was being sent back to England. I was homeless. And I had nobody in the world to turn to.
“How is your writing going?” I said after a while. My voice sounded thin and broken.
Derry turned to me and narrowed her eyes as though I’d just asked if she’d gained ten pounds.
“Why did you ask that?”
I blinked. “No reason. Just . . . making conversation . . .”
She turned back to study the road. The car fell silent again. “The night I saw you with Clive,” Derry said suddenly. “Did you sleep with him?”
I stared at her. “Did I sleep with who?”
She smiled, showing all her teeth. Her eyes glittered darkly. “You heard me. I saw the way you looked at him. You slept with Clive, didn’t you?”
“No!” I said. What on earth was she saying? Perhaps she was playing some kind of prank, I thought, and my devastation at leaving was making me miss the punch line. Either way, it was kind of cruel, and I felt uneasy.
She cocked her head. “Did you want to?”
I noticed she was driving faster and faster. The speedometer read 145 kph, and the rain was making it difficult to see.
“Derry,” I said, clutching on to my seat belt. “Do you think we can slow down?”
“Not until you answer my question,” she said, and she pressed the accelerator, lurching us forward . . . 160 kph.
I went to shout for her to let me out, but just then the fog around my brain cleared and a question beamed bright: Derry had asked whether my leaving was something to do with the diary.
How did she know it was a diary?
“I swear I didn’t sleep with Clive,” I said. “I swear I didn’t want to, either.”
A muscle rippled in her jaw. When she turned to look at me, her eyes had a strange look about them. Even her skin appeared different. Sallow, and kind of gray.
“Derry,” I said. “How did you know I gave Tom a diary?”
All the hardness seemed to melt out of her face, as though I’d flicked a switch.
“It was a dream diary,” she said blankly. “Aurelia wrote down all her dreams. And then the pages got ripped out and the diary was rewritten.”
The air had grown cold, and I suddenly felt very scared.
“Did you have something to do with that?”
“Yes,” she said, as though she’d forgotten. “Yes. I think I did.”
* * *
—
I’m not sure what happened next. I remember seeing a figure standing in the road, facing the car with their arms by the sides, as though waiting to be struck. Derry slammed on the brakes and swerved wildly to avoid hitting them, but she overcompensated and the car plunged through the roadside barrier onto the verge.
There was a moment when the car sailed into the air, lifting my feet off the floor. I must have been screaming, but I heard nothing, saw nothing, except the trees and the silent cliffs. Then the car smashed hard against rock, bonnet first, and an airbag exploded in my face. We rolled, once, twice, a dozen times, and I thought, This is it, this is how I die. How will Tom tell Gaia? How will she cope, losing her mother and me in the space of a year?
The thought made me angry. Even when we crashed into the fjord, I remember a flash of rage preventing me from blacking out.
I must have climbed or fallen out of the car window, because the next thing I knew I was in the fjord, looking up at the sky. I was floating on my back, moving downstream. My body sang with pain. Derry’s car was crumpled at the side of the bank, its front end dipping into the water. I couldn’t tell if Derry was inside or not, but I hadn’t the strength to try to save her. With a terrific whine the car seesawed forward and plunged into the dark water.
The current beneath me moved fast, jostling me forward. I was powerless to do anything but let it carry me wherever it wanted. The water was freezing, and I was sure I had only a few minutes before I drowned, or died from hypothermia. Warm liquid crept down my face and into my eyes, and I suspected it was blood from a head wound.
I lifted my head to scope the direction of the current and saw a log in front of me. Perhaps I could grab hold of it, I thought, and stop myself from drowning. Or