He waited for me to agree, but I just looked at him.

“You used to think the same way,” he said. “Only a few weeks ago, you used to think like me. You’ve changed.”

He turned on his heel and went back to the gallery. The first coat was nearly done; there were just a few patches of bare plaster left beneath the cornices, and one above the door. Now that the sun was going down the emulsion was losing its dazzle, and until he switched the light on it looked more black than red.

“Maybe I have changed,” I called after him. “What happens then?”

After a minute or two I followed him into the gallery and began working my roller over the tacky tray and slamming it against the wall. It was his turn to speak; I wasn’t going to break the silence again.

Chapter 9

9

The early morning mist turned the garden into a strange place. It muffled the sounds of the sea and invented weird shapes that slipped in and out between the trees.

I never doubted Maggie would come, after what had happened yesterday, but I did worry we might miss one another. It’s not as if we’d ever arranged a meeting time in the past; we’d just got into the habit of arriving on the beach around sunrise. But there was no sunrise today. There was no sun. There were only pale shadows and dark shadows, and an autumnal smell of rotting fruit.

When I got to the end of the garden I could hear the tide lapping on the shingle at the foot of the cliffs, which meant that the beach would be largely submerged and the rock, where we’d sat and shared her flask of coffee, out of reach. Oh, this was stupid; I might as well go back to bed. I paced up and down on the lip of the cliff, chafing my arms for warmth. Two minutes, I told myself, and began counting to one hundred and twenty, but when she still didn’t come I began counting again.

I kept glimpsing something white on the edge of my vision that made me jump, although it was just the wedding canopy. The guy ropes had gone slack and the canvas sides were clammy and sunken, like an old, ill face. I turned my back on it and wondered what time it was. I must have come too late. No, I’d come too early; it was still the middle of the night.

“Freya!”

Maggie was coming up the cliff path and growing clearer through the mist. Pebbles rattled from under her feet as she half ran, half clambered toward me. She was only whispering, but there was something loud and definite about her presence, which made me glance over my shoulder at the ever-vigilant house.