The Portrait Has My New Address

How it begins

My new address was painted under the dead woman's chin.

I had removed three centimeters of yellow varnish before the first number appeared. At first I thought it was an old inventory mark. Then came the street name.

I put down the swab.

The portrait had arrived on Monday. I had signed the lease on Tuesday. Until then, I had been sleeping on my sister's sofa, pretending the arrangement was temporary enough to be funny.

There it was: forty-six Bell Street.

Flat four.

The dealer's paperwork dated the painting to 1891.

I photographed the exposed letters, then the whole canvas, then the clock above my bench. Evidence of what, I could not have said. I wanted a record of the order in which I had noticed things.

My phone vibrated.

The landlord had sent a message asking whether I was settling in.

I did not answer.

Under the studio's cold light, the painted woman's expression seemed less serene than it had that morning. Her eyes looked slightly left of the viewer, toward something beyond the frame.

I checked the stretcher. Old wood, recent staples. Someone had remounted it.

The studio door opened.

Daniel Moss stood there with the provenance file I had requested. We had met twice, both times in auction rooms where he had made expensive people uncomfortable.

“You look unwell,” he said.

I showed him the address.

He did not ask whether I was sure.

Instead, he opened the file to a photograph taken six months earlier. In it, the woman's chin was intact.

“Who recommended the flat?” he asked.

I thought of the email that had arrived just when I needed somewhere affordable. A cancellation, the agent had said. Lucky timing.

Outside, a delivery van stopped across the street.

Neither of us moved until we heard its engine start again.