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dark house, watching the countryside beyond the windows of his study. It was peaceful there, smelled of camphor and paper and old soot from the un-swept chimney. Grandpa read in his chair while I typed up some university work on his old Smith-Corona, his head drooping into a doze now and then.
    In the evening we had sat in the kitchen with the door open to the night. He’d shared some of his best old whisky and we’d played rummy. I should have noticed how weak he was, but I think he was trying his hardest to hide it from me.
    Then he was gone, and all that was left was his literary estate, obituaries with the same decade-old photograph that graced the dust jackets of all his books. Grandpa Jim – the sad, funny man with the same grey eyes as me – had slipped away, and in his place he left ‘J. G. Stevenson’.
    When the train arrives at King’s Cross, I try to shake off my pensive mood. Hopefully, I will find something conclusive at the gallery; something to help me understand Grandpa Jim’s secrecy, to show Hall that there is nothing to be seen, nothing to be dug up from my grandfather’s past.
    I brave the crowded tube and head towards North London. By the time I reach Belsize Park, it’s after two.
    The weather is skittish; rain showers and weak sunlight. I pull out my A to Z and struggle to find the right page as a breeze grabs at the paper. I hunch into my jacket and walk. Ten minutes later I almost miss the road and have to backtrack. On a grimy Victorian building I see a notice, taped to the glass-paned door: Lewis-Medford Gallery .
    I venture in. At the top of a flight of stairs is a reception area. Thick rugs carpet the floor; pamphlets are piled lazily on a desk. Through a pair of double doors I can see paintings, stretching along a gallery.
    ‘It’s fifty pence entrance!’ a voice shrills at me.
    A middle-aged woman swathed in cardigans has emerged from an alcove and is staring at me, half-eaten biscuit in hand. I smile at her, count out a few coins.
    ‘I telephoned earlier, about the Ahlers painting?’
    Her expression brightens as she drops the money into the till.
    ‘Yes, you found us, then. I’m so sorry I don’t know more, it’s my brother who’s in charge here really, I’m just covering. The Saturday girl’s gone off sick. You’ll want to have a look round then, here …’
    She scrabbles through the papers and comes up with a photocopied sheet bearing details of the exhibition. Thanking her, I escape into the gallery. It is a silent place, the sunlight dimmed by blinds. There are little nests of dust in the corners. Many of the paintings have tarnished frames, and the unmistakable scent of objects long untouched.
    Through the first hallway, then the adjacent one, I peer at anything that might resemble a café scene. I eventually find Ahlers down a flight of stairs in the lower gallery.
    It’s darker here, and musty. I pull my denim jacket tighter, moving along the line of frames. They are all Paris scenes: Notre Dame, the Canal St Martin. I don’t see any ‘Mademoiselles’ on my first pass, so I check more carefully, reading each label. After a third examination, my heart sinks.
    ‘Looking for the missing Ahlers?’ someone asks.
    A small man in an oilskin cape has emerged from a side door marked ‘Private’. It must lead to the outside, because he brings the smell of rain with him.
    ‘Yes,’ I stutter, searching my bag for the details. ‘I’m looking for a café scene, Mademoiselles at Pâtisserie Clermont .’
    Unclipping his cape, the man produces a handkerchief and wipes the rain from his face.
    ‘Gone, I’m afraid, miss.’
    It takes a second for his words to sink in, and even then, I hope that I’ve misheard.
    ‘Pardon?’
    ‘Gone. Sold, about five years ago. Surprised me, too, no one ever expressed much of an interest before.’
    ‘Do you know where it is now? Is it in another gallery, or—’
    ‘I’m sorry.’ He stops me. ‘It was a private sale, the