Derry shakes her head, covers her mouth with her hand. Back here, in London, she feels horrified at what she did. By how she’d felt. She is haunted by the sight of Aurelia in the fjord. By the way she’d just stood there, and watched, and waited.

As though she’d been someone else entirely.

   40   

THE CHOICE

Now

I packed the last of my things into the suitcase, carefully sliding the precious pictures Gaia had done for me along with the handprints I’d done of Coco into the front pocket. I stared at my phone, at once hating myself for bringing it and wondering how on earth I’d managed to avoid taking a single photograph of the girls. It would be the only thing I’d have to remember them by. It occurred to me that perhaps I’d be better trying to forget them altogether. I would never see them again.

As I went to leave the room I spotted the diary beneath my bed. Aurelia’s diary. I picked it up and held it for a moment, working out my options. I could use it to blackmail Tom. It was evidence that he had beaten her, and even if he hadn’t killed her he might well have driven her to take her own life. I sat on the bed and thought hard about how I could use this to my advantage.

Think like an opportunist, I thought. What would my mother do?

I could threaten him, make some sort of deal. Let me stay or I’ll show this to the police.

I don’t know how I managed to pull my suitcase out of my room and along the landing. The realization that I was leaving Gaia and Coco for ever had made my body almost completely limp. I felt as though I was having an out-of-body experience. In fact, it struck me that I felt worse than I did on the night I attempted suicide, or even when I gave up Mia. This was a scale of awfulness that surpassed everything I’d experienced. What life did I have without them? I loved them both more than I had loved anyone. I was homeless again, for sure, but I didn’t care where I ended up, because there was simply nowhere that was ever going to feel OK without Gaia and Coco in my life.

As soon as I reached the kitchen Gaia came rushing up to me in floods of tears and wrapped her arms around my legs. Then she started to jam her feet into the ground in an attempt to stop me from moving forward, both arms pushing me backwards.

‘No!’ she shouted. ‘You’re not leaving!’

I tried to speak, but there was a fist-sized lump of infinite grief in my throat and it made talking and breathing very difficult.

‘Gaia,’ Tom barked. ‘Go to your room.’