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human beings are for. It's not what that girl was for. You took the food right out of her mouth.'
    Why can't mirrors cry? They do, of course, but only do it if you go first.
    She walked back into the bedroom and looked at the photograph of herself and Owen on the dressing table. Nine inches higher than her own head, Owen's black throw of hair and dark eyes were the first thing to strike you. But Sylvie repayed her own close attention, that almost blonde hair combed back from a face of delicate features, green eyes, small sharp nose. Vivacious: that's how her features had been described more than once. The laughing girl, they'd called her; that was before her marriage. Tiny lines had started mapping the years at the edges of her eyes since that shot had been taken. Hardly surprising, really. And she was perhaps a few pounds heavier these days, but still very attractive. If she ever had any doubts about that, the next fellow down the line trying to get her into bed soon removed them. As she pulled her stockings on, she started smiling. Putting things on with such care so someone else can take them off with the same attention later. She found the symmetry pleasing. Sylvie Treadle was going to be entirely Sylvie Ashton tonight.
    A little over an hour after climbing into her car she arrived at the riverside road in Shrewsbury where Henry had his gallery.
    The Riverside Gallery had become Henry's when his third and most tranquil marriage had ended with his wife's death. Eleanor had been considerabl y older and not in the best of health from the start. Henry always spoke of her with warmth and affection, but Sylvie couldn't help wondering if he might have married the gallery as much as the woman. Anyway, it was now his to do with as he chose. A large white building with black wooden cladding, it was a curious warren of mis-shaped rooms, and low-hung rafters. Henry had divided it up into sections for the public, where he hung his saleable wares, and those parts where you needed special permission to enter, like the living quarters, the kitchen, the bedroom and, most of all, the Picasso Room. The pictures on the wall in there were very much not for sale. Sylvie parked her little car in the drive, looked at the river for a moment, the river that was the cause of so many of Henry's nightmares, and then pushed open the large door, ringing the bell as she walked through.
    Physically, Henry was everything that Owen wasn't. Did that apply mentally too? She wasn't sure about that. Where Owen was tall and thin, Henry was short and, not fat exactly, but loose about the waist. He had the unbuttoned look of a Regency Lord. And Henry's hair had greyed all round its untrimmed edges. He was drinking red wine, as usual. After kissing her smilingly (why did Owen always seem to frown when he kissed?) he offered her a glass, which she took.
    'The river is behaving itself. '
    'For the moment. I still think we'll probably get a chance to test the new defences before long. Shall we go and sit in the Picasso Room then?'
    'If I'm still allowed. '
    'You're always allowed, you know that.'
    'It's a privilege.'
    'It certainly is.'
    *
    It had begun when Henry had first moved in to the gallery with Eleanor She had already managed to buy three of the etchings from the Vollard Suite, two of them featuring the minotaur that so obsessed Picasso throughout his life. And the same images soon started to obsess Henry too. When his wife had finally died, and the resources of the gallery had become his in their entirety, he had pursued these images with some determination. Picasso etchings were not as expensive as much of his other work. Henry now had all fifteen of the Vollard Suite prints which featured the minotaur, and they filled the walls of the Picasso Room. Minotaurs and the women they consumed, or were in their turn consumed by.
    'How do you know they're authentic, out of interest?'
    'Well, the first look tells me usually. But if I need to check there's the