Even while he was staring at me, he kept stroking Stella’s portrait. His eyes were bleaker than the sea at its most wintry and grey, and I wondered if Stella had been in love with them at any point, and whether they were the last things she saw before she died.

“I sometimes used to think your sister was a horror,” he said, smoothing her ripped-up face. “But at least she had class. You’re something else entirely.”

“You think you can shock me,” I said. “But I already know about you and Stella.”

He smiled faintly.

“Stella laughed when I talked about exhibiting these paintings,” he said. “But at least she laughed to my face; at least she didn’t pretend to be on board and whisper about me behind my back.”

“I know it was you who killed her,” I said.

His smile faded. “You know nothing at all.”

My phone started up again, but the ringtone was different—it was the ragtime tune that signified Dad. The screen lit up with his name.

“Answer it.” Cory pushed the phone toward me with his foot. When I hesitated, he took the craft knife from his jacket pocket and turned it over in his hands.

Dad was already speaking as I brought the phone to my ear, although I could hardly hear him over the crackle of static.

“. . . Freya, it’s your father. I don’t know where you’ve got to, but frankly I’m not prepared to hang around in this godawful . . . crackle . . . Zoë and I are leaving.”

I cast my eyes about the room—at the dusty light bulb, and the rain-jewelled window, and the many painted faces of my sister. I glanced at Cory’s knife, with its bright triangular blade. “Hang on. Dad . . .”

“No, I won’t ‘hang on.’ You’ve put me in a most embarrassing position . . . crackle, crackle . . . most unlike you to be so . . .”

The line was terrible. They must be outside in the wind. Or perhaps they were already in the car, heading for a brandy and an early night in their plush hotel.

“Dad, please don’t go.”

Cory had been leaning forward, but he shot to his feet when I said “don’t go” and his face seemed to tighten, like a photograph coming into focus.

“He’s not leaving,” he whispered, sliding the knife under my chin. “Don’t let him leave.”

But Dad had got the bit between his teeth. “. . . that I have a huge respect and liking for Cory, but he’s no artist as you surely know . . . If you’ve got problems with your relationship, that’s none of my business but . . . crackle . . . how unkind of you, very disappointing, frankly . . . crackle, crackle . . . to drag me into some kind of vindictive plot . . . As if humiliating your boyfriend in a national newspaper was some kind of . . .”