Prologue
She would simply disappear. The ice would crack and give way beneath her feet and she’d be pulled swiftly under—no flailing and thrashing to stay above water, no struggle, just down, down, down into the darkness and silence.
When she was little, she had often walked on the frozen pond that lay between the edge of town and the fields. It didn’t occur to her back then that it was possible to fall through.
To think that such a place existed—a small lake in the middle of the wood, overhung by trees, their branches weighed down by snow as if they were mourning. The tips of her fingers were numb, her toes so cold that they hurt. She swung the torch to and fro. There was nobody here but her. They hadn’t come. And yet there were tracks. Had she missed them? Was she late? She glanced at her watch. No, she wasn’t.
She switched off the torch. Inching her way along the forest path, she had needed the grainy beam of light, but now that she’d stepped out from the shadowy trees, she could do without it.
•
The stars were bright out here, far from the city. Frosty leaves crunched underfoot. The night glistened. For a moment she forgot what she was doing here in the middle of the night—forgot about the betrayal and the anger and the pain.
She stepped out onto the frozen surface, stopped, listened. The ice creaked, a living being, stirring in a dream.
She listened more closely, looked up at the sky, closed her eyes. The silence sang in her ears.
Strange, she thought.
A wind got up, sharp as a knife and smelling of fresh snow. She hunched her shoulders.
The stars gleamed milkily. She had the feeling she shouldn’t be here.
Then she saw something on the ice. She hesitated. Stooping to get a better look at whatever it was, she reached out a hand to it. When she realised what she was looking at, she recoiled. A dead bird, dark against the white snow, not yet frozen.
She stiffened and turned away abruptly, breathing fast. She believed in signs.
There was nobody there.
She wheeled round—nothing, nobody, just her and the night. She looked up at the stars again. Then she made up her mind.
She would do it. She would destroy them, all of them. But the one she really wanted to destroy was Norah.
1
Norah loved goodbyes. She loved moments of transition: the minutes between night and day, winter and spring, one year and the next. She loved new babies and weddings. Another life, a second chance, rebirth. A clean slate and a new pencil.
Then why are you crying?
The road stretched endlessly before her. The woods were black and impenetrable, the sky bruised by the night. Norah stared into the darkness, and in the rear-view mirror her old life receded, growing smaller and smaller, almost unreal—her job, her boyfriend, her home, the dog.
The disaster.
Norah wiped away her tears. One day she’d get over what had happened in Berlin. Life wasn’t fair, she knew that; she’d survive. The anger and bitterness would never entirely disappear, but they would fade like an old tattoo. The heaviness of the last weeks and months was beginning to lift even now, with every mile she put between herself and Berlin. She’d been right to leave.
•
Norah had a good six hours’ drive ahead of her. She slowed the car and rounded a bend, taking care not to cut the corner. She switched on the radio and electronic music poured out of the speakers. It was some time since she’d passed a car going the other direction and she liked it that way—liked the sound of the asphalt under the tyres, the soft music, the woods, the peace, the feeling of starting over. The last light faded. The pine forests on either side of the winding road seemed to grow denser. She steered the car around another long drawn-out bend and stepped on the accelerator. When she looked up, the sky was suddenly full of stars—a handful at first, then dozens, thousands, myriads.
A glance at the sat nav told her she had almost five hundred kilometres to go. So what? She wasn’t in a hurry. She slowed and pulled over, switched off the radio, engine and headlights, and sat and stared at the sky.
Then she got out of the car, walked to the middle of the road and threw back her head. The stars were painted with the finest of brushes. She smiled and for a moment she just stood there, looking up. She felt the cold on her cheeks first, then in her fingertips, through the thin leather of her gloves, then in her toes. She tried to remember why stars twinkled, but she’d forgotten. What was that? A cracking noise. She turned and stared into the darkness. Forest sounds. Norah laughed at the sudden thumping of her heart.
Forest sounds, her own breath. A dead straight road ahead, and above her the sky. Nothing to be afraid of. She got back in the car without hurrying, switched on the headlights, started the engine. Her handbag lay beside her on the passenger seat; a few belongings were piled in the back. That was all. The hastily packed removal boxes were waiting for her in Vienna. She was starting over; she was free. Norah turned the radio on again and changed stations. Then it was just her and the road and the music.
2
When Norah woke up in her new flat in Vienna the next morning and walked barefoot to the window, the grand facades of the houses opposite were already bathed in the milky light of the winter sun. She opened the window and stood there, enjoying the crisp chill on her face as the city stirred to life below. A group of children was crossing the road, their shouts almost drowned by the noise of the traffic. Norah took a deep breath, then closed the window and looked about her.
How little there was to her life. Her bed was only a roll of slats and a few pieces of wood, strewn over the parquet of her bedroom like a disjointed skeleton—she’d spent the night on a camping mat, feeling the hard floor beneath her whenever she’d moved. Then there were the removal boxes, forty-eight of them. That was as much of her old life as she’d brought with her into the new.
She opened one of the boxes at random. It was labelled Clothes and contained summer things—flip-flops and the white bikini she’d bought for the previous year’s holiday in Sardinia, where they’d celebrated her thirty-fourth birthday.
She’d packed too hastily, desperate to leave the flat in Berlin. Alex had looked on in bewilderment, knocked sideways by what was happening. He didn’t know what to say and she wouldn’t have listened if he had.
Norah shut the box again, then opened another and another and another: bedclothes, diving gear, blankets, shirts, T-shirts—but no warm jumper anywhere. She shivered. It was cold in the flat; the radiators barely gave off any heat. Sighing, she threw down a black blouse, then stretched and looked about her again. The removal men had stacked the boxes at random all over the flat. Piled up against the backdrop of bare white walls and high ceilings, they looked like installations in a museum of modern art.
Only a few things were already in place: her desk in the study, her sofa in front of the TV in a corner of the living room—she could leave the TV on, if the silence got too loud for her—and the coffee machine in the kitchen. The rest was a desert. No, she thought, not a desert—a blank sheet of paper, waiting for the first brushstroke.
Norah found herself smiling.
When she went out a little later, locking the door behind her, the communal stairs smelt of damp carpet and filter coffee. She was about to head down when she heard a low noise and, glancing up, she saw a small black cat eyeing her shyly from the stairs above.