That night she dreams of when the house is completely finished, of sitting by a roaring fire overlooking the sweeping vista of the fjord, the waterfalls, the city in the distance where her grandparents lived. Her mind leaps forward across all the summers that she’ll bring the girls out here. She’ll set up a telescope so they can spot snow goose chevronning the skies and sea eagles pivoting above prey. Gaia will have her own gallery wall for all her sketches and memory boxes of leaves and forest treasure, and perhaps she too will have a gallery. A studio, even, filled with new work.

But none of this will ever happen. In just seven weeks’ time Aurelia will be dead, and the house they are building will be a carcass of splintered wood sprawling across the forest.

   22   

IT DIDN’T ADD UP

Now

Tom killed his wife. I was sure of it.

I spent the next couple of nights tentatively reading the diary, entry after entry, becoming more afraid with each one. During the day, I’d be counting aloud while the girls put a hundred raisins in a box, made octagons and rhomboids with straws, or transformed twigs into paint brushes by tying pine needles to the end of them. By night, I’d be reading the poignant last words of her dead mother recounting how their father was beating her to a pulp.

When I finished all the entries, I set down the diary with trembling hands. I got up and walked to my suitcase, which was leaning against the wardrobe, and took out my phone. I didn’t know if my number was still working – I probably owed the network a fortune in fines – but I was connected to the Wi-Fi, and sometimes I charged the phone just so I could search YouTube tutorials on Montessori activities for Gaia and Coco. And also Gaia liked to watch kids’ programmes on Netflix. Only a few programmes worked over here, but I was still logged in to David’s Netflix account, and I’ll admit to getting a little bit of satisfaction out of still being able to watch stuff that he was paying for. Gaia’s TV was limited to weekends, but the cartoons she watched on Netflix were sweet, and often we had a good discussion about the story afterwards, so I didn’t see the harm. Anyway, the point was that I knew I could still make calls via Wi-Fi. I could call Meg and ask her advice. So, I’ve just found out that my employer was beating his wife before she died. He probably murdered her. What should I do?

I should probably just skip that part. I would ring Meg and calmly explain that I legit needed help. I had no way to get back to civilization, and now my life was in danger.