‘Well, um, I have a bit lately.’

She blushes, thinking of her night with Paul McCafferty. She has found herself returning to it relentlessly over the days since, worrying at the night’s events, like a tongue at a loose tooth. What had made her behave in that way? What had he thought of her? And then, the mercurial shiver, the imprint of that kiss. She is cold with embarrassment, yet burns gently, the residue of it on her lips. She feels as if some long-distant part of her has been sparked back to life. It’s a little disconcerting.

‘So, how’s Goldstein?’

‘Not far off now. We had some problems with the new building regs, but we’re nearly there. The Goldsteins are happy, anyway.’

‘Do you have any pictures?’

The Goldstein Building had been David’s dream commission: a vast organic glass structure stretching halfway around a square on the edge of the City. He had been working on it for two years of their marriage, persuading the wealthy Goldstein brothers to share his bold vision, to create something far from the angular concrete castles around them, and he had still been working on it when he died. Sven had taken over the blueprint and overseen it through the planning stages, and was now managing its actual construction. It had been a problematic build, the materials delayed in their shipping from China, the wrong glass, the foundations proving inadequate in London’s clay. But now, finally, it is rising exactly as planned, each glass panel shining like the scales of some giant serpent.

Sven rifles through some documents on his desk, picks out a photograph and hands it over. She gazes at the vast structure, surrounded by blue hoardings, but somehow, indefinably, David’s work. ‘It’s going to be glorious.’ She can’t help but smile.

‘I wanted to tell you – they’ve agreed to put a little plaque in the foyer in his memory.’

‘Really?’ Her throat constricts.

‘Yes. Jerry Goldstein told me last week – they thought it would be nice to commemorate David in some way. They were very fond of him.’

She lets this thought settle. ‘That’s … that’s great.’

‘I thought so. You’ll be coming to the opening?’

‘I’d love to.’

‘Good. And how’s the other stuff?’

She sips her coffee. She always feels faintly self-conscious talking about her life to Sven. It is as if the lack of dimensions in it cannot help but disappoint. ‘Well, I seem to have acquired a housemate. Which is … interesting. I’m still running. Work is a bit quiet.’

‘How bad is it?’

She tries to smile. ‘Honestly? I’d probably be earning more in a Bangladeshi sweatshop.’

Sven looks down at his hands. ‘You … haven’t thought it might be time to start doing something else?’

‘I’m not really equipped for anything else.’ She has long known that it had not been the wisest move to give up work and follow David around during their marriage. As her friends built careers, put in twelve-hour days at the office, she had simply travelled with him, to Paris, Sydney, Barcelona. He hadn’t needed her to work. It seemed stupid, being away from him all the time. And afterwards she hadn’t been good for much at all. Not for a long time.

‘I had to take out a mortgage on the house last year. And now I can’t keep up with the payments.’ She blurts out this last bit, like a sinner at confession.

But Sven looks unsurprised. ‘You know … if you ever wanted to sell it, I could easily find you a buyer.’

‘Sell?’

‘It’s a big house to be rattling around in. And … I don’t know. You’re so isolated up there, Liv. It was a marvellous thing for David to cut his teeth on, and a lovely retreat for the two of you, but don’t you think you should be in the thick of things again? Somewhere a bit livelier? A nice flat in the middle of Notting Hill or Clerkenwell, maybe?’

‘I can’t sell David’s house.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it would just be wrong.’

He doesn’t say the obvious. He doesn’t have to: it’s there in the way he leans back in his chair, closes his mouth over his words.

‘Well,’ he says, leaning forwards over his desk. ‘I’m just putting the thought out there.’

Behind him a huge crane is moving, iron girders slicing through the sky as they travel towards a cavernous roof space on the other side of the road. When Solberg Halston Architects had moved here, five years previously, the view had been a row of dilapidated shops – bookmaker, launderette, second-hand clothes – their bricks sludge brown, their windows obscured by years of accumulated lead and dirt. Now there is just a hole. It is possible that the next time she comes here she will not recognize the view at all.

‘How are the kids?’ she says abruptly. And Sven, with the tact of someone who has known her for years, changes the subject.

It is halfway through the monthly meeting when Paul notices that Miriam, his and Janey’s shared secretary, is perched not on a chair but on two large boxes of files. She sits awkwardly, her legs angled in an attempt to keep her skirt at a modest length, her back propped against more boxes.

At some point in the mid-nineties, the recovery of stolen artwork had become big business. Nobody at the Trace and Return Partnership seemed to have anticipated this, so, fifteen years on, meetings are held in Janey’s increasingly cramped office, elbows brushing against the teetering piles of folders, or boxes of faxes and photocopies, or, if clients are involved, downstairs in the local coffee shop. He has said often that they should look at new premises. Each time Janey looks at him as if it’s the first time she has heard this, and says, yes, yes, good idea. And then does nothing about it.