By the time Mireille has finished telling her story, the sun on the horizon is dousing the red and green beacons that define the shipping channel across Port Phillip Bay. While she has been talking Harry has been watching container ships strung with lights sliding between these beacons to and from Webb Dock. Now that she has stopped, the many unlikely facets of her story contend in his mind. He looks at her, hoping to make sense of this tale by the light of her eyes. ‘That’s … I don’t know. I did this for the money. And for art. I thought this was art, this theft. I thought you did, too. But all along you had this ugly, hidden motive. You’re not even who you say you are.’

‘I am who I say I am, Harry. But it is maybe true I am a damaged person and my motivations are dark, unworthy.’ She nods distractedly, as if considering this.

‘You’re Dora Maar’s daughter?’ She doesn’t answer the question. She has told him already. ‘And this was …? Revenge? Was this just about … getting back at the guy?’ he asks.

‘I had planned to sell him the real painting. I only needed the forgery to convince you and Turton we were going to sell a forgery and give the real one back, to convince you this thing could work, that we could all get away free. But I was going to switch them. I was going to have you go to the Savage Club with the real Woman. Then I would call the police and Laszlo would be arrested and ruined. My mother, and I, would be avenged. The painting Laszlo stole from Picasso to ruin her life, and mine, I had now stolen to ruin his life. He would be taken from his high place and humiliated, as she was. He would be jailed, a thief and an outcast. Of course, you would be arrested, too. And Turton. But that was no matter to me. Until I fell in love with you.’

Mireille leans towards Harry and reaches out a hand to him. He looks at it blankly and she takes it back and lays it on her thigh. ‘When I rolled up the forged woman instead of the real one and gave her to you to take to Laszlo, I realised I was in love with you.’ She smooths her palms along her thighs. ‘I was sacrificing my revenge to keep you free. And you could have walked away free, with your million, if Laszlo had not found out who you were, and that Turton was involved.’

Mireille unfolds her legs and points her stockinged feet towards the window with her calves clenching. Harry knows no other woman who wears stockings. ‘My mother’s existence was left colourless after Picasso. Laszlo cost her everything. The theft of this painting gave him a new life and ruined hers. And mine.’ She lowers her feet to the floor and says softly, ‘I could have lived happily as Picasso’s daughter.’

Harry reaches over and places a hand behind her neck and pulls her forwards and kisses her, then angrily pushes her backwards to the floor. She complies, watching him, accepting his need of this mastery.

He tears her shirt open and, hearing a button tick against the window, realises he should stop. But he keeps going, wanting to strip her bare, to know who she is.

He rides through the clamour of their orgasms, the drumfire heartbeats, sawing breaths, whispered abuse and falling tears. And loping out into a dumb contentment, he thinks he sees, momentarily, the Weeping Woman in the contorted features of her climax. The daughter of the mother, the horror in the ecstasy. And he thinks then, collapsing onto her, his anger momentarily exorcised, her story might be true.

Then she is gone. ‘M? Mireille? Mireille?’ He calls only three times before he knows. He gets up from the paint-spattered sisal matting floor where he has slept. On the kitchen bench she has left a note. Beside it is a small canvas, rolled and tied with red string.

Harry,

No more forgery. No more stealing. Paint. Art is freedom for you.

My love was love.
Mireille xxx

He unties the string and rolls the canvas out on the bench top. It is a painting of a girl with a doll in her lap. Looking at the signature on the painting he laughs, shakes his head and closes his eyes. He pours himself a glass of vodka. He looks again at the painting. Perhaps it is a mother with a girl in her lap. Mauve and blue and yellow. It is a Picasso. Signed by the man and dated 1935. ‘No more forgery. No more stealing.’ So this is real. Mireille is the Weeping Woman’s daughter.

He hangs the Picasso in his studio. He calls it a Picasso, though he doesn’t have its veracity checked. He doesn’t want to know. The truth of Mireille’s story rests on it and he couldn’t bear for it to be proven a forgery. He couldn’t bear for her to be proven other than what she has claimed. He sometimes thinks she would have known this – she may have counted on it. She may have given him a forgery, knowing its discovery would be protected by his love for her. It is an exquisite thing. A Picasso.