I walked out into the corridor. The art books had been arranged alphabetically, and I noticed the classical taste of the contemporary choices. I looked for Emin, Lucas, the Chapmans – no. Round the corner the fiction began. Whoever she lived with was a big reader with excellent taste. I carried on down the corridor, attracted by the light I could see from the room at the end. It was a long room with two enormous sets of windows that filled it with light and showed the top branches of the tree outside. The walls were covered in paintings, there was a dining table at one side of it, and a living-room area formed by two dark red sofas in an L-shape. Hardbacks were piled in a stack in one corner of the room with spines I recognised as recent arrivals to the shop. There was a photo of a middle-aged woman on the mantelpiece, the sort of woman who belonged in this room. Six of our living room could have fitted inside this one, and I wondered how much the flat had cost when it was bought. I wondered how much it cost now. I observed myself wondering and hated myself for being so dull. A pair of black Chelsea boots faced the corner like a dunce.

‘Sugar?’ shouted Emily from the kitchen.

I walked back and said no thanks. I watched her remove a teabag from one mug and dunk it in the other. ‘Your boyfriend’s a big reader too.’

‘Oh, yeah. A lot of the books are actually his ex’s. She was in the business until – well, that’s his business. I’ve always been too peripatetic until recently to keep hold of my books. I end up buying the same favourites four or five times.’ She handed me a tea. ‘Probably easiest to do this in my room. The living room’s too distracting. You just want to appreciate it. I don’t allow myself in there when I have work to do.’

She led me back down the corridor and opened a door. The first thing I saw was a double bed and I thought hopefully that perhaps I had misheard her about the boyfriend, and she was only a lodger.

‘It was the guest bedroom before I took it over,’ she explained. ‘Supposed to be for his daughter but she never stays over, not now I’m here.’

She turned sharply away from me as she said that, and I didn’t ask any further.