She’d lost her frame, of course, but I recognised her at once: the deadpan eyes; the paper mosaic and the web of shiny glue; the gap where her hands had been ripped off at the wrists. I hadn’t realised until then that she was naked. It wasn’t immediately obvious because of the way her red hair hung, like a veil, to her waist. I wondered why Cory had chosen to rip her up like that, only to stick her back together again? And why no hands? The glinting web of glue had an oddly powerful effect on her presence, as if something wild—a churn of heat and light—were about to burst through the surface of the picture from the other side.

At first I thought she was on her own. It was only as I turned to go that I saw the others: a whole chaotic pyramid of boards, papers, and canvases; a bonfire waiting to be lit. Some of the pictures were torn, some bent; a few were still framed, most were not; all depicted red-headed girls, gathering dust. For one befuddled moment I thought they must be portraits of me, but then I crossed the room to take a better look and it became obvious that they were not Freyas; they were Stellas.

Cory had never posed me like this; had never studied me with such a raw appetite. If there was too much flesh in his paintings of me, and not enough soul, then at least he tried to disguise the fact by showing me reading, or sitting at a window looking vague and otherworldly. I was always clothed and my eyes were usually averted.

Lucky for me, I thought.

I took pictures from the heap, one after another, and studied them for as long as I could bear to. Stella—I mean Cory’s version of Stella—tended to be naked, and her smile was pointed and cold. Even when she had clothes on—as in this one, where she was wearing a long red dress—she seemed strangely denuded, as if he had stripped her of her personality layer by layer, and reduced her to a piece of animate meat. I held up one of the smaller oil paintings, which showed her on a bed with her head thrown back and her arms above her head. The colours were horrible—lurid pinks and purples—and the focus was not her face or even her breasts, but her exposed neck.

Lucky for you, said Stella’s voice in my head, but it did nothing to lessen the ache I felt in the pit of my belly.

I tossed the picture away. It was supposed to land facedown but it didn’t, so she lay naked at my feet, thrusting her salmon-pink neck at me. I trod on it—on her—as I crossed to the window.