He opened his mouth to speak, but someone behind him beat him to it.
“Clive?”
He yanked his hand away as if my hand had turned into raw flame. Derry was standing in the doorway, her thick fleece house robe pulled tight across her chest. She had this weird expression that put me on edge. She looked from me to Clive as though we’d just been sticking pins in a voodoo doll of her likeness, or hosting a druidic ceremony. Everyone’s gone mad tonight, I thought.
Clive stood up quickly and wiped his hands on his trousers. They stared at each other wordlessly.
“Derry,” I called out to her. “Are we doing our walk tomorrow morning?” I was keen to get back outside. I found it cleared my brain for the day ahead.
She ignored me and muttered something at Clive, who was protesting something and staggering toward her with his hands out. But she turned and stomped away. This is why I couldn’t do marriage, I thought. Too much reading between the lines. But I was disappointed, too, because as Clive asked those bizarre questions, I had wondered if I should ask him about the diary. It was possible he had planted it in my room. I made a mental note to ask him the day after.
That night, I was up again with Coco, rocking her back to sleep, when I heard Derry and Clive talking in their room.
“I saw the way you looked at her,” Derry said. Then: “Did you want to?”
Was she talking about me?
35
you want this
THEN
Aurelia wakes with a gasp, the bedclothes swamping around her. She is panting, filmed with sweat, her heart jackhammering in her throat. She rises from the bed, the dimensions of the room all akimbo, and heads for Gaia’s bedroom. She collapses on the shape of the bed and reaches her hand for where Gaia’s face should be. The relief that hits her when she feels the familiar warm smoothness of her daughter’s cheek and nose is overwhelming: she is still half inside the dream, can see each of the faces of the reindeer with unbelievable vividness. The glassy black eyes, the markings around their snouts, brown felt dangling in tatters from their antlers . . .
She squeezes her eyes shut and tries to breathe away the panic that mounts up again as she recalls seeing Gaia in the water, and that searing helplessness when she discovered Gaia was gone. The emptiness of her arms. An infinite emptiness.
But it was not real, and Gaia is here.
She sits up and covers her face with her hands, then sobs quietly for a moment. Gaia does not stir. Aurelia doesn’t want to go back to bed. The thought of falling into nightmares again does not appeal. She’ll drink, that’s what. She’ll go downstairs and have a nightcap, or four, so that she doesn’t dream.
It’s a mild night. Climate change has thrust schizophrenic weather patterns upon Norway, so that the old concept of winter clothes and summer clothes does not apply. She puts on her robe and slippers and heads downstairs to the kitchen. She stands by the window for a few moments, looking out at the trees, at their almost-house. The sky is a strange color—navy streaked with yellow. The trees are usually troubled by wind, ruffled by its many hands, but tonight they are still. As she cranes to get a better look outside, there it is, a flicker of aurora borealis. The yellow streaks deepen to a rich stripe of emerald green tinged with pink. It begins to sway, like a river in the sky, then splits into two separate strands that bifurcate across the sky. She gives a gasp. Never has she seen the northern lights. Not even as a child, when they went north. She wants to run back upstairs and wake the children, wake Tom, wake Clive and Derry, but then she catches sight of the kitchen clock and considers that at this time of night, no one is going to thank her for waking them up. And the thought of trying to get Gaia back to sleep after such excitement puts her right off. So she stands there, relishing the experience of being the only person for miles to see this sight, as though the heavens are dancing just for her.
“Nightcap?” a voice says. She jumps and turns around to see Clive in the doorway. He doesn’t look like he’s even been to bed.