‘I didn’t peg you as a thief,’ I threw back, and as soon as I said it Laurence Olivier spoke in my head. Superb comeback, old bean.

But then she closed the door and turned a key in the lock. I watched as she walked slowly back towards the table. Why had she locked the door?

‘The woman in the photograph is my sister. Ingrid,’ she said, glancing at the photograph. ‘Not Aurelia.’

‘Your sister?’ I said.

‘My older sister,’ she said, sitting down opposite me. She lit a cigarette and shook out the match. Her hand trembled as she withdrew the cigarette from her lips.

‘Ingrid Olsen was your sister?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tell me about her.’

She looked me over with a little frown.

‘We were sixteen months apart. Best friends. Could finish each other’s sentences.’ She blew out a puff of smoke. ‘And she was murdered. But then, you’ll probably already know that, since you’ve been trawling through my personal things.’

‘That must have been very hard for you,’ I said gently. ‘If you were so close. And she was …’

‘She’s gone,’ she said firmly. ‘Nothing I can do will ever change that. I realize that now.’

I tried to figure out what she meant by this. I realize that now. Did this realization come from stealing Aurelia’s things, or something else?

‘It can’t be coincidental that she looks so like Aurelia,’ I said.

She took a long drag on her cigarette and looked past me out the window. ‘Who knows?’ she said. Her pale eyes slid to mine, and my mind raced. Maren could have put the diary in my room in order to make me suspect Tom of killing Aurelia, or driving her to suicide. But Ingrid’s likeness to Aurelia could be no coincidence. Did Maren want to distract me from something by putting the diary in my room?

I stood up quickly in my seat to leave, and she stood up just as fast.

‘You’re not going anywhere,’ she said.

I sank back down into my seat, my heart pounding. Derry’s words rang in my ears. She’s devious. I’d say Maren locked you in that basement.

‘Did you kill Aurelia?’ I whispered.

   31   

THE CROSSING

Then

In six days’ time, Aurelia will be dead, but now she sits in the living room of the red house writing in her diary.

I keep losing things and dreaming about where they are. My emerald earrings have vanished and I’m upset about it – Mum bought them for my twenty-first – and last night I dreamed that I knew they were buried in the ground just outside the house. I dug and dug until I hit what I thought was earrings, but when I pulled my hand out of the ground I had two eyeballs rolling around in my palm.

‘Evening, Aurelia,’ a voice says.