We said goodbye shortly afterward. I told him I’d better get on, and he had the grace not to ask, With what?

Cory had broken off to refill his glass and study the progress of his painting. When I put the phone down he looked round and smiled—or at least, I think he did. It was difficult to tell what he was doing under that beard. His eyes met mine briefly and slid away.

“Everything OK with your dad?”

I knew by his subdued tone of voice that I’d blundered. What, though? What had I said that was wrong? I raked over the phone conversation, but it was all so stilted and unexceptional. Food . . . Phone . . . Sleep . . . Work . . . Perhaps it was something I’d failed to say? The engagement ring . . . ?

“You never mentioned the exhibition.” Cory dabbed at a blob of paint with his forefinger, gave a self-deprecating laugh, shrugged and drank, leaving a smear of yellow ochre down the side of the glass.

Sometimes Cory’s sadness seemed to plumb greater depths than I could bear to imagine. It was ingrained in him; it made him look—beard and all—like a lost little boy. I bet his mother’s heart used to bleed for him when he was a child. I bet he was hard to say goodbye to at the school gates.

“I didn’t know you wanted me to,” I said defensively. “I didn’t know it was public knowledge.”

“It’s fine,” he said. “I’m not blaming you. But your father isn’t the public, is he? He’s the arts editor of the London Globe. He’s my VIP reviewer. Obviously we can’t set a date for the opening without consulting him.”

I actually laughed at that. I said, “Oh Cory, you’re not serious. You don’t want him to write you a review!”

“Why not?”

I laughed again, but now it was just a way of buying time. I almost said, because he’s so bloody brutal, but that would be tactless. Because he’s incurably honest would be worse. I pictured Dad in front of one of Cory’s painted girls—his face screwed up, his eyes concealed behind his spectacles—and I felt a plunging sensation, as if I were falling through ice.

“Cory?” I was speaking from underneath the ice now, my mind in slow motion. “Do you mean it? You want Dad to write a review for the Globe? The actual London Globe?”

“Why not?”

I hesitated.

“I don’t think you understand what you’re asking.”

“Oh, come on, Freya, it’s only one evening of his life. It’s not such a big ask, is it, given that you’re his only daughter? I’ll offer to pay his train fare if you want, and he can stay the night here.”

“It’s not a question of the train fare.”