I rummaged inside my bag for my purse, and my hands closed on Tom’s exhibition catalogue. I pulled it out and laid it on my lap. If I could have talked to anyone in the world at that moment, I’d have chosen Tom.

I wasn’t in the mood for reading, but I opened the book and leafed through it slowly, saint by saint, angel by angel. Maybe I thought I’d find some comfort in their sad and faraway eyes, but they didn’t have anything to tell me just then. I tried reading the text.

Raphael’s reputation was almost inevitably going to suffer in an artistic climate that valued “Sturm und Drang” over quiet grace and calm.

Tom wrote that. I knew it was part of his essay even before I’d spotted his photo at the foot of the page, because it came to life in his voice. One moment the printed letters were lying flat on the page, the next they were up and about, and Tom was saying them inside my head.

I read the sentence again, but the effect wasn’t as strong a second time. I tried over and over, but the more eagerly I reached for him the faster he seemed to fragment and fade. There was nothing left in the end—just my own internal voice, echoing round my head. I wasn’t sure what Sturm und Drang meant.

“Tom?”

I said his name aloud in an effort to summon him back, and the house sighed. I closed my eyes and dropped my face against the glossy pages of the book. I suppose it only smelled of newness and ink, but it hit me like the scent of a lovely and unreachable world.

Cory was still asleep, the night was still dark, and the house had more to tell me, if only I knew how to listen. It seemed impossible—unthinkable—that Stella could have been here and left no trace at all.

I wandered the rooms—upstairs and down—but I knew what I’d find because I’d seen it all before. The cobwebs, the debris, the oppressive emptiness.

The only part of the house I’d never visited was the attic. I’d poked my head up the stairwell once, a long time ago, and concluded there was nothing to see. Cory had dissuaded me from going up. “It’s just a load of empty rooms,” he’d said, “and I’m not 100 percent sure the floorboards are safe.”

I turned the lights off in the downstairs rooms and stopped in front of Lady Caroline’s portrait.

The attic, then?

Lady Caroline looked into my eyes and her mouth curled at the corner.

“Freya?” Cory’s voice came sleepily over the bannister. “What are you doing?”

I hesitated, but only for a moment. “I couldn’t sleep. I came downstairs to make some tea.”

He yawned noisily. “Can you make me one too?”

“Sure.”