“I’m not.” Hanna was still doing her trying-to-deal-with-your-irrationality voice. “There is an actual storm coming, and we will actually get stuck in it if you don’t come back to the car. Come on, I’ve found the turning we missed. If we get going, we’ll be at the hotel in half an hour.”

Liza stared at her wife silhouetted in the car headlights and tried desperately to sift through a decade of love and bitterness. Standing there backlit, her close-cropped hair—it had been greying since her mid-twenties and was now a steely shade that matched her eyes—and business-casual suit made her look like an elf who’d quit working for Santa and hooked up with MI5. For the best part of ten years, Hanna had been the most fascinating human being Liza had ever laid eyes on. Right now, she was a pain in the arse.

“All right.” Shivering slightly, and at least a little glad to be escaping the night air, Liza began to trudge back to the car. “But so we’re clear: I’m still not okay.”

“Noted.”

They drove in silence for a while, and when fat, heavy raindrops started to pelt the windscreen, Liza allowed herself a quiet moment to resent the fact that Hanna hadn’t just been overbearing; she’d been overbearing and right.

When the predicted half hour had passed, light wavered like will-o’-wisps out of the darkness. The Westmacott Hotel was a castle, an actual castle, because of course Hanna had booked them an actual castle. Her inability to do anything even remotely by halves was one of the things Liza loved about her. Had loved. Still loved. Even if it was hard to remember sometimes.

With the rain, it was difficult to make out details of the hotel-slash-castle until it was practically on top of them. It loomed out of the storm in a tableau of gothic excess, a flag flying from a tower overlooking the courtyard, windows gleaming defiant against the night. Leaving the car in the sparsely occupied car park, Liza and Hanna fought their way through downpour to the main doors.

Inside, the near-medieval opulence of the hotel’s façade gave way to a more modern refinement. The fittings still had an original vibe, in the old rather than new sense of the word. Neoclassical pillars stretched from floor (marble) to ceiling (rose-decorated), and deep leather armchairs were scattered in corners for the convenience of guests. To Liza’s right, a spiral staircase led up into the tower, while ahead a set of majestic steps swept up to the first floor and down to who knew where. Even the gleaming hardwood check-in desk had an air of antiquity about it that the man behind it—despite his relative youth—matched effortlessly.