“Seriously,” I said. “If I told you that Stella could light up the room with her smile, it’s not that I’d be lying. It’s just that it sounds so elegiac; it’s the sort of thing people said at her funeral. If I told you she had an unforgiving streak—which is also true—then it doesn’t feel quite so . . . morbid.” Our noses were touching, and I was too close to read his expression. “Does that make any sense whatsoever?”

I touched Cory’s face. He hadn’t had much of a beard when we first met, but he’d let it grow over the last few weeks. I think it suited him, but it also increased his inscrutability—entirely concealing his upper lip whilst emphasising the lower one, and making something new and strange of his mouth. These days I found his lips almost as enigmatic as his eyes.

“Tell me more about her,” he said. “I want to understand everything you’ve been through.”

I wondered whether he would shave the beard off if I asked. I’d never demanded a favour like that before, and I didn’t like the idea of testing him—or being tested in return. If you loved me, you’d shave . . . Well, if you loved me, you wouldn’t ask.

“Freya? Tell me something else about Stella.”

“Something else . . . I don’t know. I can’t think.”

There were so many stories I’d pondered over the years, but none that I’d told out loud. I sifted them cautiously, picking them up one at a time and blowing off the dust.

“You have to promise to tell me one of your memories too,” I said. “Your childhood . . . Your father . . .”

“Yes, all right, but you go first.”

Cory’s voice was soft in my ear, and I liked feeling that his focus was on my words rather than my body. I liked having the attention of the human being rather than the artist.

“OK, let me think . . . I suppose there was the fifteenth-birthday incident.”

“Yes?”

I laughed uncertainly. Was this a funny anecdote? I suppose it might be. Unless, of course, it was tragic.

“Well, Stella decided to make this amazing dinner for my fifteenth birthday. And, I mean, when Stella decided to do something, she didn’t hold back. She must have spent weeks planning it out and sourcing all these obscure ingredients online. I remember she even turned down an invitation for the night before, because she was too busy prepping some complicated chicken recipe she’d dug out from Mum’s old recipe book. She was so lovely and excited about it, and if I told her she didn’t have to, she’d say, ‘You’re only fifteen once, Freya Lyell!’”

I paused and Cory kissed the rim of my ear.