“We ought to have had the chimneys swept and then we could have lit fires in the downstairs rooms,” Cory fretted. “Although I suppose the smoke wouldn’t do the canvases much good. OK, so, next job: we need to dig out as many heaters as we can find and try to warm the place up.”

I hugged myself in an effort to suppress my shivers.

“Freya?”

“Mmm?”

“You’re not wearing your engagement ring.”

“No.”

These days, I could hardly bear to look at Cory—all I could do was direct my eyes to his left ear and hope he wouldn’t notice the difference. I think he did notice on this occasion, though, because he stopped talking and stared at me expectantly. I shuddered from head to toe, as if someone were walking over my grave.

“I’ll wear it this evening,” I said.

He took me by the shoulders and held me at arm’s length.

“We are together, aren’t we, me and you?” he said. “You’re on my side?”

Behind him, the landing seemed to go on and on: two rows of closed doors receding into infinity. It was too dark to see all the way to the end.

“Tonight . . .” he said. “The exhibition . . . It’s sacred to you, isn’t it, the same way it’s sacred to me? You know that? You feel it?”

I mumbled a reply along the right lines and told myself I’d be out of here by this time tomorrow. I’d be at home with Dad, getting back to normal. Cory’s world—where people whispered in corridors, wore ghostlike dresses, and turned words like sacred and beautiful inside out—would be gone forever. It would not have altered me. I would not find that it had dyed me, through and through, a different, darker colour.

“You’re not crying, are you?” he said, alarmed. “Why would you be crying? This is what I mean—there’s something about you today that I don’t understand.”

“I’m not crying,” I insisted, flicking an ivory sleeve across my cheeks. The fabric smelled faintly of mould. “I think we’re both tired.”

A wintry draught stirred the still air, as if a door or window had been flung open. There were footsteps in the entrance hall, and a voice yelled up the stairs, “Hello?”

My first thought was, Diana, which tells you something about my state of mind. It struck me as more likely that Diana had risen from her deathbed to stalk the house and shout at the top of her voice than that an outsider had burst in on us.

“That woman!” Cory’s whisper was testy.

“What woman?”

“Your woman. What’s she called? Maggie.”

The voice came again, a powerful singsong. “Hello?”

“I’ll deal with her,” said Cory. “You wait here.”

I let him get halfway down the stairs before I shook my head and followed.