Sasha stared at her in the light from the lamp on her nightstand. For an instant, she wavered. His blue eyes were wide and hurt, his hair askew. He looked more like a wounded animal than an angry husband. For once, he smelled of nothing but soap and toothpaste and warm, scrubbed skin. He was clean and perfect—uncorrupted. She heard the words again in her head—You’re an idiot—yet even in the full vortex of fury, she saw his beautiful face and the small, beloved fragments of his beautiful soul—her Sasha—and thought, Just apologize, just say you’re sorry, God knows I’ll take you back, I’ll always take you back.

But Sasha couldn’t hear Iris’s thoughts, or he didn’t care. He climbed out of bed, took his pillow and the spare blanket folded at the end, and walked out of the bedroom.

SASHA ALWAYS LOCKED HIS study door when he was out, but Iris knew where he kept the key—behind the frame of the mirror above the mantel in the dining room.

The next morning, after Sasha left for work, Iris unlocked the study door and slipped inside. Her husband was not an immaculate man. There was always something slightly askew about his dress, even if you couldn’t quite pinpoint what was out of order, and his study was no different. Except, perhaps, that you could pinpoint the mess, because it lay all around you—the stacks of unfiled papers, the books shoved in odd corners of the bookshelves, the broken lampshade sitting upside-down next to the lamp. The morning sunshine speared through the window and struck a framed map that hung off-kilter on the opposite wall. Mrs. Betts was only allowed to clean the room while Sasha was inside it. He liked his privacy, he always said, and until now, Iris was happy to let him enjoy it. Wasn’t it better not to know?

She didn’t have much time. Mrs. Betts would be whipping up the hot cocoa this moment, and Jack would drink it in the kitchen, legs swinging, asking the housekeeper questions that she’d answer as she finished washing up the breakfast dishes. But Jack’s three-year-old powers of attention were not vast. He might drink half the cocoa and slide off the chair in search of new amusement, probably prodding his brother—currently slumped on the sofa in the drawing room, reading his book—and Iris would have to take them both to the park or something. So she didn’t waste time idling about the room. She went straight to the file cabinet and found it locked, as she expected. To hunt for the key would be time wasted. She turned instead to the desk drawers. There were two on each side—both drawers on the left were locked, and so was the bottom drawer on the right, but the top one slid right open.