On an easel is a portrait of a richly dressed couple. The woman is at least three decades younger than her husband. Her cheeks are flushed with youth and her lips, curved in a smile, are the same blushing shade as the posy of tulips in her arms. The husband affects a more serious pose, legs planted wide, chin raised imperiously, the golden chains roped about his neck conveying his superior status as one of the city’s elite. In his left hand, he clasps a set of golden keys – the keys to the city, or his wife’s heart, perhaps.

‘I ought to finish it,’ Catharina mutters, throwing the portrait a dark look. ‘Crispijn will only bother me until I do. But I just cannot seem to summon up the will.’

‘It looks finished to me,’ Anna observes.

Catharina snorts in disbelief. ‘Does it so? Look again. Can you not see how Lady Huysum’s dress appears thin? I haven’t worked up the colour. The dress is meant to be pink, not white. I’ve run out of poppyseed oil. Crispijn was supposed to bring me more back from Amsterdam. I suppose I should send you upstairs to ask him for it, but I cannot stand the thought of his gloating, thinking he’s won and I am hard at work again. He should respect my wishes and support me, knowing how hard it has been to lose the one person I trusted above all others.’

Dropping her hands to her sides, Catharina leads Anna to a velvet curtain which conceals another painting hanging on the wall, a rope dangling beside it. Catharina picks up the rope.

‘This is the most important piece in my collection,’ she says. ‘Before I show it to you, I need you to understand that it wasn’t always this way. Crispijn and I used to be close. “Two cherries connected by one stem” – that’s how my mother described us. She was called home to God just after our fifteenth birthday. Her death plunged me into the deepest melancholy I have ever experienced. Until that moment, I’d never truly believed that someone I loved could just disappear, that they could depart for Heaven without saying goodbye and leave nothing of themselves behind.’

Catharina’s eyes shine. She pauses to press a hand against her stomach, and inhales a deep, steadying breath.