“Very all right.”

“We’ll take it to my room. It’s nicer in there.”

“Your room, as in your studio?” I wanted him to remember his promise to show me some of his artwork.

“Yeah, well.” Cory laughed, a little sadly. “Former studio.”

When I first saw Cory’s room, I thought of those Arabian Nights tales where genies whisk palaces from one corner of the globe and set them down in another. I suppose you might call it a cheap effect if you were being detached about it. Light two dozen candles and place them in clusters around a large, untidy room—which is what we did, with a box of matches each, once Cory had set the tray down on the floor—and of course the shadows will come to life, and the dirt will turn to gold dust, and the bare plaster will look as if it’s been gilded. I didn’t want to be detached, though. I fell for it willingly.

“Look at this place!” I said. “It’s waiting. It’s waiting for you to take up art again and bring it back to life.”

“Do you think?”

“I do.”

Aside from a few oddments of furniture, every single object in the room was art related: leggy easels, rolls of canvas, jars of brushes, boxes overflowing with masking tape and mannequins, bulldog clips and string; even the floorboards were streaked and freckled with paint. I wondered how long it had been since he touched them; beneath the flattering glow of the candlelight the place felt sad and neglected. It didn’t smell of inspiration—by which I mean it didn’t smell of oily rags, or paint, or turpentine, or coffee, or glue. There was a fuzz of dust along the top of every canvas, and here and there the candle flames picked out a spider’s web, stretching like a mesh of copper wire from one picture frame to the next.

We spread a rug on the floor and threw cushions on top. There was a midnight enchantment in the air, though it can’t have been late, and it reminded me of when Stella and I were little, and we made dens out of our duvets when we were supposed to be asleep. Cory sat cross-legged in the middle of the rug and I knelt opposite, pulling my dress as low as it would go over my knees.

“Here,” he said, “have something to eat while I open the wine.” His voice had gone quiet, as if we were doing something illicit; risking discovery at any moment.

“So,” he whispered, passing me a full glass. “You were telling me about your dad, and poetry writing, and Tom.”

“Was I?”

Oh Lord, what exactly had he gleaned from that orange exercise book? I couldn’t see his expression. The nearest candle was guttering, and the shadows round his mouth and eyes flickered so rapidly that his face altered half a dozen times a second. One moment his smile was light and jokey, the next it was tender, or serious, or searching.