She waded out up to her knees, then lowered herself and swam slowly toward the spot where she’d last seen Aurelia. She only managed a couple of strokes before she spotted something ahead. A white sheet, floating in the water. And then she screamed.
The white sheet was Aurelia’s dress. Aurelia’s body floated past her, facedown, arms outstretched, her blonde hair streaming like reeds across the surface.
Derry turned and swam for her life back to the riverbank. She didn’t look back, didn’t stop moving until she had climbed the ladder to the top of the cliff. As she raced back to Granhus, the knowledge that she had let Aurelia drown crept beneath her skin. Why had she done that? People would blame her, maybe accuse her of killing her. She had to keep it to herself.
She returned to Granhus, still wet from the fjord. But it had started to rain.
Gaia was standing on the chair by the kitchen window.
“Have you seen Mumma?” Gaia asked, and Derry’s stomach dropped.
“No,” Derry answered, and it surprised her how quickly she regained her composure. “No, darling. I haven’t.”
That was two weeks ago. Aurelia’s body was found, much to Derry’s horror, but still she said nothing about what she’d witnessed. After all, Aurelia had been depressed. She had mentioned suicidal thoughts just days before she’d gone missing. Her midwife back in England reported an alarming e-mail, requesting therapy. And she left what seemed to be a suicide note.
* * *
—
From the shelter of the vault, Clive turns again to survey the crowd ahead.
“I did nothing,” she tells Clive in a broken voice. “I just stood there and watched her drown. What sort of person does that make me?”
The other mourners are moving to the cars, about to head to the wake. Nothing that Derry is saying makes sense. He knows Derry was sore after that night she’d seen him and Aurelia kissing. He knows he’s pushed her to the brink of her sanity at times with his philandering. But he also knows her well enough to know she wouldn’t have killed Aurelia. He’d feared that his indiscretion had caused Derry to argue with Aurelia, and that this had contributed to her decision to kill herself. “Aurelia drowned,” he says in a low voice. “It was suicide.”
Derry shakes her head, covers her mouth with her hand. Back here, in London, she feels horrified at what she did. By how she’d felt. She is haunted by the sight of Aurelia in the fjord. By the way she’d just stood there, and watched, and waited.
As though she’d been someone else entirely.
41
the choice
NOW
I packed the last of my things into the suitcase, carefully sliding the precious pictures Gaia had done for me along with the handprints I’d done of Coco into the front pocket. I stared at my phone, at once hating myself for bringing it and wondering how on earth I’d managed to avoid taking a single photograph of the girls. It would be the only thing I’d have to remember them by. It occurred to me that perhaps I’d be better trying to forget them altogether. I would never see them again.
As I went to leave the room I spotted the diary beneath my bed. Aurelia’s diary. I picked it up and held it for a moment, working out my options. I could use it to blackmail Tom. It was evidence that he had beaten her, and even if he hadn’t killed her he might well have driven her to take her own life. I sat on the bed and thought hard about how I could use this to my advantage.
Think like an opportunist, I thought. What would my mother do?
I could threaten him, make some sort of deal. Let me stay or I’ll show this to the police.
I don’t know how I managed to pull my suitcase out of my room and along the landing. The realization that I was leaving Gaia and Coco forever had made my body almost completely limp. I felt as though I was having an out-of-body experience. In fact, it struck me that I felt worse than I did on the night I attempted suicide, or even when I gave up Mia. This was a scale of awfulness that surpassed everything I’d experienced. What life did I have without them? I loved them both more than I had loved anyone. I was homeless again, for sure, but I didn’t care where I ended up, because