‘So … what happens now? You need some space?’ He adds, ‘I have to warn you – if you want me to leave I may need to wait until my legs stop shaking.’

She looks at Paul McCafferty, at the shape of him, already familiar to her very bones. She does not want him to leave. She wants to lie down beside him, his arms around her, her head nestled into his chest. She wants to wake without the instant, terrible urge to run away from her own thoughts. She is conscious of an echoing doubt – David – but she pushes it away. It is time to live in the present. She is more than the girl David left behind.

She does not turn on the light. She reaches for Paul’s hand and leads him through the dark house, up the stairs and to her bed.

They do not sleep. The hours become a glorious, hazy miasma of tangled limbs and murmured voices. She has forgotten the utter joy of being wrapped around a body you can’t leave alone. She feels as if she has been recharged, as if she occupies a new space in the atmosphere.

It is six a.m. when the cold electric spark of dawn finally begins to leach into the room.

‘This place is amazing,’ he murmurs, gazing out through the window. Their legs are entwined, his kisses imprinted all over her skin. She feels drugged with happiness.

‘It is. I can’t really afford to stay here, though.’ She peers at him through the half-dark. ‘I’m in a bit of a mess, financially. I’ve been told I should sell.’

‘But you don’t want to.’

‘It feels … like a betrayal.’

‘Well, I can see why you wouldn’t want to leave,’ he says. ‘It’s beautiful. So quiet.’ He looks up again. ‘Wow. Just to be able to peel your roof off whenever you feel like it …’ She wriggles out of his arms a little, so that she can turn towards the long window, her head in the crook of his arm. ‘Some mornings I like to watch the barges head up towards Tower Bridge. Look. If the light is right it turns the river into a trickle of gold.’

‘A trickle of gold, huh?’

They fall silent, and as they watch, the room begins to glow obligingly. She gazes down at the river, watching it illuminate by degrees, like a thread to her future. Is this okay? she asks. Am I allowed to be this happy again?

Paul is so quiet she wonders if he has finally drifted off to sleep. But when she turns he is looking at the wall opposite the bed. He is staring at The Girl You Left Behind, now just visible in the dawn. She shifts on to her side and watches him. He is transfixed, his eyes not leaving the image as the light grows stronger. He gets her, she thinks. She feels a stab of something that might actually be pure joy.

‘You like her?’

He doesn’t seem to hear.

She nestles back into him, rests her face on his shoulder. ‘You’ll see her colours more clearly in a few minutes. She’s called The Girl You Left Behind. Or at least we – I – think she is. It’s inked on the back of the frame. She’s … my favourite thing in this house. Actually, she’s my favourite thing in the whole world.’ She pauses. ‘David gave her to me on our honeymoon.’

Paul is silent. She trails a finger up his arm. ‘I know it sounds daft, but after he died, I just didn’t want to be part of anything. I sat up here for weeks. I – I didn’t want to see other human beings. And even when it was really bad, there was something about her expression … Hers was the only face I could cope with. She was like this reminder that I would survive.’ She lets out a deep sigh. ‘And then when you came along I realized she was reminding me of something else. Of the girl I used to be. Who didn’t worry all the time. And knew how to have fun, who just … did stuff. The girl I want to be again.’

He is still silent.

She has said too much. What she wants is for Paul to lower his face to hers, to feel his weight upon her.

But he doesn’t speak. She waits for a moment and then says, just to break the silence, ‘I suppose it sounds silly … to be so attached to a painting …’

When he turns to her his face looks odd: taut and drawn. Even in the half-light she can see it. He swallows. ‘Liv … what’s your name?’

She pulls a face.

‘Liv. You know th–’

‘No. Your surname.’

She blinks. ‘Halston. My surname is Halston. Oh. I suppose we never …’ She can’t work out where this is going. She wants him to stop looking at the painting. She grasps suddenly that the relaxed mood has evaporated and something strange has taken its place. They lie there in an increasingly uncomfortable silence.

He lifts a hand to his head. ‘Um … Liv? Do you mind if I head off? I’m … I’ve got some work stuff to see to.’

It’s as if she has been winded. It takes her a moment to speak, and when she does her voice is too high, not her own. ‘At six a.m.?’

‘Yeah. Sorry.’

‘Oh.’ She blinks. ‘Oh. Right.’

He is out of bed and dressing. Dazed, she watches him hauling on and fastening his trousers, the fierce swiftness with which he pulls on his shirt. Dressed, he turns, hesitates, then leans forward and drops a kiss on her cheek. Unconsciously she pulls the duvet up to her chin.

‘Are you sure you don’t want any breakfast?’

‘No. I … I’m sorry.’ He doesn’t smile.

‘It’s fine.’

He cannot leave fast enough. Mortification begins to steal through her, like poison in her blood.