her mouth against his. It takes all his willpower not to rip her clothes off. He should get a medal, he thinks.
She rolls off him and lies beside him, basking in the victory that is contained in all thirty-six pages of the contract. Their house is going to be real. Their dream house. It’s incredible, a dream come true. Her mood soars, but Tom is returning to the reason why he looked so glum earlier. He’s complaining, whingeing. She wants him to shut the hell up. They’ve just won governmental consent to build their dream home here in Norway, for heaven’s sake. What is there to complain about?
“. . . and the issue I have with that is that it’s completely unnecessary. It’s a tick-box requirement. We’re in Norway, above a fjord. We have the best air quality in the world.”
She rolls over onto her side, cupping her abdomen as it slides to the mattress. “I’m still not following . . .”
He explains that a mechanical air ventilation system will require energy. He’s been insistent on the house being completely eco-friendly, off-grid, producing more energy than it consumes, blah blah blah. She yawns and does her Kegels, thinking about fittings for the new bathroom as she clenches the hammocked muscles of her pelvic floor.
“More than three-quarters of the land on earth—”
“—has been modified by humans. Yeah, I know, Tom. You’ve mentioned it a few thousand times before.”
“I’m just saying. I’m not being a pain in the arse . . .”
“You are, Tom. You are.”
“All right, but it’s about . . . look, if I just abandon my principles and overlook what really matters despite being an architect and, you know, aware of how we’re destroying the planet, then what hope is there for the next generation, huh? For Gaia and Coco?”
She stops clenching, a little out of breath. “Isn’t diverting a river modifying the land?”
“Aurelia, you asked me to change the course of the river. You picked the spot where we would build . . .”
“I know I did . . .”
“The river’s still going to be there. It’ll just . . . bend a little. So it becomes part of the aesthetics of the house.” He’s stumped by her calling him out like this. Frustrated, even. He hadn’t wanted to touch the river. He’s invested in making this house as eco-friendly as possible. “You’re saying you didn’t want me to divert the river?”
She sighs. “All I’m saying is I really don’t think installing a mechanical ventilation system in a house is going to melt the ice caps . . .”
His face lights up. “You see? That’s what everyone thinks. ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter if I chuck this plastic bottle out, there’s already a whole island of plastic bottles in the Indian Ocean,’ or ‘Sod going vegan, a burger never hurt anyone.’”
She laughs. He joins her. They laugh for different reasons.
After a moment or two she touches his cheek.
“It’s going to be out of this world,” she says. “We’re so lucky to be able to do this.” She kisses him deeply, holds his face close. He feels his fingers reach for the buttons of her shirt.
“You know I’m leaving for Oslo tonight,” he says, his brain flagging a last resort for sex. “I’ll be gone for a week.”
But she doesn’t answer. Something has appeared in the fringes of her vision by the bedroom door, a shape. A woman with her head bowed, wearing a long dress.
“What’s wrong?” he says, following her gaze to the doorway.
Aurelia rises to her feet sharply. “Someone was here.”
“Who? Who was here?”
Aurelia raises her hand to her head. She looks upset. “I could have sworn I just saw . . .”
He gets to his feet, studies the space that Aurelia is staring at. The doorway. “What? What did you see?”
She gives a deep sigh, presses her palms against her eyes for a few moments. “Nothing,” she says finally. “Just a trick of the light.”
Sex is out of the question now. He strains to find a way to bring it back into the realm of possibility, but he can see she’s unsettled. “Are you sure you’ll be all right here with the girls?” he says.
She swivels her green eyes back to him and forces a smile. “I’m sure.”
“You could come, you know.”
“A hotel in the city in winter is the last place I want to take a newborn. But I’ll miss you. Come back early if you can.”