Maren laughed, and I realized I’d said this aloud. I widened my eyes and pressed a finger to my lips, telling her to keep quiet in case she woke Tom. Or the girls. She nodded, chastised, and fell silent.

‘It seems … dangerous,’ I observed in a low voice.

‘It’s more than dangerous,’ she said, her blonde eyebrows raised. ‘Building a family home right where his wife died? Right after the first house was destroyed?’ She glanced again at the model of Basecamp. ‘Many people said the storm was a punishment.’

‘A punishment?’

She turned solemn as a winter morning in Glasgow. ‘Mother Nature wasn’t happy that he built Basecamp where he did. She destroyed that house. He should have taken the hint. But he didn’t, and Aurelia died. But even now he’s pressing on, too stubborn to see …’ She shook her head and gave a deep sob.

‘You mean, Aurelia’s death was a punishment for the house?’ I asked carefully. Surely I hadn’t heard her correctly?

‘Everything in nature is connected,’ she said with a sigh. ‘He stopped up that river to build Basecamp. So foolish. It’s not just one river, it’s the whole forest. The whole region. Countless animals and plants … the fjord …’

She moved to place the scale model back where she’d found it, and my eyes fell on a photograph of Tom, Aurelia, and the two girls. It was a happy photograph, placed on his desk. He looked very different in that photograph from the man who had thundered at Maren.

‘Tom doesn’t realize what he’s done,’ she said gravely as she followed my gaze to the photograph.

‘Maren,’ I said carefully, ‘I need to ask you something.’

She swivelled her eyes to me.

‘You said Tom was manipulated into coming back here. Who manipulated him?’

But she’d already turned back to the model of the first house, and when she spoke it seemed as though she’d forgotten I was there and was addressing someone else. ‘It is madness, all of it. Who brings children out to a place like this, with the cliff and the forest and the beasts? Who builds a house right where their wife died just a few months earlier?’

   14   

SHE WHO IS MISSED MOST

Now

Gaia sits up in bed. It’s dark outside. Slowly she works out that she’s in her room. There’s a figure lying beside her on the floor, huddled beneath a blanket. A long strand of hair spills out from the top of the blanket across the floorboards. Gaia catches her breath. It’s Mumma. Her heart glows in her chest. You came back! She knew she would, eventually. Mumma always comes back. Mumma doesn’t leave, not for ever. Mumma is always there because she loves Gaia with all her heart and she is back now for good.