‘I saw Jasmine in the Pig’s Foot the other night.’ He brightens. ‘What a gorgeous girl she is. She asked after you.’

Liv finds the filter papers, deftly opens one and scoops in coffee.

‘Really?’

‘She’s marrying a Spaniard. He looks like Errol Flynn. Couldn’t take his eyes off her. Mind you, neither could I. She has a sway to her walk that is positively hypnotic. He’s taking on her and the baby. Some other chap’s, I believe. They’re going to live in Madrid.’

Liv pours a mug of coffee, hands it to her father.

‘Why don’t you see her any more? You two were such good friends?’ he wonders.

She shrugs. ‘People grow apart.’ She cannot tell him this is only half of the reason. These are the things that they do not tell you about losing your husband: that as well as the exhaustion you will sleep and sleep, and some days even the act of waking up will force your eyelids back down and that merely getting through each day will feel like a Herculean effort – you will hate your friends, irrationally: each time someone arrives at your door or crosses the street and hugs you and tells you they are so, so desperately sorry, you look at her, her husband and their tiny children and are shocked at the ferocity of your envy. How did they get to live and David to die? How did boring, lumpen Richard with his City friends and his weekend golfing trips and his total lack of interest in anything outside his tiny complacent world get to live, when David, brilliant, loving, generous, passionate David, had to die? How did hangdog Tim get to reproduce, to bring further generations of little unimaginative Tims into this world, when David’s unexpected mind, his kindness, his kisses, had been extinguished for ever?

Liv can remember screaming silently in bathrooms, bolting without explanation from crowded rooms, conscious of her own apparent rudeness but unable to stop herself. It had been years before she could view anybody else’s happiness without mourning the loss of her own.

These days, the anger has gone, but she prefers to view domestic satisfaction at a distance, and in people she doesn’t know well, as if happiness were a scientific concept that she is merely pleased to see proven.

She no longer sees the friends she had back then, the Cherrys, the Jasmines. The women who would remember the girl she had been. It was too complicated to explain. And she didn’t particularly like what it said about her.

‘Well, I think you should meet her before she goes. I used to love watching the two of you head out together, pair of young goddesses that you were.’

‘When are you going to call Caroline?’ she says, wiping crumbs from the stripped-pine kitchen table and scrubbing at a ring of red wine.

‘She won’t talk to me. I left fourteen messages on her mobile phone last night.’

‘You need to stop sleeping with other people, Dad.’

‘I know.’

‘And you need to earn some money.’

‘I know.’

‘And you need to get dressed. If I were her and came home and saw you like this I’d turn around and walk straight out again.’

‘I’m wearing her dressing-gown.’

‘I guessed.’

‘It still carries her scent.’ He inhales Caroline’s sleeve, an expression of deep tragedy across his face, and his eyes fill with tears. ‘What am I supposed to do if she doesn’t come back?’

Liv stills, her expression hardening momentarily. She wonders if her father has any idea what day it is today. Then she looks at the battered man in his women’s dressing-gown, the way his blue veins stand proud on his crêpy skin, and turns away to the washing-up. ‘You know what, Dad? I’m not really the person to ask.’

13

The old man lowers himself gingerly into the chair and lets out a sigh, as if crossing the room has been some effort. His son, standing with his hand under his elbow, watches anxiously.

Paul McCafferty waits, then glances at Miriam, his secretary. ‘Would you like tea or coffee?’ she asks.

The old man gives a small shake of his head. ‘No, thank you.’ The way he looks up says, Let’s just get on, shall we?

‘I’ll leave you to it.’ Miriam backs out of the little office.

Paul opens his folder. He lays his hands on the desk, feeling Mr Nowicki’s eyes on him. ‘Well, I asked you here today because I have some news. When you initially approached me I warned you that I thought this case would be tricky because of the lack of provenance on your side. As you know, many galleries are reluctant to hand over work without the most solid proof of –’

‘I remember the painting clearly.’ The old man lifts a hand.

‘I know. And you know that the gallery in question was very reluctant to engage with us, despite the holes in their own provenance. This case was complicated by the sharp increase in value of the work in question. And it was particularly hard, given that you had no image we could go on.’

‘How am I meant to describe such a drawing perfectly? I was ten when we were forced from our house – ten years old. Could you tell me what was on your parents’ walls when you were ten?’

‘No, Mr Nowicki, I couldn’t.’

‘Were we meant to know then we would never be allowed to go back to our own home? It is ridiculous, this system. Why should I have to prove that something was stolen from us? After all we have been through …’

‘Dad, we’ve been over this …’ The son, Jason, places a hand on his father’s forearm, and the old man’s lips press together reluctantly, as if he is used to being quelled.