‘Why did they move?’ she asked.

‘Well – they didn’t actually move.’ Suddenly, Jordan began stepping from foot to foot and didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. ‘It was the freakiest of coincidences – one you simply could not make up – and frankly wouldn’t want to. Shortly after they moved into this property, there was a terrible tragedy. A completely freak accident with the people who lived across the road.’ He pointed through the window, his discomfort becoming more and more intense and urgent. His face looked hot and clammy. ‘Shortly after the couple moved in here –’ he hesitated – ‘do you really want to hear this?’

‘Yes,’ Kevin Middle said, and his wife nodded in agreement. ‘We do.’

Jordan continued. ‘The Penze-Weedells, across the way, had one of these new electric cars, with all the automatic features such as self-park and autonomous driving. It went wrong one afternoon, shot out of the drive and hit a van owned by the couple who had only recently bought this house, head on. The husband was killed outright. His wife remained in what I think they call a persistent vegetative state for some time, before passing away, too.’

‘I think I read about this,’ Sarah Middle said. ‘It rings a bell.’

‘Of course!’ her husband said. ‘Jason Danes, right?’

Jordan nodded, glancing again, uneasily, at the figures in the doorway. ‘Yes. I imagine one day there will be a blue plaque outside.’

‘They lived here?’ Kevin Middle said. ‘What an amazing coincidence!’

‘It is,’ Jordan agreed. ‘Truly horrendous. Less than a couple of weeks after moving in.’

‘Oh no,’ Middle said. ‘I didn’t mean about the accident.’ He smiled. ‘You see, my wife and I are big Jason Danes fans. In fact, we were among his earliest patrons, we like to think.’

‘We went to his very first private viewing,’ Sarah Middle chipped in.

‘We did!’ her husband confirmed. ‘There was something about his work that reminded us of an artist whose prices were way beyond us – Lowry.’

‘We have over a dozen of Jason Danes’s works,’ his wife said, proudly. ‘He lived here? I can’t believe it.’

‘It would be so very fitting to hang them here,’ her husband said.

‘Of course,’ Jordan said. ‘Oh yes, of course, absolutely. What a tribute!’

‘Such a tragedy that Danes will never know our passion for his work,’ Sarah Middle said.

‘If he’d lived, he’d be up there, one day, among the greats, no question,’ her husband added.

Paul Jordan glanced again at the doorway. At the two figures who were still standing there. Watching them.

He smiled back at his clients, who were both in their late thirties. ‘Indeed. For sure. Oh, absolutely.’

And he knew for sure, absolutely, that one day soon they would both be meeting Jason Danes.

Acknowledgments

Writing novels may seem to outsiders to be a solitary task, and much of it really is. But my books would never happen without the hard work of many great people I’m blessed to have around me, and those I turn to for research help, who are invariably immensely generous with their time and in sharing their knowledge, in my quest to make my novels, although fiction, feel as authentic as possible.