She disappears through the front door – leaving it open – and Marina is left with a precarious sensation, as if she’s been set adrift. She can still smell the woman’s scent, a mix of cold cream and eau de cologne, and she breathes it in like a hunter following a trail.

6

Eva

January 1992

Eva scrutinises the piano keys. She has made mistake after mistake with this piece. Is she ever going to get it right?

She flexes her fingers, examines her nails. She has been off colour for weeks, ever since she saw the woman in the lamplight, staring at the house. Midnight, awake as usual, she had made hot chocolate and stood at the frosty window warming her hands. How unnerving it had been, seeing the figure standing there like a beautiful statue with the snow settling on her thick, dark hair. Intrigued, Eva had switched off the light and watched.

Two months later and the woman had moved into the building. Eva had recognised the old Mini first and then the woman emerging from the car and hauling out bags. Faux-fur coat and fingerless gloves. That hair. There had been no mistaking it was the same person. Ron had helped and Eva had watched him buzzing around with a tinge of jealousy that she had quickly stifled. After all, it had been her fault that she and Ron had broken up. She had rejected him.

She remembers when Ron had moved in. Her mother, Natalia, had met him first, outside on the pavement; had rushed to tell Eva how good-looking he was, how interesting too. He worked in a museum. Natalia had been impressed by that. She liked the kind of people who were interested in history, or the arts – or music, of course. And she had been excited in a way Eva hadn’t seen for a while.

A few months later, Natalia had had a heart attack. How difficult Eva had found that to comprehend when her mother had always been so slim, so active. She had walked everywhere, to the shops, to the houses of the ladies she sewed for and of the pupils she taught. And she’d had stamina, staying up late at night to perfect her piano pieces or to finish the clothes or the curtains that she made. It had been a real shock. Her beautiful mother gone – just like that. Some days Eva had hardly been able to get out of bed, and there was no way she could leave the house. It was as if she had drifted back to the dark days when she was a child, suffering from vertigo and panic attacks.