Later, when he overhears Gaia’s happy chatter from the playroom, relief catches him by surprise.
On his desk, a photograph of Aurelia smiles back. She has her arms wrapped around a tree, her hair sweeping away from her, and that smile, her beautiful smile that deflected from so much darkness and turmoil, beaming out of the frame like the North Star. He can hear her voice, clear as a bell.
Oh, Tom, she says sadly. Why did you do it, Tom?
11
the felling
THEN
It’s been a month since Aurelia first arrived at the site. She’s grown used to Granhus, and the finishing touches Tom has added in the form of new sofas, books, and a toy room have made it homey. He had the old boiler fixed so she can have hot baths every night if she wants to, and the Aga is actually brilliant—it really does heat the whole house, even a place as big and as drafty as Granhus.
Still, she hasn’t felt right since Coco was born. No, not since then—since she came to this wild place on the edge of the cliff. She WhatsApps her friends back home often—miserable out here, send gin —and is more serious than they think. If she was back in London, meeting up with Dulcie and Saffy and their new babies, or at her mother’s house in Oxford, being fussed over and ordered to take long hot baths every night (It soothes the soul, darling), maybe she wouldn’t feel as . . . hollow. As though the world is black and white, devoid of smell, taste, and texture.
And then there are the weird dreams she keeps having.
She looks at herself in the long mirror in the corner of the bedroom. She’s still in her nightdress, her blonde hair wild and tangled, her face bare. When did she last wear makeup, or proper clothes? She can’t remember.
Tom keeps asking if she’s all right, and the answer’s always the same: Of course I am. We’re building our dream home! It’s amazing. And she smiles, and portrays herself as she usually is: happy, focused, full of plans. But something has changed. She can feel a darkness settling inside her bones, a fog veiling her thoughts. The midwife would say it’s postnatal depression, but she’s sure it’s not. She has had low days like everyone else, but this is something completely new, beyond the scope of her new-baby, new-house situation. When did it happen? She glances outside at the untrammeled view of the fjord, and the answer crystallizes: it was when Tom cut down the trees.
She recalls the morning when she’d stood, right in this very spot, holding a mug of tea in one hand and Coco in her other arm, looking down at Tom felling the first tree. A big gnarled thing with a hollow in the middle, like a mouth, two branches crooked out at either side like arms. A storybook tree. The trunk was six feet wide. Hours later, Tom emerged drenched in sweat and exhausted, as though he’d had to box the tree down with his bare hands. He held up a jar of the sap: so dark it resembled blood. “The king of the forest is conquered,” he’d said with a grin.
That was when the darkness had seeped into her. She knew she’d been wrong to ask him to cut down the tree. Everything feels so different here, as though they’re no longer on the earth but in some other place—an in-between. Time, light, and even the elements are expanded and contracted here, so different they require different names. She feels the boundary between her own self and the land has been ruptured. That she is affected by the forest, the fjord, the wildlife. No, not just affected—occasionally possessed by the spirit of the place. She touches her hand to the glass of the mirror and gives a wry laugh. If anyone heard her thoughts they’d think she’d gone mad. Possessed! Still, the felling of the tree feels like a death, like slaughter. She feels physically pained by it.
Tom reassured her that he’d put the wood to good use. He Skyped Derry, who began to draw up plans for bespoke kitchen units, a dining table, a hand-carved bed for Coco. It reassured her a little that the tree would not be wasted. But when she’d gone outside there were at least a dozen nests on the ground, some still with broken eggshells inside. A steady trail of insects ribboned away from the branches.