A closed coffin. Matty imagined the decomposition continuing, bacteria feasting on Rosa from the inside, her changing colours, a mossy black-green against the red of her darkest nail polish. Becoming liquid. Becoming nothing.

Matty had gone back to the Wood Green flat, where they’d moved after returning from Italy, and where Rosa had lived for the last eleven years. Sat in the dark. The council had it cleaned, but there remained a furred smell underneath the bright scrape of chemicals. Even when the smell faded, she was still there, as Joe had been for those few months in Golders Green before the two of them moved further north. The tight-jawed essence of her, the nicotine in the corniced corners of the ceiling. A month there, listening to Rosa whispering from the net curtains and clicking in the light bulb, had been enough. It wasn’t home.

So Matty sold the house. Transferred some of the money over to Nonna and Nonno, and opened another bank account. Started to stack Rosa’s things into boxes, going through every room and up to the attic, where the world suddenly tilted, and turned itself inside out.

Packing up. Bed folded back into seat. Kettle stacked away in the tiny cupboard next to the plate and bowl. The wetsuit hung opposite the cooker, a towel folded up underneath it.

Matty went outside, did twenty squats. Lifts with the pair of dumbbells that stacked tidily under the back seat. A set of press-ups, the gravel leaving teeth-marks on each palm.

A quick fag, to the satisfying throb of worked muscles. Always good to feel hardy, sculpted. The mountain lough looked unknowable again, as if it hadn’t been touched.

Matty took the Old Military Road once more, a high, featureless pass through the national park. The widest sky. The moorland colours were like Joe’s beard, when he used to grow it during the odd winter – blond-red and the beginnings of grey in with the brown.

The first phone book was on the passenger seat. Burning a hole in it.

Tomorrow. Matty would start tomorrow.

Chapter 2

22/11/99

__________LOUGH, UPPER LAKE, Air 11°C, Water 10°C, 2.5km

There was a man crouching down by a motorbike in the car park, a grimy cloth in his hand. Shaved head, long ginger beard, leathers. Matty changed behind Shifty’s closed curtains, and he looked up when the side door shuddered shut.

‘Nice wheels,’ he said.

‘Cheers.’

‘Going for a swim?’

‘Yep.’ The wetsuit hadn’t quite dried enough since this morning, and had taken ages to get on.

‘I applaud you, man.’ An American accent. ‘That’s awesome. Don’t get into trouble in there.’