I was like a diamond setter, dealing in words rather than stones. I took my time over each one—turning it over, holding it to the light, weighing its implications, comparing its alternatives—and it might be allowed to stay, or it might be scrapped, or it might just fill a space until a better one turned up. How precisely to describe the way Cory painted a woman’s eyes? Were they tawdry or lifeless, and what was the difference? Was interiority a clumsier word than soul, or a more nuanced one? I rattled the pen against my teeth and tried them all; then I found others and tried them too. I wanted an adjective that meant “sexual but not sensual.” I needed an economical way of describing someone who can see another person in minute detail whilst missing everything that matters. I ransacked my brain and hankered after a thesaurus. The first draft filled fourteen pages; the fair copy barely made six.

It’s always interesting to see the accidental themes that emerge—and fail to emerge—in an exhibition like this. For example, self-satisfaction runs like a dye through the Freya exhibition, although I’m sure Cory Byrne never meant it to. Perceptiveness—which, as a portrait painter, he presumably hoped to achieve—is notable by its absence . . .

My back ached by the time I’d finished, and my legs had cramped. I stood up and walked round the room while I reread the piece, wincing as my toes revived. After a couple of tiny changes—insight rather than perceptiveness, pornographic rather than obscene—I dated it, 11/16/14, and signed it, F. Lyell, although I was too tired and elated to form the letters neatly.

If I’d been in my right mind I wouldn’t have considered this little essay worth dying for; all I’d done was to articulate some thoughts about my ex-boyfriend’s bad paintings. At the time, though, it felt like the great triumph of my life, and I couldn’t bring myself to care what came next.

I tore the pages out of the notebook, folded them in two, and slid them under the locked door—giving them a good shove to ensure they were out of my own reach.

I stayed on my feet for as long as I could, pacing up and down. Perhaps I was destined to be a ghost, stalking the attic of Byrne Hall for centuries to come in a 1970s ball gown. One day another young woman might come here and fall in love, and these footsteps of mine, echoing through time, would be her first intimation that something was wrong.

I had to stop, just for a moment, and close my eyes against the whir of my own thoughts. I swayed into the wall and slid into a crouch, and I was out like a light before my head hit the floor.