I broke away from the view and picked up my tray. The sooner we finished in here, the longer we’d have to rest and eat before Cory started on a new canvas. After all, there was no getting out of it; I could hardly refuse to help. I couldn’t even claim to be busy with my writing—not credibly. Cory had mentioned it this morning—“Would you mind helping me paint the gallery walls, or are you too busy? I wouldn’t want to interrupt your flow.” But he was either being polite or sarcastic, and I couldn’t decide which was worse. We both knew that my efforts to write short stories were going nowhere. Our bohemian studio—the rich, colourful, messy muddle of it—belonged to Cory. My notebook was still lying empty, except for a few half-hearted notes and crossings-out.

Half an hour elapsed as the blood-red rollers squelched up and down. I sneezed a couple of times. Cory moved the stepladder to different parts of the room.

“Are you happy with Pamplona Red?” I asked, switching the roller to my left hand. I thought it was a good idea to speak every now and then. If we left it for too long then the silence grew monstrous and our voices—when we did use them—sounded loud and strange. They did to me, anyway; I don’t think Cory noticed.

“Yes. Why?”

“No reason. Just wondering.”

The other day, when Cory told me that his order for Pamplona Red had arrived in a DIY store across town, I got excited. I thought we would have to go and collect it, in a taxi or a borrowed car, and I looked forward to seeing Bligh again. But the paint was delivered to the house by a taciturn bloke in a van.

We’d taken to having everything delivered over the last few weeks, even our groceries—such as they were. I told Cory I wouldn’t mind popping down to town, but he said, “We save time this way.”

My left arm wasn’t as wieldy as my right. I’d finished the lower section of wall to the right of the fireplace, but now I was having to reach up. Every couple of strokes I stopped to roll my shoulder and let my arm drop. Cory had his eye on me.

“It’s freezing in here,” I said. “I’m going upstairs for a jumper.”

He nodded vaguely and carried on painting.

My clothes were jumbled up with Cory’s on a chair in the corner of the studio. I call them “my clothes” but I’d borrowed the warmer ones from him and—as much as I hated it—Diana. I kept meaning to go on a shopping expedition to Bligh but, one way or another, it hadn’t happened yet.