“What?”

“Glassy-eyed.”

I snorted. A waiter approached with a tray of canapés, and Tom filled his cupped hand with pesto palmiers and tequila prawn skewers.

“How was that wedding last weekend?” he said, when I made no further response. “Down in the West Country, wasn’t it?”

I nodded. “Byrne Hall. It’s a stately home overlooking the sea.”

“Oh yes.” He glanced at me anxiously. “Sorry, of course. I’d forgotten. Near where . . .”

“Mmm.”

There was a long pause while he chewed a palmier and dusted the crumbs off his trousers.

“It’s funny you should mention Stella,” I said, in response to his faint allusion, “because I came across a portrait of her inside the house.”

Tom turned and stared at me, and I wondered how long it had been since we last mentioned her name. Months? Possibly years. I wasn’t surprised that he blushed.

“What do you mean? What house?”

“I snuck inside Byrne Hall itself—we weren’t supposed to, we were meant to keep to the garden—and there was a portrait of Stella on the wall near the stairs.”

I’d been trying to forget about the portrait that may or may not have existed, but perhaps I’d been trying too hard, because it—she—wouldn’t fade. Whatever I did or said or thought, she was there getting in the way, staring me out in my waking hours and striving to speak to me at night. She was like a television picture without any sound, and it bothered me that I couldn’t understand a word she said.

“Actually, I was thinking of taking a few days off work,” I added. “I want to go back to Byrne Hall and take a proper look; talk to the people who live there; find out if perhaps they knew her . . .”

I picked at the pastry flakes he’d scattered on my lap, pressing them onto my thumb pad one by one.

“Right.” Tom looked confused, as if I’d been talking quickly in a foreign language. I was relieved to see Dad approaching our bench.

“Don’t say anything,” I warned under my breath.

“No, OK.”

Dad was peering at us over the rim of his glasses.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” he said, “but I was hoping to have a word with Tom.”

My father could look fierce to the point of terrifying when he was happy, and he was happy tonight. I loved it when he was like this, with his hair standing up round his ears, and his tie askew, and a pencil twitching in his fingers, and no room in his head for anything except art.

It didn’t last, of course. The evening drew to a close, we said our goodbyes, and my father’s joy glugged away like wine from a toppled bottle. It was difficult to talk on the crowded tube train. All I could do was stand there in the heat, my face pressed up against a stranger’s armpit, and watch his euphoria fade.