Jacqueline gets to the phone and says, ‘You have to come home. I can’t take it any more. She’s a nightmare. I think there’s something wrong with her wiring. The other day she made a batch of scones and then fed them all to the birds! Some of my best face creams are missing.’

‘She doesn’t need face cream.’

‘How do you know what she needs? We don’t know anything about her. God knows what else she’s got hidden in that suitcase. They might be selling them. They might have some sort of black market goods ring going. It’s like being in a prison, Claire. You’ve put me in prison.’

Patience retrieves the phone. ‘Claire, it is my assessment that your mother misses being able to affect you emotionally.’

‘What do you mean? She misses talking to me?’

‘It is not that she misses your company, or hearing your news. It is more that she misses being able to watch how you react to the things she says. I am not reactive. I’m like the television: it’s all one-way.’

‘But you talk to her, don’t you?’

‘Of course. We talk all the time.’

‘Do you talk about me?’

‘No.’

‘Well, there’s your answer,’ Claire says with a gruesome laugh.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean you should try it. Try gossiping about me. She used to like doing that.’ With my brother, she doesn’t say. ‘Maybe make the odd comment. See if it helps. You know: Claire’s a bit bossy, or Claire didn’t clean the oven very well. Maybe tell her I don’t check in with you as much as your normal clients do.’

‘But Claire, your level of contact is above average.’

‘Just give her what you can.’

Towards the end of the fellowships, they are invited to give short presentations to the Institute on the work they’ve been doing. Claire attends Jerome’s talk on Covered Table with Pie and is amazed at how authoritatively he discusses the likely provenance of this pie, the likely nature of the sauced and shining pulp of meat inside it, and how this connects to trade developments at the Vleeshal (literally flesh hall) at the Grote Market in town.

Claire’s own presentation does not go well. She is reluctant to criticise Annika’s project to her colleagues, but unwilling to praise it without foundation, and so her discussion turns out to be primarily descriptive; she begins to feel like Pieter Claesz, just painting what is there, never plunging beneath the surface. Even when she appears to speak analytically, to cut something open, it is only ever a simulation of openness, a staged exposure. The scholars present hardly pretend to applaud, and she is not offered a renewal of her fellowship for the following term.

Jerome’s fellowship has not been renewed either, but he plans to stay in Europe for a few more weeks, avoiding home as long as he can. He will go to Berlin, then maybe to Rome; he will eat schnitzel and cacio e pepe and write up his presentation as a full-length article and send it out, because, ‘Claire, I’ve gotta publish, or I’m stuck in Hallabassee for ever.’