She had decided for some reason upon eight o’clock—8:00 P.M. She thought that was about when the auctioneer would reach The Magi. After that, of course, the whole situation would become impossible for her. Her father would acquire the panel, and she would be forced to choose between him and her promise to the murdered Resurrection Man. Which really was no choice at all. Either option was intolerable. How could she betray her own father? And how could she keep the secret that he was involved in something monstrous? Whoever buys The Magi … He is the Devil from Hell … Sophia was all for fortitude, but there came a time when to suffer a situation was absurd. That was the time: 8:00 P.M., when they sold The Magi, when her father bought it. So she had decided.

She finished with her clothing. Next she packed her CDs into cushioned envelopes, addressed these in her scrupulous hand. Her classical pieces—oceans of Bach mostly and some Mozart—she would send to her sister Laura. The American popular music she sometimes enjoyed—Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald—would go to her friend Tony; her brother Peter despised it. She would send him her few rock albums instead, plus the Lucian Freud poster she knew he liked.

She tidied her flat, then carried the packages to the post office on Fulham Road. It was farther away than the branch on Earl’s Court, but she found the drug dealers and fast-food restaurants near the tube stop depressing. This walk was far nicer. Past whitewashed mansions, under garden walls, through the hanging branches of cherry and chestnut trees. Forsythia that would bloom so yellow come spring. The air was cold and damp and invigorating, refreshing on her cheeks, in her hair.

As she walked, she thought some more about the face in those photographs she had burned. It had been even clearer in these than in the portrait on her wall at the Grange: while her mother’s features had been very like her own, her manner, her expression had really been quite different. They had been warmer. They had been better, Sophia thought as she walked. That sweet way she would tilt her head to one side. And the way her eyes always looked faintly worried, as if there were some service or kindness she might have neglected. Her smile was so eagerly agreeable too. Even in the Kodachrome square of past time, her generosity made itself known to her daughter. Sophia felt it with a pang. One did wonder sometimes how things might have been different …

After she had posted her packages, she took a cab to the gallery.

“Would you be a darling and go to the auction for me tonight?” she said to her assistant, Jessica. “I really don’t feel up to it.”

“You’re not ill or anything?” Jessica asked her. Blinked up at her with her limpid fawn eyes.