‘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.’

On Claire’s last day, they meet at a coffee shop. Jerome insists on smoking a joint, though he never normally lets himself smoke in Haarlem: he says he’d never get anything done. Claire drinks her beer and watches his eyes droop.

‘This is a sativa variety,’ he says. ‘It’s much more mellow than the indicas. You sure you don’t wanna try?’

‘I’m fine.’

He breathes out a snake of pale smoke. ‘You know,’ he says, ‘I’m gonna try and get back to Haarlem, or maybe Amsterdam, next summer. If I manage to swing something, you should come out and see me.’

Claire clamps her teeth together. The old pain leaps up. ‘I’m my mother’s primary carer,’ she says, ‘so we’ll have to see. It depends how she’s doing.’

‘Who’s looking after her now?’