Roddy snorted. ‘Well, that’s something, I suppose.’

‘Secondly.’ Phoebe hesitated, her eyes closed, and then took a breath. ‘I’ve never really been brave enough to say this to anyone before, but – You see, over the years, I have, with great difficulty, built up a certain … faith in myself. In my painting, I mean. In fact, it’s got to the point where I think it’s probably quite good.’ She smiled. ‘That must sound very arrogant.’

‘Not at all.’

‘It wasn’t always like this. There was a time when I didn’t have any faith in myself at all. It’s quite … painful to talk about, but – well, it happened when I was a student. I’d given up nursing for a while to go to art college, and I was living with some people in this house – we were sharing it – when someone came and stayed with us for a few days. A visitor. And one day I was out shopping, and I came back to find that he was in my room, looking at this painting that was only half-finished. Less than half-finished, really. And it was as if … as if he’d seen me naked, I suppose. And not just that, but he started trying to talk about the painting, and it was obvious that it meant something completely different to him, that I was completely failing to communicate anything through it, in fact, and I … It was very strange. A few days later he left without saying anything. Didn’t say goodbye to any of us. He left us all feeling … empty, somehow, and I couldn’t bear the thought of looking at those paintings again – of anyone looking at them. The upshot was that I asked the landlady if we could have a bonfire in the back yard, and I burnt everything I’d done. Every painting, every drawing. I dropped out of college and went back into nursing full time. And that was that for a while. I didn’t paint at all. Not that I wasn’t thinking about it. I still used to visit galleries, and read all the magazines and everything. There was this sort of – empty space, inside me, where I used to paint, and I was looking for something to fill it: someone, I should say, because I was longing just to find a picture – any picture – which would leap out at me and suddenly … connect. Do you know that feeling? You must do: coming across an artist whose work speaks to you so directly, it’s as if you both understand the same private language – somehow confirming everything you’ve ever thought and at the same time saying something completely new.’ Roddy was mute, incomprehending. ‘You don’t, do you? Well, anyway. It never happened, needless to say. But what did happen was that a couple of years later I got a parcel in the post, from one of my old lecturers at the college. They’d been having some sort of clear-out, and they’d found some sketches of mine, apparently, which they wanted to return. So I unpacked these things and started looking at them again. Funnily enough, there was an early version of the painting which had caused so much trouble in the first place, the one this man had completely misunderstood. And seeing it again – seeing all of them again, really – I realized how wrong he’d been: how wrong I’d been, to over-react like that. Because Iknew, as soon as I saw them after all this time I knew that they were good. I knew that I’d been on to something. I knew that there was no one else around who was – I won’t say better than me, I don’t have that much of an ego – but who was really working in the same field, or attempting anything at all similar … It just gave me my confidence back, somehow, made me feel that I’d actually been doing something at least as worthwhile as all the other painters who were getting bought and sold and commissioned and exhibited. And I’ve never really lost that feeling. I do feel that I … that I deserve. So what you should know, I suppose, is that I’m pretty determined. I don’t think there’s anything, now, anything in the world that matters to me as much as finding some kind of audience for my work.’

She took a few sips from her glass and brushed a strand of hair back from her brow. Roddy didn’t speak for some time.

‘What we should probably do,’ he said at last, ‘is take a look through the pictures tomorrow and see what we can arrange.’ Phoebe nodded. ‘Right now, I think we’d better go to bed.’ She looked up, questioning. ‘Separately,’ he explained.

‘All right.’

Together they climbed the Great Staircase, and at the entrance to the East Corridor, they kissed a formal good-night.

4

Phoebe felt tiny in the four-poster. Her mattress was soft and full of lumps, and although she had intended to lie to the side of the bed nearest the window, she found herself rolled by the weight of her own body into a deep valley at the centre. The bed creaked whenever she moved: but then the whole house seemed to be forever creaking, or groaning, or whispering, or rustling, as if never for a moment at ease with itself, and in an effort to close her ears to this disquieting soundtrack, she tried to focus her mind on the day’s strange events. She was pleased, on the whole, with the way things had worked out with Roddy. Even before arriving at Winshaw Towers, she had taken the reluctant decision to sleep with him if he made this his absolute precondition for promoting her work, but she was glad that she hadn’t been obliged to go through with it. Instead, something much better, and much more unexpected, was starting to emerge from their weekend together: a sense of mutual understanding. She even realized – very much to her own surprise – that she was beginning to trust him. And in the warm glow of this realization, she permitted herself a fantasy: the same fantasy to which all artists, however good their intentions, however unflinching their principles, have recourse from time to time. It was a fantasy of success; of recognition, and acclaim. Phoebe’s ambitions were too modest to encompass worldwide celebrity, or serious wealth, but she did dream – as she often had before – of having her work seen and appreciated by other painters; of touching the lives and colouring the perceptions of a few members of the public; of being exhibited, perhaps, in her home town, so that she might give something back to the people with whom she had grown up, repay her parents for the faith and patience which they had vouched her and which had been so valuable during her worst moments of self-doubt. At the thought that some – or even all – of this might now, possibly, miraculously, be about to happen, she stretched her legs beneath the grey, musty sheets and added a whole new chorus of delicious creaks to the furtive stirrings of the house itself.

But all at once she was aware of another noise, too. It was coming from the direction of the door, which she had taken the precaution of locking before getting into bed. She sat up cautiously and reached out for the table lamp, which cast a murky, ineffectual glow over the room. She looked towards the door. Suddenly feeling like the leading lady in some low-budget and none too original horror film, she realized that the handle was turning. There was someone out in the corridor, trying to get in.

Phoebe swung her legs out of bed and tiptoed towards the door. She was wearing a thick, striped cotton nightshirt which buttoned up at the front and reached down almost to her knees.

‘Who is it?’ she asked, in a brave, slightly quavering voice, after the handle had been tried a few more times.

‘Phoebe? Are you awake?’ It was Roddy’s voice: a loud whisper.

She sighed with exasperation. ‘Well of course I’m awake,’ she said, unlocking the door and holding it ajar. ‘If I wasn’t before I certainly am now.’

‘Can I come in?’

‘I suppose so.’

She opened the door and Roddy, who was wearing a satin kimono, slid inside and sat down on the bed.

‘What is it?’

‘Come and sit down a minute.’

She sat beside him.

‘I couldn’t sleep,’ he said.