She walked through snow that was two or three inches thick, and felt it begin to soak into her boots as she neared the bottom of the slope. Most of the village houses were gathered together in two terraces that ran parallel with the south wall of the harbour, and all were in darkness except for her own. The lights were confined to the downstairs rooms, and she knew that Tom would be waiting up for her; it must be Christmas Day by now, and he would want to mark it with her, this year more than ever. Nora forced herself on, listening to the whisper of powdery snow beneath her feet. Their cottage was at the end of the row, near the lodge house, and she put her hand on the back gate to let herself into the tiny yard, knowing that Tom would have cleared a path to the door for her. The thought stopped her abruptly in her tracks, a reminder of the love that she had betrayed tugging 145insistently at her conscience, and suddenly she knew that she simply couldn’t bring herself to go home. It was like a physical paralysis, an inability to walk in through the back door and call to her husband as she always did, to pretend that everything was normal. In that instant, Nora realised that she had lost the right to belong in her own life; regardless of how worried she knew Tom would be, she turned and walked away.

The museum was in darkness, covered in its own white shroud, and Nora stood in the shelter of the lych-gate opposite, imagining Emily’s body lying still and cold under the sheet, where the woman she thought was her friend had left her. If she had one decent bone in her body, she would go in there now and stay with Emily until someone found them both, but the revulsion of what she had done had only increased as the day wore on, and it had been as much as she could do to lock the door earlier, when the visitors threatened to go inside; now, on the most haunting, emotionally charged night of the year, her friend’s death had taken on an almost superstitious horror, and the devil himself couldn’t have dragged her over the threshold.

‘Nora? What the hell are you doing out here? I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Where have you been?’ The shock of Tom’s voice brought her to her senses. He stared at her, and she saw her own despair reflected back in his bewildered expression. ‘Christ, Nora, you’ll catch your death. What on earth do you think you’re playing at? I expected you home ages ago.’

Instinctively, she glanced over his shoulder at the museum, knowing that surely now he would realise as soon as Emily’s body was discovered who was to blame for her death. He 146already sensed that something was terribly wrong, and it was only a matter of time before concern turned to shame and then to hatred. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to face it just yet. ‘I’m sorry, but they kept me late,’ she said. ‘Then there was something I forgot to say to Emily when I saw her this morning, so I thought I’d call in and do it now. I was looking for a light upstairs, but she must have gone to bed.’