I stayed in my room until I heard my aunt and uncle go downstairs, and then I had a shower. Although the bathroom window faced the forest, the frosted glass offered very little of a view. When I leaned towards it a generalised mass of foliage bulged at me, but that was the only movement. Soon I desisted, feeling inexplicably uneasy, as if I’d invited more than I could see. I was rubbing the mirror above the sink clear of condensation to aid my token shave when I had the unwelcome fancy that the hand imitating mine belonged to an intruder. It was flattened against mine like the underside of a snail, and felt as moist and chill as I imagined that would be. Of course all that was the glass, but I couldn’t help feeling relieved once I was able to see my own face in the mirror. Perhaps my mother was right after all, and too much concentration on the likes of my aunt’s paintings was inflaming my imagination. All the same, I wasn’t about to give up my enthusiasm.

I took a question that had been nagging at me down to breakfast. “Do you have to talk to yourself when you’re working?”

“It’s been known. I don’t think your parents would approve of some of my language.”

Since my uncle was scrambling eggs, he hadn’t realised I was talking to his wife. “Do you?” I asked her.

“I don’t go in for curses, Patrick. Not that kind or any other.”

“No, I mean do you talk when you’re painting.”

“I might.” As she turned to find orange juice in the refrigerator she said “Why do you ask?”

“I thought I heard you last night while I was in bed.”

“I’ll have to keep my voice down. Your uncle was making rather a racket. I suppose you heard that too.”

I contributed a laugh in case she expected one. “It was a bit thunderous.”

“I decided since I was awake I might as well work.”

“It’s not like you to paint after dark,” my uncle said.

“No need to apologise, Neville.” Without waiting for an answer my aunt said “You’ll be working all day, won’t you? Patrick and I can have our walk.”

She was making it sound like a ritual, and I thought my uncle didn’t care too much for it – our outing or her choice of words. “Stay on the paths, won’t you?” he said. “Don’t let her go wandering off.”

“If you don’t go where other people won’t,” my aunt said, “you’ll never see what’s to be seen.”

I made a youthfully enthusiastic bid to forestall an argument. “I expect that’s what artists do.”

“Some of us don’t,” my uncle retorted, which left me feeling I should have kept the comment inside my clumsy head.