I crossed the hall, swishing in my satin and smiling dumbly at anyone who would meet my eye. At some point, Cory was going to pinch my arm and demand to know what the hell was going wrong with his party. Perhaps I could suggest it had something to do with the lighting. Cory had dreamed of a candlelit glow, but the newly wired chandeliers were giving off a bluish glare that hadn’t been apparent when he tested them this morning. It did something bad to the walls; took all the warmth from the Pamplona Red.

I held my hand against the electric radiator that Cory had brought from upstairs, but its effect was puny in the cavernous hall. There was a halogen heater near the stairs that gave off a cozier glow, but it kept making odd buzzing noises, as if it were about to die.

Music, I thought vaguely, and Cory must have had the same idea, because the CD player started up.

“Schubert!” someone declared.

“Lovely!”

There were nods and murmurs all round, as if the inarguable loveliness of the music was a relief to everyone.

Cory had been worrying about music all afternoon. “Schubert quintet?” he kept asking. “Or Miles Davis?” He had tapped his nails against his teeth and hung about in front of me, demanding an answer.

“Freya, seriously, what do you think? It’s got to be something classy—but are we talking classy classical or classy jazz?”

I’d said Schubert just to shut him up, although as far as party spirit was concerned, the jazz would have been a better bet. There weren’t enough speakers for all this space, and the music sounded small and faraway, as if a quintet of ghosts had struck up in the cellar. To make matters worse, the wind was picking up outside and the music couldn’t compete; it could only add a thread of unease to the bigger, crazier sounds of the storm.

“Listen, Robert, I don’t mind,” a happy and half-familiar voice was saying in one of the front rooms. “I’m just glad to get out of London for a while and spend some time with you.”

I peered round the edge of the door, and Zoë Stefanidis spotted me straight away.

“Here she is!” she cried. “Here’s Freya!”

Zoë bounced toward me with her arms outstretched, and I didn’t resent her warmth as much as I thought I would. I let her hug me and half hugged her in return, keeping my left hand behind my back so she wouldn’t spot the engagement ring. She smiled and her earrings clanked as she kissed me not once, not twice, but three times on the cheeks.

Dad was lurking behind her, thin and hunched, like a question mark. I could tell, without looking directly, that his mood had darkened since he’d entered the house.