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carpets seemed to be enhanced, somehow, like the skin of the paintings on the wall, no longer as crooked or as haphazard as they were, but not entirely aligned either, simply shown to better advantage.
    ‘’Allo, Saul,’ she said, wiping her hands on the back of her trousers. ‘I’ll leave you to it, shall I? Would you like a drink?’
    Then she was gone.
    ‘W hat has she done to you?’ Saul murmured, sinking into a chair, gesturing to the room at large. They never did much by way of small talk.
    ‘Ah, that,’ Thomas said, without a shred of guilt or embarrassment in his voice, smiling at him affectionately. ‘I fear she’s reinforced my mission in life. I was always a teacher, and now I’m a pupil, too. I know the names of all the birds in the bay.’
    ‘She’s a thief, Thomas.’
    ‘There’s little to choose between thief and collector, Saul. Similar instincts, perhaps, so somebody said, and you should know. A reconstructed thief, let’s say. To whom I owe a great debt.’
    ‘What debt?’
    ‘Never mind, and anyway it was you who always encouraged me to follow instinct, and that’s what I’m doing. And condemning someone for being a thief, as if theft was a permanent vocation, is less than kind, coming from you. You’re a born burglar, and you were trying to cheat me the first time you met me.’
    Saul grinned, ruefully. Trying to sell an inferior painting to Mr Thomas Porteous on the naïve assumption that he was a nouveau riche, middle-aged idiot trying to buy himself a bit of class had been a big mistake, pointed out to him with infinite good manners in an encounter which had changed his life. Now he acted as agent, the additional hunter– gatherer for a virtual recluse as hell-bent as he was himself on finding the best and preserving it honestly. Finding great paintings, large or small, in mint condition, preferably untouched. They were in this together, however rarely Saul appeared and in whatever guise. He did not want a third party in on it, especially a female: he did not want his Collector to be distracted, and yet he could see the necessity. Thomas had been losing the will to live and now he had it in spades.
    ‘That’s a lovely scarf you have,’ Di said, coming back with a selection of drinks on a polished tray. ‘Mr Porteous says you’re partial to gin.’
    Saul raised his eyebrows. She sounded so like a parody of an uppity parlour maid, he failed to realise that she found him terrifying.
    ‘Saul’s bought some pictures on approval,’ Thomas said smoothly. ‘Shall we look at them together?’
    ‘Mostly drawings,’ Saul said, ‘And a couple of oil sketches. I think our collection is short on English drawings. There’s scope for plenty more, space to have a room full.’
    ‘Oh yes,’ Di said, nodding so hard her head looked loose. She had delivered the drinks and sat on the edge of her chair as if waiting for a treat. Saul turned to her, with obvious condescension.
    ‘And what exactly would you collect if you could?’ he asked her.
    She sat with her hands pinned between her knees. Saul disliked girls who did this, as well as girls who were garrulous, and she was both, as if she had just discovered speech, but then he didn’t like girls, full stop. Gauche was the word that sprang to mind; Saul didn’t like it.
    ‘Don’t know,’ she said. The hands were imploring, gesturing like windmills, irritating and endearing, prefacing a torrent of speech. ‘Yes, I do. I probably like sketches, best. Sketches for oil paintings, when the artist is halfway there, trying it out. When it isn’t fully clothed and ready to go out, when it’s sometimes, like more perfect than the finished thing. Like Constable’s sketches, I like them far more than the polished paintings. I’d have lots of sketches here, something to show how things get made, even sketches that show when the painter should have stopped, and said, that’s enough.’
    The speech got faster and faster until she stopped,