The painting was a fusion of abstract and figurative images of women – women, in swathes and layers of bodies, hair and faces. Bea saw him watching.

‘Hey,’ he said.

‘Is it yours?’ she asked.

‘Yeah.’

‘There’s no father in it,’ she said. ‘Isn’t the show about fathers?’

‘Yes,’ said Dan.

She wanted to say, You’re good at women, you like bodies, I think it’s beautiful, but she would never have said something like that.

‘It’s good,’ she said, with no conviction.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, looking at the painting, blankly.

‘Art’s not my subject, but I really like it,’ said Bea.

‘I worked so long at it, I can’t see it any more,’ said Dan. ‘It’s not how I wanted it to be.’

‘Nothing ever is,’ she said, and smiled.

‘I guess not,’ said Dan, and a silence fell between them, then he got caught up talking to somebody else, but when she and her friends left a few minutes later he felt a gap behind him, and when he turned to check, the door to the stairwell seemed particularly empty because she had gone. Later on, up on the roof, he had a beer and watched her, waiting for her to be alone. She stood out, but he didn’t know why. It intrigued him that she had such a presence. Her girlfriends were better dressed than she was and one of them was very nice-looking, but only she stood out – in jeans and boots; not big but definitely not skinny – there wasn’t anything he could pinpoint that made her shine to him, except maybe that her hair was fair. But he wasn’t into blondes. When he knew her, and looked back, he thought it was her character, her inner heart he’d seen, and somehow known he had to try for her. There was a DJ that night, and the bar was glowing pink and green and you could see across all of the city, the small, distant lights dancing in the warm air. Dan stopped her when she was coming back from the toilets.

‘Hey,’ he said, approaching sideways so as not to scare her off. ‘How was your night?’

‘Good, thanks,’ said Bea, hoping he didn’t think she was there to buy paintings.

They talked. She tried to be particularly forthright, so he wouldn’t guess she was attracted to him, but he knew anyway. It was obvious. He bought her a drink and asked her about herself. She told him she had just joined Stamford Hill Psychotherapy and Counselling, and he told her he had just started working as an estate agent. When he said that she stopped looking into his eyes.

‘My father’s in property,’ she said.

‘I’m not in property,’ said Dan. ‘It’s just a day job.’

She didn’t say anything but her openness had gone.

‘Got to earn a living,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Bea. ‘Sure.’

They talked some more and he bought her another drink, and then she bought him one. He told her he had no future as an artist because he thought conceptual art was bullshit and abstracts were boring and people just got them to go with their furniture. She said he should forget the marketplace and just do the work he loved. He talked about Basquiat and Clemente, and explained his submission for Father had been defined by having grown up without one. He asked about hers.