Muffin's house was a shrine. It contained only the tiniest proportion of Ridley's output, and yet his work was displayed on every wall. Lucia hardly looked anymore; it might as well have been the Disney wallpaper in Lottie's bedroom. Now she thought about what would happen afterwards, and in years to come – the division of the spoils. She wanted none of it, nothing, only her book. So, for the first time, she looked over Ridley's work like a visitor at an exhibition.
How good they were she couldn't say. What did Lucia know about art? She was just a schoolteacher. But there was one picture she especially liked – a little watercolour showing Muffin breastfeeding with, Lucia thought, her first or second child, long before Lucia. Muffin's dark hair was swept over one shoulder; she hadn't cut it off yet. The Muffin Lucia knew never cared what she looked like. She bought her clothes from charity shops, never used creams or cosmetics, never checked her face in the mirror. In middle age she was practically sexless. You could not have conceived of her taking a lover. But when she was a young mother she was very beautiful, and as she gazed back at the artist she knew that it was so.