Kristen deposits the bowl of salad on the table. ‘Who is this artist anyway? Do you like olives?’

‘His name is Édouard Lefèvre, apparently. But it’s not signed. And yes. Thank you.’

‘I meant to tell you … after the last time we spoke.’ Kristen looks up at her daughter, shepherds her towards the door. ‘Go on, Tasmin. I need some mummy time.’

Liv waits as, with a disgruntled backwards look, Tasmin slopes out of the room. ‘It’s Rog.’

‘Who?’

‘I have bad news.’ She winces, leans forward over the table. Takes a deep, theatrical breath. ‘I wanted to tell you last week but I couldn’t work out what to say. You see, he did think you were terribly nice, but I’m afraid you’re not … well … he says you’re not his type.’

‘Oh?’

‘He really wants someone … younger. I’m so sorry. I just thought you should know the truth. I couldn’t bear the idea of you sitting there waiting for him to call.’

Liv is trying to straighten her face when Sven enters the room. He is holding a page of scribbled notes. ‘I just got off the phone with a friend of mine at Sotheby’s. So … the bad news is that TARP is a well-respected organization. They trace works that have been stolen, but increasingly they’re doing the tougher stuff, works that disappeared during wartime. They’ve returned some quite high-profile pieces in the last few years, some from national collections. It appears to be a growth area.’

‘But The Girl isn’t a high-profile work of art. She’s just a little oil painting we picked up on our honeymoon.’

‘Well … that’s true to an extent. Liv, did you look up this Lefèvre chap after you got the letter?’

It was the first thing she had done. A minor member of the Impressionist school at the turn of the last century. There was one sepia-tinted photograph of a big man with dark brown eyes and hair that reached down to his collar. Worked briefly under Matisse.

‘I’m starting to understand why his work – if it is his work – might be the subject of a restitution request.’

‘Go on.’ Liv pops an olive into her mouth. Kristen stands beside her, dishcloth in hand.

‘I didn’t tell him about the claim, obviously, and he can’t value it without seeing it, but on the basis of the last sale they held for Lefèvre, and its provenance, they reckon it could easily be worth between two and three million pounds.’

‘What?’ she says weakly.

‘Yes. David’s little wedding gift has turned out to be a rather good investment. Two million pounds minimum were his exact words. In fact, he recommended you get an insurance valuation done immediately. Apparently our Lefèvre has become quite the man in the art market. The Russians have a thing for him and it’s pushed prices sky high.’

She swallows the olive whole and begins to choke. Kristen thumps her on the back and pours her a glass of water. She sips it, hearing his words going round in her head. They don’t seem to make any sense.

‘So, I suppose it should actually come as no great surprise that there are people suddenly coming out of the woodwork to try to get a piece of the action. I asked Shirley at the office to dig out a few case studies and email them over – these claimants, they dig around a little in the family history, claim the painting, saying it was so precious to their grandparents, how heartbroken they were to lose it … Then they get it back, and what do you know?’

‘What do we know?’ says Kristen.

‘They sell it. And they’re richer than their wildest dreams.’

The kitchen falls silent.

‘Two to three million pounds? But – but we paid two hundred euros for her.’

‘It’s like Antiques Roadshow,’ says Kristen, happily.

‘That’s David. Always did have the Midas touch.’ Sven pours himself a glass of wine. ‘It’s a shame they knew it was in your house. I think, without a warrant or proof of any kind, they might not have been able to prove you had it. Do they know for sure it’s in there?’

She thinks of Paul. And the pit of her stomach drops. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘They know I have it.’

‘Okay. Well, either way,’ he sits down beside her and puts a hand on her shoulder, ‘we need to get you some serious legal representation. And fast.’

Liv sleepwalks through the next two days, her mind humming, her heart racing. She visits the dentist, buys bread and milk, delivers work to deadline, takes mugs of tea downstairs to Fran and brings them back up when Fran complains she has forgotten the sugar. She barely registers any of it. She is thinking of the way Paul had kissed her, that accidental first meeting, his unusually generous offer of help. Had he planned this from the start? Given the value of the painting, had she actually been the subject of a complicated sting? She Googles Paul McCafferty, reads testimonials about his time in the Art Squad of the NYPD, his ‘brilliant criminal mind’, his ‘strategic thinking’. Everything she has believed about him evaporates. Her thoughts spin and collide, veer off in new, terrible directions. Twice she has felt so sick that she has had to leave the table and splash her face with cold water, resting it against the cool porcelain of the cloakroom.

Last November TARP helped return a small Cézanne to a Russian Jewish family. The value of the painting was said to be in the region of fifteen million pounds. TARP, its website states in the section About Us, works on a commission basis.