“What’s she like?”

Jess had a way of looking at me that was unnerving, a little like having a scalpel slicing into my brain. “Weepy, clingy and wet,” she said, as if that were also her description of me. “He wouldn’t have strayed if she’d beaten him up a bit more, or found herself a job. She’s the fiancée he produced to get rid of Madeleine…and she took him to the cleaners when she discovered he was rogering a couple of nurses behind her back.”

“You mean two in a bed?” I asked in surprise.

It was the first time I saw Jess laugh. “God! That would have been funny! He’s a gent, for Christ’s sake. He took them one at a time and sent them flowers if he couldn’t make it…and now all three of them feel abused. I feel marginally sorry for the wife-except she brought it on herself-but the nurses haven’t got a leg to stand on. They knew they were sharing him with one woman so why make waves about another?”

I thought rather guiltily of the married men I’d bedded. Particularly Dan. What kind of relationship was that? “It’s easier to compete with a wife. You know what you’re dealing with. Another lover suggests you’re as boring as the woman you’re trying to depose.”

IT WAS A GOOD FEW MINUTES after we heard Peter’s car drive away before either Jess or I spoke. I couldn’t think of anything to say, other than “Go,” but she was staring at the floor as if looking for inspiration in the quarry tiles. When she finally opened her mouth, it was to express disapproval of Peter. “I don’t know why he did that. If you phone his private line you’ll have to pay for treatment. I’ll give you directions to the clinic so that you can get it for free.”

“Perhaps I’m not entitled.”

She frowned. “I thought you said you and your parents had been given asylum.”

I reached for my keys from the other side of the table so that I didn’t have to look at her. “Ja, well, I still hold a Zimbabwean passport so I don’t know what my status is. I think Dr. Coleman was just trying to be helpful.” Over the years I’ve developed a mid-Atlantic accent that doesn’t specify where I come from, but under stress my South African intonation takes over. I heard the “Zim” of “Zimbabwean” come out as “Zeem,” the “think” as “thunk,” and the “C” of Coleman as a hard “G.”

Jess picked up on it immediately. “Is it me that’s worrying you? Do you want me to go?”

“I’m sure I can manage on my own.”

She shrugged. “Are you planning on staying?”

I nodded.

“Then you’d better let me light the Aga first because you won’t be able to cook without it.” She jerked her chin towards the door to the corridor. “You might as well have a wander while I’m doing it…see if there’s anything else you need help with. It’ll be your last chance. I’m even less keen to be here than you are to have me.”

Looking back, it’s odd that neither of us took these remarks personally. They were simple statements of fact: we preferred our own company. It hadn’t always been so for me but for Jess it was natural. “I get it from my father. He could go days sometimes without speaking a word. He used to say we were born into the wrong century. If we’d been around before the industrial revolution our skills would have counted for something and our reticence would have been taken for wisdom.”

Her mother had tried to teach her to be more forthcoming. “While she was alive, she could always get me to smile-my brother and sister, too-but I reverted to type after they died…or forgot how to do it. I don’t know which. It’s a learnt skill. The more you do it, the easier it comes.”

“I thought smiling was an automatic response.”

“It can’t be,” said Jess bluntly, “otherwise Madeleine wouldn’t be able to do it. Her smile’s about as genuine as a crocodile’s…and she shows more teeth.”

ALL THIS TOOK TIME to make sense. That day, I was just an explorer. I remember standing in front of a poster-size photograph on the wall at the end of the upstairs landing with “Madeleine” printed underneath it. The name registered because Jess had asked me if she and I were related, but still I didn’t know who she was. It was a black-and-white shot of a young woman leaning into the wind with a turbulent sea behind her, and, but for the name, I’d have assumed it was an Athena print. It was striking, both for the girl’s looks and the way the photograph was lit.

Madeleine was stunning. She was dressed in a long coat and trousers with a black cloche hat pulled over her head. Her face was turned towards the camera and the definition of every feature was extraordinary. Her perfect teeth showed in the sort of triangular smile that American pageant queens practise for hours, but to me it looked genuine, reaching to eyes that danced with mischief. I came to understand why Jess didn’t like her-there was no contest between Madeleine’s Venus and Jess’s Mars-but it was a mystery why Peter Coleman had turned her down.

I had no idea at that stage that Madeleine had been responsible for preparing Barton House for letting, but I do remember thinking that whoever owned the place had a very low opinion of tenants. It could have been so imposing-commanding ten times what I was paying-but instead it was hideously tacky. Every room showed evidence of cheaper, smaller furniture taking the place of something grander. Mean, narrow wardrobes had the imprint of a larger brother on the wall behind them, and indentations in the carpets showed where great beds and heavy dressing-tables had stood before their flimsier replacements had been imported.

To anyone with an ounce of creativity, the house screamed for a makeover. Given freedom, I’d have taken it back to its eighteenth-century origins, stripping the walls of their twentieth-century coverings and removing the fussy curtains to show, and use, the panelled shutters. Simplicity would have suited it, where frills, furbelows and vulgar furniture made it look like an ageing tart with thick make-up covering the blemishes. I discovered later that it was as it was because Madeleine refused to allow Lily’s solicitor to squander her inheritance on improvements, but it did set me wondering about the owner. It seemed so obvious to me that any money spent now would pay for itself again and again through higher rent.

I was most puzzled by the sketches and oil paintings that hung in every room. They were a mish-mash of styles-abstracts, life drawings, eccentric representations of buildings with roots anchoring them to the ground and foliage growing from their windows-but they were all signed by the same artist, Nathaniel Harrison. Some were originals and some-the sketches-were prints, but I couldn’t understand why anyone would collect so much of a single artist’s work simply to hang it in a rented house.

When I asked Jess about it, her mouth twisted into a cynical smile. “I expect they’re only there to hide the damp.”

“But who’s Nathaniel Harrison? How come Lily bought so much of his work?”

“She didn’t. Madeleine must have imported them after she stripped the house of her mother’s paintings. It would have been cheaper than having the house redecorated.”

“How did Madeleine get them?”

“The way she gets everything,” she said caustically. “Sex.”

Extracts from notes, filed as “CB16-19/05/04”

…I can’t separate specific events anymore. I’m not sure if I’ve shut my memory down or if I was too disorientated for it to function properly. Everything’s fused into time inside the cage and time out of it. I described the cage to Dan and the police, and I said it was in a cellar, but the rest…

…The police thought I was being deliberately evasive when I said I couldn’t tell them anything else. But it was the truth. When Dan asked me what happened, I couldn’t tell him either. It wouldn’t have helped, anyway. The police weren’t going to arrest a man on the evidence of smell. What sort of identification is that?