And she didn’t seem capable of making it stop.

When she’d spotted Aurelia in the water, a thought had bubbled up in her mind that she should go and help. She was a strong swimmer, much stronger than Aurelia. But another force had gripped her and held her to the spot, a shadow instinct imposing upon her own. Why should she help, really? Swim, you bitch, she thought viciously. You want my husband? You’ll have to go get him.

But where had she gone? Derry lowered herself into the water and swam slowly towards the spot where she’d last seen Aurelia treading water. She only managed a couple of strokes before she spotted something ahead. A white sheet, floating in the water. And then she screamed.

The white sheet was Aurelia’s dress. Aurelia’s body floated past her, face down, arms outstretched, her blonde hair streaming like reeds across the surface.

Derry turned and swam for her life back to the riverbank. She didn’t look back, didn’t stop moving until she had climbed the ladder to the top of the cliff. As she raced back to Granhus the knowledge that she had let Aurelia drown crept beneath her skin. Why had she done that? It didn’t make sense. People would blame her, maybe accuse her of killing her. She had to keep it to herself.

She returned to Granhus, still wet from the fjord. But it had started to rain.

Gaia was standing on the chair by the kitchen window.

‘Have you seen Mumma?’ Gaia asked, and Derry’s stomach dropped.

‘No,’ Derry answered, and it surprised her how quickly she regained her composure. ‘No, darling. I haven’t.’

That was two weeks ago. Aurelia’s body was found, much to Derry’s horror, but still she said nothing about what she’d witnessed. After all, Aurelia had been depressed. She had mentioned suicidal thoughts just days before she’d gone missing. Her midwife back in England reported an alarming email, requesting therapy. And she left what seemed to be a suicide note. She had wanted to die.

From the shelter of the vault, Clive turns again to survey the crowd ahead.

‘I did nothing,’ she tells Clive in a broken voice. ‘I just stood there and watched her drown. What sort of person does that make me?’

The other mourners are moving to the cars, about to head to the wake. Nothing that Derry is saying makes sense. He knows Derry was sore after that night she’d seen him and Aurelia kissing. He knows he’s pushed her to the brink of her sanity at times with his philandering. But he also knows her well enough to know she wouldn’t have killed Aurelia. He’d feared that his indiscretion had caused Derry to argue with Aurelia, and that this had contributed to her decision to kill herself. ‘Aurelia drowned,’ he says in a low voice. ‘It was suicide.’