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you didn’t want to own it.’
    This was another psychotherapeutic technique. Not simply reflecting back, but pinpointing contradictions in the patient’s account.
    Elinor nodded. ‘It felt like too much of a responsibility. It’s worth quite a lot of money. And it wasn’t just the practical side of looking after it that bothered me,’
she went on. ‘It felt like a responsibility in artistic terms, too. It seemed to limit me as a painter. To set a goal that I could never turn away from.’ A look of sadness came over her
face. ‘In fact, I sometimes wonder if it ruined my career. I went to Goldsmith’s, you see, and during the time I was there, that kind of meticulous style was completely unfashionable.
It was all installations, warehouses, cows sawed in half, conceptual stuff.’ Her expression became more composed. ‘I did well on paper, of course; I got a first, because there was no
denying my work was good, but no one important came to my graduate show. No one was interested in collecting me.’ She paused. ‘I haven’t done too badly, I suppose. I’ve made
a career as a painter, which is more than most of my contemporaries did. But I’m not a hot artist, never will be.’
    She pronounced the word ‘hot’ with distaste.
    ‘And then, of course,’ she went on, ‘there was the family connection. I often wondered if I’d just joined the family firm, and had no original ideas of my own.’
    She was beginning to unburden herself now. Jess had the impression that she had been mulling over these problems for a long time, never discussing them with anyone.
    ‘You see, Gwen John is said to be a relative of mine. My great aunt, supposedly.’
    ‘Supposedly?’
    ‘Yes. Through my mother, Ursula. She claimed she was the illegitimate daughter of Augustus John, Gwen’s brother. But it was never verified. He had rather a lot of illegitimate
children, as it happened.’
    ‘What was your father’s view?’ From time to time, despite her training, Jess let her curiosity get the better of her.
    ‘My father died ten years ago. Cancer.’ Elinor’s tone was matter-of-fact, but Jess thought she detected a note of bravado in it, as if, after a whole decade, she had to marshal
her best defences against her grief. ‘He actually thought the story was a load of nonsense. My grandmother Ariadne was a very flighty woman. She’d had a brief affair with John, like so
many others. My father believed that she’d exaggerated the importance of it.’
    ‘Why would she do that?’
    ‘Because John was so famous. And to annoy her husband, of course.’ Elinor gave a wry smile. ‘That was the kind of relationship my grandparents had. One that my mother repeated
with my father, I might add.’
    There was a pause. Parental conflict, thought Jess. The claustrophobia of an enduring but unhappy marriage, from which the child can never escape, carrying it internally into adulthood.
    ‘But one way and another, the story became part of family history,’ Elinor continued. ‘And something of a curse, maybe, for us all. This tenuous connection to a painter whose
work has influenced mine – for the worse, at least in commercial terms – and whose existence, in the end, seems to have caused the death of my mother.’
    Silence fell. Jess had wondered when Elinor would begin to speak of her mother. The story of the painting was obviously important to her, but to some extent it was simply a preamble to
discussing the traumatic event that had pitched her into claustrophobia. And, as so often happened in therapy sessions, she’d waited until the last minute to start talking about it.
    Jess glanced at the clock. They were already over time.
    ‘Elinor, I’m afraid we’ll have to finish there for today.’ Her voice was gentle. ‘Perhaps we can talk some more about that in our next session.’
    After Elinor left, Jess had another two patients to attend to, and then it was time for lunch. She and Bob had arranged to meet at the