Astrid wasn’t fooled for a second. Or, rather, she was. So Dario’s customer would be forced into the light. The only disaster would be if he had seen Peggy follow me, but I was almost certain he’d scarpered before then. Astrid had clearly been brooding on matters because now she turned her attention to Pippa, claiming that Jeff should come forward and tell all. It was funny to see Pippa squirming, like a beetle with a needle pushed through it.

‘It’s not really a good idea,’ she said.

It wasn’t part of my strategy, but I couldn’t resist it. ‘Married, by any chance?’ I said. She gave me an angry look but I returned it blandly.

‘It would be awkward,’ she said.

The evening turned golden, the shadows lengthened. I watched Astrid and Owen and it seemed to grow colder, and then Miles arrived and started to moan about the events he had set in motion, and it felt colder still. The magic had gone and people stirred and gathered together the stained, sticky remnants of the picnic. As we walked back, I thought about what was to come and whether there was anything I needed to worry about.

‘I probably ought to go home,’ said a voice beside me.

I looked down. I had almost forgotten about Melanie. I shook my head. ‘There’s something I want to show you,’ I said.

We didn’t speak again until we arrived back at the house. As the rest of them headed downstairs for coffee and a smoke, I took Melanie’s hand and led her upstairs and into my room. I took her towards my bed, then placed my hands on her shoulders, positioning her just so, and looking into her large eyes. The collar of her shirt was tied with a white silk ribbon in a bow. If I could unfasten it easily, that would be proof that God wanted me to fuck her. She started to say something but I shook my head. I took one end of the ribbon and pulled. It came undone like a badly tied shoelace. I took the bottom of her shirt and lifted it over her head. She had to raise her arms to help me. I unclipped her bra and let it fall. I pulled her skirt and knickers down in a single movement. She had to lift her sandalled feet to step out of them. I sat her on the bed and pulled off her sandals.

At first, when I pushed myself inside her, I imagined that I was fucking Pippa and I pushed harder and harder, and heard Melanie cry out under me. Then I thought of Astrid. I imagined her face on Melanie’s body.

And then at the very moment I came, from the very first moment I started to come, I regretted everything: meeting Melanie, spending the evening with her, bringing her back here, having her in my bed. I felt her hands on my shoulders, her heels on the back of my thighs. She held me close inside her.

‘Davy,’ she said, after a long time. ‘I’ve never ever done anything like this.’ And then I heard a snuffling sound and saw that she was crying.

After she went to sleep I got up and went to the bathroom. I pulled up the blind and stared into the garden. Something was moving and it took me some time to make out what it was. What they were. What they were doing. I knew it. I don’t know how, but I fucking knew it. Astrid and Owen, like animals, not caring who saw them. The tick in my eye, getting stronger. I tasting something sour in the back of my throat, as if I was about to be sick.

Chapter Thirty-four

I saw Owen’s photographs before Astrid. I let myself in one day when Dario was asleep and everyone else was out. I wasn’t working myself now. It took too much time and the money wasn’t good enough. I made up some of the difference from people’s carelessness. Pippa was the best. She left notes lying around in her room and never noticed if they disappeared. Since Peggy’s death, I’d collected forty pounds from her. And twenty from Miles, when he left his wallet at home one day by mistake. A few coins from Astrid, so far. Mick and Owen were trickier, and Dario never seemed to have any money on him. One time, though, I lifted some weed from his room and sold it back to him. I said someone had given it to me at work and I didn’t want it, but I thought he might. He insisted on giving me something for it, and I could tell he felt a bit guilty that he was ripping me off.

For me the crunch had come when we were finishing the work on the house, which the landlord was doing up before selling. While we were adding the last touches – painting the walls, laying down the last skirting-boards – this couple had come to look at it. They weren’t that old, in their early thirties perhaps, but it was obvious they were stinking rich. They had an air of smug wealth about them. Their hair gleamed as if every strand had been buffed. Their skin glowed. There was a kind of carelessness about them, as if they were so far above normal people that they didn’t even need to show it. We were invisible to them, workers with rough hands and plaster in our hair, who, for all they knew, didn’t even understand English. And if we did understand, what did it matter? What did we matter? In loud, drawly voices, they said that if they bought the place, they’d start again. Their words: start again. Some of the decoration wasn’t to their taste. They’d obviously have to rip out the kitchen units and get an architect in to have a look at the layout of the ground floor. The bathrooms were cheap and nasty. I stood and listened to them and felt a fluttering in my chest, as if a moth was trapped in there. A band tightened round my head. Ticking in both eyes.

I laid down my paintbrush, walked into the garden, where I could escape what they were saying, and made a promise to myself. I was going to get some proper money together and I was going to leave. Leave London, leave the UK, go to a new life where people would treat me with respect and I would be the one calling the tunes. I saw the beaches of Brazil, the beautiful women gazing up at me adoringly. For a few moments, I even saw Astrid beside me, hanging off my arm, laughing at what I was saying, pressing her slim, strong body against mine.

I left that day, after collecting what was owed to me, and I didn’t go back, and I didn’t answer the messages that were left on my mobile. I didn’t tell the Maitland Road lot, of course, which meant that each morning I would leave the house at the usual time, and each afternoon return as if from a hard day at work. Now I had time to make plans and time to investigate the people I was living with.

Which was how I knew that Pippa had fucked poor old Mick, one more scalp to add to her collection. And then – much better, much more interesting, something to make my spine tingle – I came into the kitchen and saw Pippa saying something to Owen. She laughed and put her hand on his arm, and he went red and stepped back and I knew, I just knew, that they had done it as well. Pippa and Owen. Could no one else tell? I looked at them when they were all together and it was obvious that they were like blind people. Even Astrid.

One rainy day I was in Owen’s room again, examining his photographs, which I’d been thinking about ever since I’d had that glimpse of them. All of them were black-and-white. Some were blurred and arty and pretentious, water and burned trees and posters half ripped off walls. The women were different. I could hardly move and my breath rasped in my throat. Owen, I thought, you bastard. You’re not so different from me, after all. You think you’re making art but really you’re making pornography. Just because there’s no colour doesn’t mean that blood isn’t blood, flesh isn’t flesh. It made me laugh. He’d got some woman to take her clothes off by telling her it was art. Then I came across the woman with the mutilated face. I picked it up and held it in front of the window to see it more clearly. He was good, I had to admit it. He really was good. I felt envious of him. I touched each slash with my fingers. Now I know you, I thought. I know you, but you don’t know me.