“Yes, of course! I don’t know why you think—”

“And his mother. Have you found out yet—”

“Shh. No.”

I took her by the shoulders, turned her round, and shoved her gently toward the stairs.

Cory came in as the kettle was rolling to a boil and washed his hands at the sink. I slipped an extra mug from the cupboard while his back was turned.

“Where is she?”

I barely caught the question; the tap was gushing noisily over his hands and spattering the draining board with diluted paint.

“She went to the loo.”

“Yeah, right. She could be anywhere. She could be nosing about upstairs.”

“I’m sure she’s not.”

He snorted and shut the tap.

“Oh, come on, Cory! What was I meant to say? ‘No, sorry, Maggie. You’ll just have to cross your legs’?”

Cory wiped his gory hands on a tea towel and flung it on the floor. He stood at the window with his arms folded across his chest, although there was nothing to see beyond a shock of brambles and nettles.

“Why couldn’t we have laughed,” I wondered aloud, “when Maggie thought the paint was blood?”

Cory drummed his fingers on his chin, rolled his eyes at the ceiling, made a big show of racking his brains. “Um . . . I don’t know. Let me see. Maybe because it wasn’t funny?”

“It was quite funny.”

We both narrowed our eyes, but he was the first to look away. Perhaps this was the kind of conversation he’d been hoping to ward off when he told me, I’m glad you’re not like your sister.

“What the hell is she doing up there?” He kicked the tea towel across the floor and I stooped to pick it up. It trembled in my hands like something half alive.

“What does it matter?” I said, draping it over the back of a chair. “Even if she is nosing about, what’s the worst thing she’s going to find? A dead bluebottle?”

He folded his arms tightly, stuffing his fists inside his armpits.

“Or are you worried she’s going to steal one of your paintings?” I raised my eyebrows and attempted a smile. “Do you think she might try and smuggle one out under her coat and flog it on eBay?”

“Don’t try to be funny, Freya. It doesn’t suit you.”

I sat down at the table. The surface was messy with crumbs and blobs of jam and rings of wine. Cory began pacing, picking things up from the counter and putting them down again—milky cereal bowls, a saucepan, a used wineglass, a bread knife. Everything he touched got smeared with red paint.

Upstairs the loo flushed—it was a Victorian monstrosity with a gurgling roar—and Cory stopped dead with the bread knife in his hand.