She was aware of a new sensation, dripping into her veins like coffee into a pot. Anger. Rage, travelling through her veins and into her heart. Galvanising her, like a jolt of electricity through dead flesh. Where she had been so lost, hovering near to the grave herself, unable to see a way forward, she now had a purpose. Find this woman, and destroy her life just as surely as her own had been destroyed.

The doorbell went, and through the glass she saw the small round shape of the lawyer, heard him coughing in the cold air. Of course, the money. It almost seemed insignificant now that this new plan had come to her. She would hear what he had to say, instruct him to do whatever had to be done paperwork-wise, and then she would take action.

She opened it, smiling properly for the first time in weeks. ‘Hello, do come in.’

He looked stricken. ‘Elle, dear, I’m afraid I have some bad news.’

Suzi

Suzi

‘It’s going to be OK,’ said Nora placidly. Nothing seemed to alarm her about my situation – not my affair, not my baby who likely wasn’t Nick’s, not the fact the police wanted to talk to me. ‘It’s not a crime to have an affair, even if the police did work out you were there.’ We were in my living room, and outside more snow was falling, silent, all sounds cut off by our thick windows and insulated walls. I was glad Nora was there. If it was just me all the way out here, I wasn’t sure I could have stood it.

‘But they won’t know I got out before it happened. They might think, I don’t know, I left the scene of the accident. Or that I was driving, even! I mean, it doesn’t look right, does it? How do you hit a tree on a clear road, on a sunny day?’

‘It is strange.’ Nora’s lovely hands traced patterns on the expensive reclaimed-wood coffee table Nick had bought. ‘Did the hospital have any insights as to why?’

‘They didn’t say anything. I guess maybe a brain thing, or a heart attack, or, I don’t know – something startled him.’

She fixed me with her grey eyes, shaded with the purple of sleepless nights, lines fanning out from them like the contours of a map. She had been very beautiful once, I could tell. I wondered what had aged her so – was it grief and being outdoors so much, or did this just happen after forty? Would this be me in a few years? ‘You got out before anything happened.’

‘Yes! God, of course. I’d have called for help otherwise. He seemed fine. Well, I mean, a bit confused and agitated, I’d just told him I was pregnant, but he was happy.’

‘Are you sure he was happy?’

I stared at her, hurt.