for cups of tea. The laundry towered in the bathroom and dishes accumulated beside the sink. The usual groan of the vacuum cleaner was no more. Even the curtains stayed drawn in the living room.
I soon worked out that Maren was spending a lot of time in the attic. One night I crept up there to see what could possibly be holding her attention. The attic was as dusty and forlorn as I’d last seen it, but there was a distinct smell of smoke in the place. After a bit of snooping, I found the cause—a half-empty box of cigars beneath the guest bed. That wasn’t nearly as interesting as the box placed next to it. With a hammering heart, I opened it to find a stack of photographs, letters, and newspaper cuttings. At first, I thought all of them were of the same person—Aurelia. There were snapshots of Aurelia and Tom on family outings, indicated by the presence of backpacks, flasks, and photo-bombing sheep; there were even notes apparently written from Aurelia to Maren:
Maren dearest, could you be a star and drop off the dry cleaning today?? Love you incredibly, A xxx
There were many ways that one could take “love you incredibly,” but my immediate thought was that it was a figure of speech. There were a couple of photos of Aurelia and Maren, too, back in the house at Hampstead at Gaia’s third birthday party. Aurelia had her arm across Maren’s shoulders. There were also some objects in the box. A bracelet, a large round button, a small ceramic penguin figurine, and a half-used L’Oréal lipstick. I looked down at them in my hand, certain they were Aurelia’s. I remembered Derry telling me about Maren stealing from Aurelia. If Tom found these he’d hit the roof. Maybe even throw her out.
Was Maren spending all day long up here, smoking cigars and looking through these mementos of Aurelia? I knew she was pretty sad about Aurelia dying, but it hadn’t struck me at all that she might be grieving. Derry’s words came back to me: Maren became obsessed with Aurelia. But then, right at the bottom of the box, I saw the newspaper clippings and the photographs, and my curiosity deepened. The newspaper clippings were in a language I couldn’t read, but which I guessed to be Norwegian from the handful of nouns I recognized from Gaia’s Norwegian spelling books. They were dated from the 1980s and seemed to be all about some girl named Ingrid who, spookily enough, looked exactly like Aurelia. Same hair, same small nose, same eyes. Only the mouth and chin gave her away. There was an old Polaroid image there, too, of Ingrid. Ingrid Olsen. She looked like she was in her late teens or early twenties, and she was sitting at a campfire in a pair of jeans and strappy vest top, her head tilted to one side and her long blonde hair sweeping to the side. In another photograph, Aurelia held the same pose. They must have been related.
I had no idea why Maren would be spending all day long staring at these images, nor why she had them in the first place.
A noise downstairs told me it was time to put the box back underneath the bed, but as I scrambled to get everything back in the same order as I’d found it, I came across a newspaper article that sent chills up my spine: Ingrid had been murdered. I couldn’t read a word of the text, but the pictures said it all: the same image of Ingrid, smiling up in pixelated black-and-white alongside a man in handcuffs being led from a court. Another image of a detective addressing reporters.
With a sinking feeling in my gut—Derry would say that my sacral chakra was misaligned—I put everything back carefully and approached the attic stairs. To my horror, Maren was standing at the foot of them, staring up at me with a cold, suspicious expression.
“What are you doing?” she said in a tight voice.
“I . . .” I said. “I came to see if you were all right.” Partially true.
Her face softened. “Oh. Well, I’m fine. Thank you.”
I climbed down the stairs and turned to her. “I noticed you hadn’t been doing any housework,” my mouth said, while my brain informed me I was stupid. “I thought maybe you’d hurt yourself and was going to offer to help.” Thanks, brain.
“Oh.” She was taken aback by that. She clasped her hands and glanced,