Prologue
5 January 2025
If Dorothea had known this was the day she was going to die, she would have spent those precious remaining hours differently. Instead of hiking in the hills surrounding her home in the mud and the rain when it made her ageing joints ache, she would have finally said yes to dinner with Dennis and eaten something rich and creamy like steak with a béarnaise sauce. And she would have certainly spent longer in her studio breathing in the familiar, comforting scent of oils and acrylics, her beloved Golden Retriever Solly at her feet, instead of wasting time on boring admin.
All this filtered through her mind as she lay at the foot of the stairs, her body at an odd angle and her cheek pressed against the cold flagstones. She could already smell the smoke and hear the crackle and hiss of fire, and she pictured the destruction of it all: her paintings and sculptures, the flames licking at the edges of her canvases, turning it all to ash. Her life’s work.
She should have been more on her guard but she’d misjudged the sounds of the intruder for the creaks and groans of an old house. Yet there had been no mistakingthe sensation of someone standing too close behind her on that twisty staircase, or the hands that had shoved her, or the flash of a dark-clothed figure as they darted past her prone body and into her studio.
So, he’d come for her, at last.
Solly stood over her now, by her side as he’d always been, loyal to the end. He emitted a low, desolate bark, his breath hot on her ear, and she tried to reach out a hand to comfort him, but she couldn’t move. She wanted to tell him to get out of the house. To run. But the words wouldn’t come. There was a metallic taste of blood in the back of her throat and her legs were numb.
This was it. This was how she was going to die.
And as she closed her eyes for the last time, her final thought was of Imogen and the letter, half-finished, that was now going up in smoke.
Tuesday, 7 January 2025
THE SUNDAY TIMES
ARTIST DOROTHEA ROE KILLED IN HOUSE FIRE
A RENOWNED artist specializing in macabre sculptures has been killed in a fire at her Somerset home.
Dorothea Roe, 73, is thought to have fallen down the stairs in her haste to vacate her Regency villa on the outskirts of Bath in the late hours of Sunday night after a fire broke out in her downstairs studio. A concerned neighbour raised the alarm and the fire service and ambulance were called, but unfortunately Ms Roe died at the scene.
At the time of her death, Roe was working on a new collection, more than fifteen years after her last, but reports suggest most of it was damaged in the fire.
Born on 17 June 1951, not much is known about Roe’s early life. She was notoriously private and gave only a handful of interviews, although she is quoted as once saying she never went to art school and was ‘self-taught’. Roe’s paintings and sculptures were hugely popular in the late 1980s and are now in museums around the globe. Inspired by artists like Paula Rego, she was particularly interested in working with papier-mâché to craft life-sized creations, often depicting the darker side of life and relationships. Roe specialized in the macabre,playing with misconceptions of the female form, distorting and warping ideals about beauty and relationships, and many of her sculptures are considered sinister, with one critic describing them as ‘having a nightmarish quality’. Her most famous isWoman in Turmoil,a surreal sculpture of a woman with four heads, each with a different horrified and twisted expression of inner anguish.
In her later years, Roe concentrated more on her philanthropic work and was one of a small group of women who set up a successful art therapy business.
Roe was fiercely guarded about her personal life, but in an interview given to this paper not long before she died she said she had never been married.
Roe’s agent Gabe Mitchell issued a statement today that said: ‘I have worked with Dorothea for over forty years and I am devastated to learn of her death. She was a wonderful, caring, strong-minded and creative soul with a sharp wit who worked tirelessly to help others. She wasn’t just my client, but also a dear friend and I will miss her terribly.’An investigation into the cause of the fire is ongoing.
1
Imogen
End of April 2025
Josh is jiggling along to ‘Mr. Brightside’ while stirring a Bolognese on the hob when I walk into the kitchen. He finishes work early on a Friday so regularly cooks – nothing fancy, usually the basic dishes we’ve been having since we first moved in together – but it’s cheaper than going out and we are trying to save money.
I stand and watch him for a while unnoticed as he sings at the top of his lungs, endearingly out of tune: his muscular shoulders (despite never going to the gym), his slim hips, his long legs, the thick, conker-brown hair that just skims the neck of his navy hoody which he would have changed into as soon as he got home, all his movements so familiar I’d know them anywhere. I creep over to him and snake my arms around his waist, making him jump. He swivels around to face me, his smile wide, his hazel eyes twinkling. ‘Hey, you,’ he says, planting a kiss on the side of my mouth, and then turns back to the pan.I’m still wearing my gym gear, which smells of the Pilates studio: warm wood, stale sweat and Dettol.
I move away from him and lean against the breakfast bar – the kitchen is too small to fit a dining table, so we always sit here, side by side on the high stools. It’s one of the many reasons we never have friends over for dinner. Late last year we were seriously discussing putting the flat on the market and buying a house, but then, a few weeks ago, everything came crashing down.
My boss, Chris, said he was being lenient in not firing me from my job as a journalist at a TV station because I did something illegal on a case I was investigating. And I got caught.
I’d previously been behind the conviction of local businessman Jeremy Filcher, whose plumbing company had been installing substandard products and ripping off their customers. He is now serving a prison sentence for fraud.
If only that had been the end of it.
One night, Filcher’s thug of a son, Dominic, followed me to my car and threatened me after he was tipped off that I was investigating the phoenix company he’d subsequently set up. It was only thanks to a passing couple who called out asking if I was okay that he was frightened off. Yet his threats made me even more suspicious that he had something to hide. I’m not proud of myself for what I did next, but I broke into Dominic Filcher’s office in an attempt to obtain proof of him evading debts and committing fraud. I didn’t find anything, although asecurity guard saw me and contacted the police. Thankfully I wasn’t charged, but Chris was furious with me, saying he had no choice but to suspend me indefinitely while the company investigated it further.
‘Good day?’ Josh asks now.
