“And then, later on, you went to sleep on the hall floor.”

I opened my eyes, but I was careful not to move. I knew he was drawing my neck because I could feel his gaze wandering round my throat and exploring the shadows under my chin. It was like having a butterfly walk over my skin.

“You looked like a mermaid in that long green dress,” he said. “You looked as if you’d been washed up by the sea and stranded on the tiles.”

I smiled. It didn’t occur to me to apologise for trespassing; it was too late for all that. If there was anything to forgive, he had surely forgiven me by now.

“Before I fell asleep,” I said, “I thought I saw your portrait of my sister.”

The pencil stopped moving across the page. I wanted to sit up and face him, but I didn’t dare alter my posture.

“Was it her? She was on the back wall opposite the door—a girl with red hair—a kind of mosaic, with lots of ripped-up bits of paper all stuck together. When I woke up she’d disappeared, and I thought I must have dreamt her.”

The pencil began drifting over the paper again, making long, tender lines. The sound echoed on the surface of my skin, following the line of my jaw up to the base of my ear, and when I swallowed I knew he had noticed the dipping of my throat.

“It’s possible,” Cory said. “My mother’s always moving pictures around, when she’s well enough. Sometimes I think she’s nothing better to do.”

He drew a few strokes before closing the sketchbook with a sigh and stretching his arms above his head.

“I don’t know about you, but I need to move. Come on.”

Cory retained my hand after helping me up, which was just as well because the landing was inky black, and so was the staircase down to the hall. I thought he would switch a light on, but apparently he didn’t need to see where he was going to move quickly and surely round the house.

I only knew we’d reached the entrance hall because I recognised the chill of the tiles under my bare feet, and the way the space made our voices ring, even though we were whispering. Cory led me forward a few paces and reached upward. An electric light stammered on-off-on: the same picture light that had died on me the other week. I suppose they’d replaced the bulb.

“Lady Caroline Augusta Fitzroy-Byrne,” said Cory. “I take it she’s not your sister’s look-alike?”

I smiled slightly and shook my head.

“We had her valued a few years ago; thought she might turn out to be a Reynolds.”

“And?”

“Sadly for the bank balance—no.”

Lady Caroline’s eighteenth-century gaze passed over our heads—pale, hooded, and inscrutable. Presumably she’d had a coral-coloured mouth in the beginning to match her flowers, but the paint had faded over the years, leaving her with no lips and a couple of bleached roses clutched to her breast. The lapdog looked several degrees livelier than its mistress: there was a slight sheen to its fur, and its eyes were like black cherries.