I turn to look at the empty doorway, but the woman has gone. I can’t help wishing I’d seen her face.

Idly, we circle the room. Dad is standing with his hands behind his back, gazing at Dorelia in a Hat, circa 1907. Tom and Natalie, his new wife—his wife!—are in a chummy huddle with the Wingate’s director and a couple of other curators. Tom slips us a smile as we pass.

“So, what’s her son like?” I ask.

“OK, I think.” Stella considers the question. “Quiet. Flaky, maybe.”

I consider joking, “Takes one to know one,” because given the mood she’s in, she would probably laugh—but it’s high risk, and I decide against it.

“He got a C-grade in week one,” Stella tells me. “I forget what it was for. Lino printing, I think. Anyway, he took it badly and walked out, and then for a couple of days there were rumours—”

“What kind of rumours?”

“Oh, it’s probably nonsense . . .” Stella shrugs. “As I say, he came back after a day or two and he’s been fine ever since. People like a melodrama.”

“Yes, but what exactly—”

We are distracted by a waiter with canapés, and Stella swipes a handful of the delicious goat cheese ones. Tom and Natalie appear, and I pause to speak, but Stella steers me away. Our lazy stroll becomes a brisk walk, the pictures mere background to Stella’s thoughts.

“Yes, that’s what I want to be,” she announces suddenly. “I want to be her.”

“Who? Natalie?” I am suitably astonished, but Stella’s “No!” is frosty all the same. We don’t discuss Tom’s wife very much, but we know we don’t like her.

“No. Of course not Natalie! I mean her. That woman.”

“Oh, OK.”

Stella doesn’t elaborate, but I think about the woman’s classy walk, the fur shrug, and the way people stared—and I do know what she’s getting at.

Chapter 3

3

It was a dream.

I woke in a sweat, clutching the pillow in two tight fists, Stella’s voice ringing in my ears.

But it wasn’t a dream. Or it wasn’t only a dream, because it had also happened in real life. Augustus John at the Wingate Gallery. The woman in the fur shrug—forever with her back to me; forever disappearing into a different room. The son Stella had known from college. He’s OK, she’d said. Quiet. Flaky.