“Johnny was talking about you at lunch. No, don’t worry,” he said quickly. Perhaps he noticed an expression of alarm on my face. “He’s very impressed with you. He says you’ve got a flair for the job and that Frances was lucky to find you.”

I didn’t reply. Like so many conversations I was having in that office, I didn’t want it to go any further, any deeper. I did worry and, more than that, I didn’t like the idea of being discussed over lunch by those two men, as if I was a specimen. And I didn’t like the way that Johnny had brought David back to the office, as if they were going to look me over together, or so that Johnny could show off his latest conquest.

“You’re an enigma. That’s what Johnny says. We lose Milena suddenly and tragically, and you appear like a white knight. It’s Fate.”

I snatched at the opportunity to push the conversation in a different direction. “It’s strange for me,” I said. “Milena feels so present here, and absent as well. What did you make of her?”

“You knew her, didn’t you?” His tone was curt.

“Not well,” I said. “Were you close to her?”

I expected David to smile and make a joke but his face took on a stony expression.

“No,” he said. “I wouldn’t say I was close to her.”

“But she was a remarkable character, wasn’t she?”

He allowed himself a very small, very forced smile. “In some ways, yes.”

“You don’t sound as if you liked her very much.”

“‘Liked’ is rather a tepid word when talking about someone like Milena. People either found her whole act appealing and attractive, or . . . well, they didn’t.” He looked at me more closely. “It’s funny to think of you as connected to Milena because you’re as opposite from her as it’s possible to be.”

And yet, I thought, she’d been involved with my husband. Perhaps that was what he had been looking for: someone as different from me as it was possible to find.

“You see?” he said. “You’ve got me changing the subject. You’ve got me talking about Milena, when what I want to talk about is you. Milena would have liked that. She wanted to be the center of attention. She would have liked the idea of us talking about her even after she was dead and buried. Or dead and scattered, in her case. To get back to you, what Johnny said is that he thought very highly of you—as I’ve said—but he couldn’t make you out. Reserved, mysterious, those were the words he used about you.”