the theme emerging from the collection, not the single image. She picked up the final photograph in this set: an homage to Diane Arbus’s iconic close-up of the sobbing child. It showed a child the way one might expect to see them represented in a book of fairytales: blonde curls, blue eyes, soft cheeks, but there was a look of such potent concentration in the intense close-up of the child’s face that it was impossible to think of innocence and unworldliness and naiveté. She looked as if she knew far too much and the effect was visceral and unsettling, like a slap to the cheek.

D’Arcy started at the sound of a throat clearing. “You look lost in another world. I wasn’t sure whether to disturb you,” Josh said, leaning in the doorway, having made a concession to the weather by rolling up the sleeves of his shirt, which perfectly matched his eyes.

And D’Arcy ruefully conceded that it hadn’t been the wine or the ambience of the evening before; he was a very sexy man and her eyes couldn’t help but be drawn to the lips that had kissed her. He, on the other hand, was having a hard time looking at her and at first D’Arcy thought he was being a dick again, pretending they’d shared nothing more than a meal. Then, with a sudden flash of insight, she wondered if, despite the air of confidence and coolness in his business dealings, he might be a little shy.