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LOUISE

The suitcases were in the car and the boxes were labelled and just before noon they would hand over the keys. Josh and Alec were doing a quick tour of Beckford, saying their goodbyes, but Louise had stayed behind.

Some days were better than others.

Louise had stayed to say goodbye to the house where her daughter had lived, the only home she’d ever known. She had to bid farewell to the height chart in the cupboard under the stairs, to the stone step in the garden where Katie had fallen and cut her knee, where for the first time Louise had had to face that her child wouldn’t be perfect, she would be blemished, scarred. She had to say goodbye to her bedroom, where she and her daughter had sat and chatted while Katie blow-dried her hair and applied her lipstick and said that she was going to Lena’s later and would it be all right if she stayed the night? How many times, she wondered, had that been a lie?

(The thing that kept her awake at night—one of the things—was that day by the river when she’d been so touched, so moved, to see tears in Mark Henderson’s eyes when he offered his condolences.)

Lena had come to say goodbye and had brought with her Nel’s manuscript, the pictures, the notes, a USB with all the computer files. “Do what you want with it,” she said. “Burn it if you like. I don’t want to look at any of it again.” Louise was glad that Lena had come, and gladder still that she would never have to see her again. “Can you forgive me, do you think?” Lena asked. “Will you ever?” And Louise said that she already had, which was a lie, spoken out of kindness.

Kindness was her new project. She hoped it might be gentler on the soul than anger. And in any case, while she knew that she could never forgive Lena—for her dissembling, for her secret-keeping, for simply existing where her own daughter did not—she couldn’t hate her either. Because if anything was clear, anything at all, if anything in this horror was without doubt, it was Lena’s love for Katie.