His face lights up. ‘You see? That’s what everyone thinks. “Oh, it doesn’t matter if I chuck this plastic bottle out, there’s already a whole island of plastic bottles in the Indian Ocean” or “Sod going vegan, a burger never hurt anyone.”’

She laughs. He joins her. They laugh for different reasons.

After a moment or two she touches his cheek.

‘It’s going to be out of this world,’ she says. ‘We’re so lucky to be able to do this.’ She kisses him deeply, holds his face close. He feels his fingers reach for the buttons of her shirt.

‘You know I’m leaving for Oslo tonight,’ he says, his brain flagging a last resort for sex. ‘I’ll be gone for a week.’

But she doesn’t answer. Something has appeared in the fringes of her vision by the bedroom door, a shape. A woman with her head bowed, wearing a long dress.

‘What’s wrong?’ he says, following her gaze to the doorway.

Aurelia rises to her feet sharply. ‘Someone was here.’

‘Who? Who was here?’

Aurelia raises her hand to her head. She looks upset. ‘I could have sworn I just saw …’

He gets to his feet, studies the space that Aurelia is staring at. The doorway. ‘What? What did you see?’

She gives a deep sigh, presses her palms against her eyes for a few moments. ‘Nothing,’ she says finally. ‘Just a trick of the light.’

Sex is out of the question now. He strains to find a way to bring it back into the realm of possibility, but he can see she’s unsettled. ‘Are you sure you’ll be all right here with the girls?’ he says.

She swivels her green eyes back to him and forces a smile. ‘I’m sure.’

‘You could come, you know.’

‘A hotel in the city in winter is the last place I want to take a newborn. But I’ll miss you. Come back early if you can.’

‘Of course I will.’

He kisses her again, and this time she doesn’t pull away.

Tom has been gone two days. The house is quiet and still, and Maren has restored a sense of order to the place. Aurelia settles the girls into their beds, but the process takes longer than it does back home: both Coco and especially Gaia are unsettled by the change in their environments. Gaia doesn’t like the house, well-stocked playroom notwithstanding. ‘It’s scary, Mumma,’ she says, turning to look at the window, where a full moon is silhouetting the huge willow tree that sits right next to the house. By day, the tree is beautiful, a kind of tree-waterfall hybrid, but at night the leaves that drape from its branches resemble tentacles, or witchy fingers. She rises from the bed and tugs the curtains closer to block out the view.

‘There,’ she tells Gaia. ‘Nothing to be afraid of. See?’