Mrs Whistler. Matthew Plampin

he said. ‘A match at Lord’s.’

      ‘You don’t care about cricket, Jimmy.’ Maud’s face was pale but attentive. She was a clever soul, his Madame. She knew that something was up.

      ‘There was a plan,’ Jim told her, ‘for the betterment of our position. But it came to naught. It may have been – well, it may have been something of a misstep.’

      This wasn’t enough. ‘Rosa Corder,’ she said, ‘talks of conflict.’

      ‘Yes, well, conflict may be coming.’ Jim tried to rally. ‘But we’ll prevail, my girl. Things will improve. There are several other strategies under consideration. The Owl, you know, is a most resourceful and well-connected fellow.’

      And then for some reason he began to tell her about lithography, and the Portuguese’s proposal that he make a series of lithographic Nocturnes – coloured prints of the river and its bridges, made ingeniously by sketching with crayon upon tablets of damp stone – which would surely amount to a stream of gold so steady and plentiful it might as well be coming in through a pipe. As he went on, he got a disconcerting sense of how he must appear to her. There will be a taxing period, certain friends had warned him, after a woman surrenders a child. It cannot be avoided. No matter what she has promised, no matter the arrangements that have been reached, no matter how unified and durable the two of you were before, there will be distress. Lingering distress. Resentment.

      Maud rose while he was talking and went to leave the room. He reached for her as she passed but she was walking too quickly, brushing against his outstretched fingers.

      ‘Why will nobody,’ she said, ‘ever tell me what’s bloody happening?’