I wake up, my head pounding, trying to remember what led to me falling asleep on the sofa. A wave of nausea makes me retch, but then the feeling subsides.

Managing to pull myself up, I stagger to my bedroom. I collapse onto the bed, curl into a foetal position and cry myself to sleep.

When I tell Graham about my experience the next day, he has what seems like a logical explanation.

“The parrot was just mimicking what it had been taught, Claire.”

He could not, however, set my mind at ease about the stroking sensation and the photo.

“You probably left it lying around and Biscuit pulled it up onto the chair,” he says.

“But it was burned,” I insist.

“Then your friend had a copy that she left at your place.”

I give up trying to get him to understand. I know there was never a copy of it— not even on social media.

The day of the burning, she’d tossed the photo into a metal bucket, along with other Nick paraphernalia — cheap gifts and reminders of moments shared — and burned it, frame and all.

On arriving home, Nick had been livid. Taryn had thrown everything he owned into black refuse bags and placed them just inside the front entrance. (He didn’t actually have suitcases. He didn’t have much of anything, except his sculpted Greek god looks.)

“This isn’t over. You belong to me!” he had shouted at her.

After the break-up, Taryn had immersed herself in her work and produced vivid paintings and drawings. In reviews of her solo retrospective, one critic had praised her “provocative evocation of emotion through skillful use of colour and line”.

Kirkland Stone, a respected art collector, showed Taryn’s work to the owner of a prestigious gallery — Hans Müller. Stone had discovered her at a local arts festival and was impressed by her work.

“My God! She has a rare talent!” Müller had exclaimed.

After the success of the exhibition, Taryn started receiving commissions for still life paintings from big corporates and requests for portraits from the rich.

“They’ve got more money than sense,” she’d said about her newly-acquired wealthy clientele. “But with a Taryn Mancini in their homes, they can at least claim excellent taste!”

***

Tell us what you think: Would Taryn have pursued her artistic career if she hadn’t been through a difficult relationship, or was art a way of healing her suffering?