over and begins to draw the floorplan. Three stories, four en suite bedrooms, a large open-plan living space with a lift transferring them to the top of the cliff, even a rooftop garden. It’s insanely ambitious, but there’s freedom in hitting rock bottom. The destruction of Basecamp has wiped the slate clean, wiped out his finances, and obliterated his pride—and what he’s left with is raw creative energy driven by a need to fulfill his promise to Aurelia. He’s back to being a passionate, neurotic postgrad, wondering if he’ll ever be paid to design so much as a garden shed. His father got to be right—Tom failed as he predicted, and he had to bail him out. Screw paying his dad back. Tom will go to the banks, or friends, for another loan, start again on the new house. The real nest. Aurelia’s Nest. A place where she will feel safe, and happy. Like her old self.
When he finishes the sketches he gets up, gives a huge stretch and a few air punches. Then he heads downstairs to make coffee.
In the kitchen, Gaia is standing on a chair by the sink, hair wild as candy floss, looking out of the window at the trees.
“Good morning, pudding,” he says, planting a kiss on top of her head. “Mummy still asleep?”
“Mumma ran away,” she says.
“Have you had breakfast yet?” He rummages in the fridge. They’re almost out of almond milk. He’ll head into the village today and pick up some more.
“Mumma’s gone,” Gaia says. “I can’t see her.”
“Gone?” he says absentmindedly. “Where’s Mummy gone?”
“She’s gone. Gone.”
He pours oatmeal into a bowl, adds the last of the almond milk. Tosses it in the microwave. Life is great. He whistles happily and does a little dance, the idea of the house still buzzing brightly in his head. In a moment he’ll go upstairs and check on Aurelia, see if she wants him to make her a cooked breakfast. Sod it, he’ll just make it and surprise her. Then he’ll tell her that he’s going to build her house.
Several miles downstream, Aurelia’s body floats facedown in the water, coming to rest against a bank of ferns and reeds. Her lips are parted; her blonde hair streams outward like pondweed. A fox starts, then dabs at her nightdress with a paw.
She will remain in this corner of the fjord for a week, currents tugging her beneath the water and hard against the rocks, rain beating down on the ballooning tent of her dress as though it might yet wake her up.
* * *
—
Can I get you anything?”
Derry’s face swims up to him. She looks so concerned, and her question stalls the gears of his mind, which churn on an endless loop. He found the note. Just one word in Aurelia’s handwriting, left on his bedside table.
Sorry
Had his wife not been missing for thirty-nine hours this note would have had little meaning. He’d assume she was sorry for spilling tea on a contract or shrinking one of his jumpers in the wash. And then he’d give her a kiss and get on with things.
Thirty-nine hours.
It has started to snow.
The police come. They take statements in clipped, cold English phrases, regard him with curiosity and suspicion. They put on plastic gloves and trawl through Aurelia’s clothes, the house. He paces. Coco won’t stop screaming. Gaia falls mute. She won’t speak, won’t eat.
Mumma ran away.
Sixty-seven hours. The phone rings. He dives for it.
“Aurelia?”
Not Aurelia. His stomach drops. It’s the police.
We’ve found a body part.
* * *
—
She is buried in Highgate Cemetery in London, with its hideous Gothic architecture and overbearing whiff of old money. Aurelia’s parents demanded that she be interred in the family plot, and he has no energy to fight them, Gothic architecture notwithstanding. It’s a punishment on their part for whatever role they believe he played in her death. But he saw her corpse, is still traumatized by what death can do . . . So fine, bury her here, he thinks. Bury her wherever you like. The body he identified was not his wife. It was meat, destruction, death. Not Aurelia. A carcass. He will not commemorate her here.
He returns to the house at Hampstead. The agony of its endless empty rooms. The children crying day and night for their mother. Concerned relatives, mostly female, fussing over him, bringing meals. One of them hires a nanny. Ellen. He almost turns her away, then thinks better of it. She seems capable, and he is not