And so had her art. They were domestic pieces. Mostly interiors of ordinary rooms. Sometimes with a fragment of a person: a leg with a thick, wrinkled stocking and a slipper in front of an old-fashioned gas fire; a hand pouring milk from a plastic container in an untidy kitchen. In the paintings there was often an object that shocked. In an old-fashioned parlour set for afternoon tea – sandwiches with the crusts cut off, a tiered plate of iced fancies – a line of cocaine on an octagonal mirror. In an elderly woman’s bedroom, on a dusty dressing table, a gun.

He’d been fascinated by the paintings, and while Fran caught up with her friends he’d stared at them. He’d decided they were like the photographs of crime scenes. Each piece held a narrative, a history of the room’s owner. Then he’d come to the portrait of the child and he hadn’t known what to make of it. At first sight it was a child from a different era. Dark hair twisted into loose ringlets and tied with white ribbons. A white dress. But the girl had a contemporary face. Knowing. A smile that might have been mischievous or complicit. Perez had stood and looked at it for a long time, and despite his reluctance to talk about art with Fran’s friends – he was always anxious that he would show himself up in front of them – he’d sought out Monica to ask her about the painting. But Monica was standing with a glass in her hand, flushed and talkative, laughing a little too loudly, and he knew this wasn’t a good time. So despite telling Willow that they’d chatted for a while, there’d been no real conversation. He’d stood on the edge of the crowd, listening, while she talked about her inspiration: ‘I glory in the commonplace made weird.’

Instead the gallery owner had come up to him. Perez had met him once at a similar occasion, when Fran had turned out again to support one of her colleagues.

‘What do you think of them?’ The owner frowned.

‘I like them.’

‘I don’t think they’ll do well here. We sell mostly to tourists, and these are too urban. Or suburban perhaps. I’ll keep a few pieces, though. Leaze is a big name after all. And the portrait of the girl. At first glance that’s a traditional work and it might appeal to a grandparent. Something a bit odd about her, though, don’t you think? Disturbing.’

Perez had agreed that there was. Then the evening was over and they’d driven to get the last ferry to Shetland mainland. And three months later Fran was dead. It occurred to him now, in a moment of complete madness, that the painting – so like the image of Peerie Lizzie described by the Sletts women – had somehow foreshadowed the tragedy.