Cory’s arms and legs were wrapped around mine and he was breathing through my hair. It was a chilly night, but under the duvet we were stewing in one another’s sweat. I couldn’t stay put any longer, even though the darkness was heavy and morning felt a long way off. Carefully, I lifted one of his deadweight legs from my thigh and slid my head out from under the crook of his arm. I needed to think, and I couldn’t do that when I was knotted up inside someone else’s limbs. Perhaps I should run a bath. I pictured lying in the soapy, steamy water with my eyes closed and the threads of my dreams and memories untangling smoothly, all by themselves.

It didn’t turn out quite like that: apart from anything else the water was tepid; I’d forgotten that the boiler went off overnight. I lay shivering under the bare bulb, staring at the bowl of potpourri on the bathroom windowsill, preferring to focus on those sad, dust-caked flowers than on my own altered body. Every time I bent my legs, my knees turned so poky and yellow that I seemed to be looking straight through the skin to the bone, and no matter how hard I soaped myself, my body smelled rotten. I’d tried not to notice these things before.

I thought about the woman at the Wingate Gallery. Russet hair, black dress, fur shrug: that was all I had, apart from the few things Stella had said about her and her son. It was like holding a couple of jigsaw pieces in my palm, knowing there was a whole picture to be made, if I could only find the rest. That New Year’s Eve party, when Stella kept smirking over her phone—was she messaging Cory? What about the fact that he’d never told me which college he’d attended, only that he—like my sister—had dropped out after a few months? And the “friend” we thought she’d run away with? And the location of her fall?

I dried myself and dressed, looking to the window for some softening of the darkness but finding none. I considered going back to the studio and asking him outright: Tell me honestly, Cory, did you and Stella know each other? It was the most obvious solution—or it would have been once. My fingers wandered to my neck and found the tenderness—the something-not-quite-right—deep down beneath the skin. I remembered Diana and how she’d stopped me on the stairs, right back at the beginning.

We have to be quick, she’d said. I need to talk to you about Stella.

But then Cory had come through the front door, and I’d allowed her to fall silent and retreat upstairs for good.