Having established a name for herself as a talented art critic for the national press, Chloë Ashby employs her expertise with illuminating effect in her fiction. In her first novel, Wet Paint, she used the uncomfortable gaze of the barmaid in Manet’s ‘A Bar at the Folies-Bergère’ to explore how her protagonist sees and is seen. In her new novel, Second Self, the central painting is ‘View of Scheveningen Sands’ by Hendrick van Anthonissen, which again becomes an insightful parallel to the protagonist’s life.

Cathy, 35, an art conservationist, is happily married to Noah, 11 years her senior, an academic and authority on international relations. Home is a flat in the yuppified part of Hackney, where Noah lovingly cooks and where the couple enjoy steamy sex in the shower after Cathy’s morning jogs along the towpath. Cathy’s best friend from school, Anna, lives a different version of this cushioned metropolitan existence. In her smart Kentish Town house, tasteful furnishings hide beneath the happily chaotic accoutrements of her toddler; beside ‘soothing sage green’ cupboards, the kitchen table is ‘pollinated with crumbs’. There are weekend trips to Cathy’s mother in Norfolk and weekly dinners with Noah’s brother’s boisterous Jewish intellectual family. So far, so cosy; but a tension runs beneath, tripping Cathy up on her jogs. She and Noah initially agreed that they didn’t want children, but, eight years into their marriage, does she want them after all?

Starting work on ‘View of Scheveningen Sands’, Cathy soon reveals a beached whale at its heart, concealed after the artist’s death ‘to suit changing sensibilities’ – a conservationist discovery that really happened. Researching historical whale strandings, while preoccupied with her ticking biological clock, Cathy notes: ‘Nature played a cruel and irreversible trick on them. I tried not to linger on the thought that it might also be playing a trick on me.’

As she works to preserve the painting, she decides to preserve her fertility by freezing her eggs. And, just as she discovers hidden intentions buried in the painting, so she also uncovers deep psychological motivations for her reconsideration of motherhood. Perhaps her craving has come about not just because Anna is pregnant again but because her own mother’s health is beginning to deteriorate.

With the painting, it is easy to decide to honour the artist’s original intention and reveal the whale. Cathy’s far less straightforward decision is compellingly played out.