“Anyway, he likes me; we got on extremely well that day he came. You didn’t see us together.”

“It’s not a question of that, either.”

I tried and failed to smile, and Cory softened. He wiped his hands on the rag and crossed the room.

“Don’t worry,” he said, stroking the hair from my face. “I’m not annoyed or anything, but will you please remember to mention it next time you speak? Once we’ve fixed a date with him, we can start sending out all the other invitations.”

He planted a quick kiss on my forehead and returned to the easel. I stayed in the corner of the room, tugging at a loose thread on my jumper, watching him at work.

Diana sleeps and wakes, dreams and thinks. Memory ought to be the comfort of the dying—isn’t that the common wisdom? So why do all the happy times elude her? For example, she’s been trying to remember those high-octane bashes she used to throw before she was married, with youth on her side, money to burn, and a glut of friends on the London art scene. Instead she keeps thinking about the parties she hosted at Byrne Hall after her widowhood, which turned out to be nothing like parties at all.

“Di?”

She remembers her guests coming downstairs in a posse while she was setting out drinks and nibbles, and grouping themselves in the doorway. They looked like a chorus from a Greek tragedy, with their sad, closed faces and their sudden knack for speaking with one voice. Oh God, they were going to say something about Cory. Diana smiled—a casual, nonplussed, questioning smile that only trembled slightly.

She emptied a packet of cashews into a bowl. Well, they could say what they liked. They had no idea, these people, these “friends.” None of them had children. They were know-nothing, arty-farty urbanites, the lot of them.

“Di, we were wondering . . .”

“We just wanted to ask . . .”

“Is everything all right with Cory?”

She gave a little shrug and ate a nut.

“He’s fine,” she said, tossing the empty packet on the fire and watching it shrivel to nothing.

Cory had become the dark star Diana circled, day by day, as a matter of course. In some horrific sense—hitherto unvoiced—she was used to it. Her guests had experienced it for the first time last night when they arrived from the railway station, full of gush and chatter. All he did was stare and say nothing and retreat to his room—it could have been so much worse—but nonetheless they’d been dragged into his orbit.

“Honestly, he’s fine.” Diana arranged the gin bottles in order of height. “He’s a teenager, isn’t he? Say no more!”

Nobody smiled back.

“Losing his father like that,” someone ventured, “at the age of thirteen. I mean, can you imagine? It must be tearing him up inside.”