Bright and Deadly Things E-Book

Lexie Elliott

• Herausgeber: Corvus
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 585

Beschreibung

A retreat doesn't always mean safety... Following the death of her husband, Emily is happy to find herself surrounded by friends and fellow Oxford peers at the rustic Chalet des Anglais in the French Alps. With no electricity, running water, or access by car, surely this trip will offer her the time and space she needs to heal. But before she makes it to the airport, Emily interrupts a break-in at her home, and on the first night at the chalet, she discovers an inappropriate sexual liaison between an undergrad and a colleague. When the student suddenly disappears, and Emily sees her deceased husband's number in her call history, she realizes she had better figure out who she can trust - or the next disappearance may be her own...

Leseprobe

Also by Lexie Elliott

The French Girl

The Missing Years

How to Kill Your Best Friend

First published in the United States in 2023 by Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.

Published in trade paperback in Great Britain in 2023 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © Lexie Elliott, 2023

The moral right of Lexie Elliott to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978 1 8389 5048 4

E-book ISBN: 978 1 83895 049 1

Printed in Great Britain

Corvus

An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

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www.atlantic-books.co.uk

At the risk of repeating myself . . .

For Matt, Cameron and Zachary, always and forever.

1

There’s someone in the house.

I know it as soon as I’m inside, though I couldn’t say how. Some indescribable change in the air, perhaps, or a sound I hadn’t consciously registered. A wave of adrenaline sweeps over my skin, prickling all hair follicles on end. I stand frozen, just inside the still-open front door, a layer of warm air and sunshine pressing at my back and the shadowy cool of the terraced house silently waiting for me. But it’s the wrong type of silence. I stand motionless, staring, my ears straining to catch any sound above my own racing heartbeat, which is thumping in my ears, thumping in my throat; waiting for a moving shadow or the thud of a footfall or even just the tiniest of creaks—but nothing comes. The house, the intruder, me: we are all holding our breath.

I squint down the corridor that leads to the open-plan kitchen/living area at the back. Beyond the rectangle of the doorframe, I can see the bright saturated green of the back garden’s lawn through the floor-to-ceiling windows at the rear of the house, verdant in the sunshine after the rain we’ve been having. Call the police, I think. Call the police, call the neighbors and scream until somebody—anybody—comes . . . But even if I scream, no one will come: the residential street outside is quiet, drowsy with the heat; and anyway, most of my neighbors will be either at work or away for their summer vacation. And what can I tell the police? Come quickly because I have an absolute conviction that there’s an intruder in my house, even though I haven’t actually looked?

But I know it’s true: there’s someone in the house. I can sense it with a pressing urgency, as if there’s music playing at a pitch that’s below my range of hearing, but nonetheless felt.

Do something. Find something, some kind of weapon. Wait—I know . . .

I check that my phone is easily accessible in my pocket, then slide my rucksack off my shoulder, easing it to the floor as quietly as possible—though surely whoever is here must have heard me come in—before reaching out slowly, silently, to the coat cupboard that is just beside me. My heartbeat is a hammering thud that must be audible streets away. I know the cupboard door will squeak, regardless of whether I open it slowly or fast. Fast, I decide. Fast, and use the noise.

I take a deep breath. Go. “Get out of my house; I’m calling the police right now!” I yell, and keep yelling as I yank the screeching cupboard door open with one hand and reach in with the other to grab a club—any club—from the golf bag that languishes beneath the coats. Words keep tumbling out of my mouth, though I have no real idea of what I’m shouting as I yank the club out, briefly entangling it with a navy rain jacket that slips off its hanger and falls to the floor as I charge with my improvised weapon toward the back of the house. Surely the intruder will head straight for the open front door? I don’t want to be in the way when they do. I reach the living room, with the afternoon sun streaming in through the French doors, and whirl around so my back is to the sunlight, holding the club diagonally in front of me with both hands on the shaft, no longer yelling and poised to spring. Where is the intruder? Upstairs? I strain to listen. The house is silent, but I’m not fooled. Something is coming, something is coming, something is . . .

A dark shape explodes out of the small study to my left, running straight for me. For a moment I’m frozen, staring blankly at the man—for it seems to be a man, though his head is covered by a black balaclava—who is heading directly toward me. Why is he not heading for the open front door? Belatedly, in blind panic, I swing the club viciously, but too late; he’s almost upon me. Only at the last minute, he veers, planting a foot on the seat of one of the armchairs and leaping over the back, and my clumsy swing connects only in a glancing blow on his lower back, the club continuing in an arcing path. I hear, rather than see, it smash through the crystal vase that was on the sideboard, because I’m whirling round to keep the intruder in my vision; he’s at the sliding doors, yanking one open to run out into the garden, where, without any hesitation whatsoever, he sprints across the small lawn to scale the cedar-planked back fence and disappear into the lane behind.

I’m left staring at the red-brown horizontal planks of the cedar fence, the club still gripped tightly in my hands. A small breeze slips in through the now open sliding door, carrying with it the shouts of children playing, a car starting somewhere, a bee buzzing round the lavender in the garden—the lazy sounds and smells of summer. I’m alone now; the insistent press of danger has receded. I am very much alone.

The police—an officer and a forensics specialist—come quickly. Perhaps there’s less for them to do in Oxford in summer, when the bulk of the student body has melted away. The tourists more than make up the numbers, but I imagine they’re less troublesome: nobody comes to visit the city of dreaming spires for the nightlife.

The forensics specialist takes out some sort of kit and starts to look around while the officer and I sit on the sofa. He’s a spare man with a no-nonsense attitude, but his eyes are kind when they meet mine. I sip from a cup of tea while I answer his questions, though what I really want is something much stronger. The golf club is on the floor now. It feels like a talisman, like I shouldn’t ever be without it; I keep one foot pressed on it as I try to describe the intruder. I assume male, given build; somewhere between five foot ten and six foot; lean and obviously quite athletic; Caucasian, judging by the small patches of skin visible around the balaclava. Wearing dark clothing of the sporting variety: black joggers and a long-sleeved top. Gloves? I’m not sure on that. I find myself saying It all happened so fast. The cliché doesn’t do the experience justice. That moment when he exploded toward me, when I was frozen in his path . . .

“He must have accessed from the rear,” says the colleague, stepping carefully over the navy rain jacket that’s still strewn on the floor. Nick’s jacket: a good one, but too big for me. I ought to do something with it; it shouldn’t go to waste. She crosses to inspect the sliding doors. “There’s no sign of forced entry at the front door—Ah, here we go. There are marks here on the doorframe, and the lock is damaged. We won’t get a print, though.” She looks across at me, mild disapproval edging into her tone. “You really should think about an alarm system and additional locks on these sliding doors.” I nod, though I’m thinking that it’s a little late to lock the stable door after the horse has bolted. Though I suppose horses can always bolt again.

“And you’re sure nothing is missing, Mrs. Rivers?” asks the officer.

“Doctor,” I say reflexively. “Dr. Rivers.”

“Dr. Rivers,” he repeats. “Do you work up at the JR, then?”

He means the John Radcliffe Hospital. I shake my head. “I’m not a medical doctor. I’m an academic.” My eyes move inadvertently toward the shadowy entrance to the study—only an alcove, really—as if the intruder might burst from there again.

“Ah. But you’re sure nothing is missing? Bikes, electronics, money, jewelry, passports, other valuables?”

“Nothing that I can see. I had my passport with me, and I’m wearing most of my jewelry.” I see them both eyeing my minimalistic adornments. “As I said, Oxford academic.” I make an attempt at a wry smile. “We’re not known for our disposable cash.”

“Well, I would think it was an opportunist thief and they couldn’t have been here long,” says the officer in a tone that suggests he’s bringing his questions to a close. “Probably just got here when you disturbed him. Or her.” They are not convinced, given the balaclava and genderless clothing, that the thief is necessarily male; in their eyes, that may be an assumption of mine that has stuck in my head, tainting what I really saw and remember. Unconscious bias. I suppose it could be; they’re right to keep an open mind. But nevertheless I can’t shake the feeling that the intruder was male.

“He—or she—must be local,” I muse. “Not everyone would know about the access to the garden from the lane at the back.” Nor about the study either, in fact, though I suppose he simply looked for a place to hide when he heard me come in.

“Did the intruder pick up and smash the vase?” asks the specialist. “If we’re lucky I might get a print off one of the larger pieces.”

“No, I did it. With the, um”—I lean down to pick up the golf club and look at the head of it properly—“seven iron.” I see Nick deep in conversation with someone—who? Does it matter? And where were we anyway?—his beanpole figure hunched over like a shepherd’s crook so that his words could be safely delivered to the ear of a smaller man as he said earnestly, If in doubt, use a seven iron. Nick, who had only taken up golfing six months before, giving golfing advice; I teased him about it mercilessly all the way home. None so fanatical as a convert. Even in those first moments, in the grip of that sweep of adrenaline, like a hand stroking an electric shock across me, I didn’t consider that it could have been Nick in the house. I’ve moved beyond denial, I suppose. I know it will never again be Nick.

“I’m sorry?” asks the officer.

I don’t know what I’ve said to prompt that. “It’s nothing. Just something my husband said.”

He looks up from his pad. “Is he at work?”

“No. No, he died a few months ago. A traffic accident.” I’ve learned how to say it: the right amount of information to impart, and the right pace at which to do it. Not so rushed that the listener might miss what you’ve said, but not so drawn out that they become terrified you might dissolve on the spot.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, though this time it’s not a question and his expression is appropriately grave. I expect that in his profession, he’s learned a few things too. I incline my head briefly; the social contract has been completed. He eyes the rucksack in the hallway. “Just back from a holiday?”

I shake my head. “About to go, actually. Well, not a holiday exactly; a reading retreat at a chalet in the Alps. I wouldn’t have been here, except I missed my flight. I’m booked on tomorrow’s instead now.” I look around the room, somehow surprised afresh to find myself here. I was never the sort of person who missed flights. But then, I was never the sort of person who couldn’t get out of bed in the morning or found themselves in tears at the supermarket cash register either.

The police wrap up shortly after that, promising emails with victim-of-crime information, but nothing more; we all know they won’t catch him. And why should they expend resources and time on a thief who ultimately appears to have stolen nothing and done no harm to anybody or anything except an inexcusably flimsy door lock? I turn the key in the front door after they leave, and use the sliding chain for good measure, all of which seems rather pointless, given the unfettered access at the rear of the house on account of the damaged lock. Then I lean my back against the secure front door, the club still in one hand, and slide down to a seated position, wondering what I should be doing. Calling a locksmith, probably. I also have nothing in the fridge, given I hadn’t expected to be here; I should call for takeout too. I look at the head of the club, at the grooves across the face of it. If in doubt, use a seven iron. It’s a long time before I move.

SOFI

August 10th

Dear Mimi,

I’ve been at the chalet for a day now. Mike is here too; I hadn’t expected that he would be. He’s not in the slightest bit interested in me, which is fine—except, no, to be honest, it rankles; it’s like he’s been warned off or something. Maybe he has, come to think of it. Maybe James has been mouthing off about that stupid bet again.

Anyway, Mike’s here; and a postgrad called Olive, who I’d guess is a bit younger than Mike, probably late twenties. There are two other undergrads besides Julie, James and me (although technically I suppose I’m not an undergraduate anymore), and Julie was right: the other two—Caleb and Akash—are nice enough, if deeply in the geeky camp. Everyone is very gung ho about the no-electricity, no-running-water malarkey, so naturally I’m very gung ho too, whilst secretly thanking the powers that be for the invention of dry shampoo. I don’t think I have the right clothing either; it’s only been twenty-four hours, but it’s apparent already that it’s absolutely de rigueur to wear battered hiking shorts or trousers in a gruesome shade of khaki or blue or dusty brown—anything the color of a bruise. My Daisy Dukes are raising eyebrows; I can feel myself stiffening in that half-defiant, half-awkward way when I spot the sidelong glances. But so what if I don’t have the right clothes: I’m here. Just like you always said: turn nothing down. Julie has all the right stuff, of course. I guess you acquire it without even trying if you grow up spending all summer in Cornwall and three weeks every winter in Verbier.

Will is coming later today—with his girlfriend, apparently. That was something of a surprise. Ha! I like my understatement there: something of a surprise. (Oxford has taught me that: the power of understatement. See: I’m learning!) He’d certainly failed to mention her. I wouldn’t have approached him if I’d known. Wait; a qualifier might be appropriate: I probably wouldn’t have. Screw it, at least I can be honest here: even the probably isn’t quite right. The best that can be said is that I might not have. It’s not like they’re married or anything.

Nick Rivers’ widow was supposed to be here already, but she hasn’t arrived. Prof. Herringway said she’ll be coming today too, now. I liked the prof in Oxford but I like him even more now; he’s so very kind to absolutely everyone. Anyway, Nick Rivers’ widow—poor thing. I can’t imagine wearing that label at her age. She must have thought her life was sorted: supersmart, great position at a top university, equally clever husband. And she’s kind of beautiful too: tall and willowy, with all that glorious hair, though the last time I saw her around college, she looked awful, like she’d subsisted on air since he died. They’d been married a while apparently; I wonder why they didn’t have kids—I mean, why get married at all except to crack on with that?

I don’t think kids are going to be part of my future. Julie will have them. She says not, but I can see what’s ahead of her, even if she can’t. She’ll walk into a good, solid career—accountancy or something—and make good, solid career progression, and then she’ll meet and marry someone from a good, solid background who probably also spent their childhood summering in Cornwall and wintering in Verbier—oh, to be someone who casually uses a season as a verb!—and then they’ll have kids and a dog and she’ll regretfully give up work and find herself making lunches and packing gym bags, taxiing the kids to ballet and music lessons and running the PTA. I mean, I love her to bits but she’s not exactly going to break out from her mold. And it’s such a waste: she’s so very, very smart and articulate and she’s had every opportunity in life, all handed to her on a plate with a cherry on top, thank you very much, and yet all she’ll end up doing is reinforcing the cycle.

Somehow I don’t think that’s what’s ahead of me. There’s a feeling that I get when I think about this stuff; it’s like the swell of the music in a movie for that crucial moment—you know, when the epiphany hits the main character—and you feel such a longing, so piercing that it hurts, to be that person, to be living in that instant, and to know you’re living it, to know how important it is. I want to be out there, living it, breathing it, saying yes to everything. I won’t turn anything down.

Love you. Miss you.

Sofi

2

Emily! I thought you were flying out yesterday.”

I’m at the departure gate at Stansted Airport, where I’ve been for hours, anxious to avoid a repeat of yesterday’s fiasco; I look up from my book to find Peter in front of me, his overly long sandy hair unkempt as ever and the smile on his long face a little wary, as if he’s uncertain that it’s safe to approach. I can just imagine his thoughts: Grieving widows are dangerous beasts. Best handled with care and, if possible, at a distance.

“Hi, Peter.” I smile and gesture to the empty seat beside me, trying not to let his caution nettle me or, at least, trying not to let it show. “I missed the flight yesterday, so here I am.”

He shrugs off his rucksack and sits down, his pale eyebrows rising as his body lowers. “Missed the flight? What happened?”

What did happen? I couldn’t honestly say. There was plenty of time, and then suddenly time lurched and there wasn’t, and I couldn’t say what happened or how I lost my grip on things. I reach for a believable excuse. “Oh, it was silly of me: I misjudged the traffic.” And then, rushing past the lie, “But it’s just as well I did. When I got home, someone was trying to break in.”

“No!” An announcement starts, and we both pause to listen, cocking our heads. “Yep, this is us,” says Peter, unfolding to his feet again. “But tell me: the break-in? Did you actually see the intruder?”

My account of the events of yesterday takes us all the way through the boarding process and onto the plane itself, neatly plastering over the oddness of being in Peter’s company without Nick. I’ve known Peter for years—he’d always been a close collaborator of Nick’s in the Oxford University engineering department, and I’d absolutely consider him one of our closest friends, but it occurs to me that I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve spoken to him without Nick at least being somewhere in the room. And it’s odd, too, to see him in such casual attire. Not that we academics necessarily dress formally; it’s just that Peter, like Nick, usually prefers to wear a shirt, not a T-shirt, with his jeans; both of them joked that it was the only thing that differentiated them from the students. Mid-thirties is a difficult age for faculty staff: not enough gray hair; far too easy to be mistaken for a graduate or even, God forbid, an undergraduate.

We’re not seated together on the plane, but we’re only a row apart, and when the kindly man seated next to me sees us talking, he offers to swap with Peter so that we can sit together. He probably thinks we’re a couple, I realize, and then feel even more awkward when Peter settles himself in the middle seat beside me, in the cramped economy quarters that are so space constrained that our elbows can’t help but brush. He busies himself adjusting his seat belt as he says, “You haven’t been to the chalet before, have you?” The chalet: Chalet des Anglais.

“No. You?”

“I went two summers ago. It’s really something.” He’s finished with the seat belt now and is bent forward instead, pulling something out of the battered messenger bag under the seat in front of him. “One of those Oxford experiences that has you feeling like you’re actually living in a slice of history.”

“On account of the lack of electricity and running water?”

“Well, there is that.” He straightens back up, a sheaf of research papers in his hand and a quick grin on his mobile face. Perhaps it’s his animation, rather than the lack of gray hair, that makes him seem younger than his years. Puckish, I think. As if there are electrical currents of thoughts and ideas crackling beneath his surface, just waiting for an opportunity to reveal themselves. “But it’s the whole thing: the seclusion, the academic aspect to it, everybody mixing in from undergraduate through to Robert himself. When you look through the chalet diaries, it really does seem like the experience is untouched by the hand of time.”

“How does Robert decide who to invite?” Robert is Professor Robert Herringway, one of the trustees of the chalet. The chalet itself is jointly owned by three Oxford colleges, which take turns week by week to use it during the summer; invitations are extended, by whoever is leading the party, to staff and students of their own college. It’s considered a privilege to be invited—it’s an introduction to a very traditional part of Oxonian history, something that not everyone gets a chance to experience.

“Alchemy and witchcraft, I think. Somehow it always seems to work and everybody gets on—or at least, nobody has killed anyone yet. It’s a rather science-heavy group this time, though, which is unusual.” His eyebrows knit in a quick frown, gone almost as soon as I register it. “Robert is usually more careful to balance it: he always says it’s a strength of Oxford that is underutilized, that each college has members spanning all academic departments; we ought to have more interdepartmental cross-pollination of ideas. Anyway, do you know when Jana and Will are getting there?”

“Today at some point.” That’s one benefit of having missed the flight—I won’t have to spend any time out there without Peter or Jana and Will. It feels like a weakness to admit, even to myself, that I had been anxious about arriving twenty-four hours before my friends. “They’re coming by train from Vienna.” I smile as I think of the text conversation I had with Will.

Hey you. Missed my flight. Arriving today instead x

Hey yourself. Us too. Race you there . . .

You’re on.

Then later, from Will:

I should have known better than to mention a competition to Jana.

She’s relentless now. If we miss our connection she may actually combust.

But I won’t tell Peter about that. He’d become just as unbearable to travel with as Jana must be right now.

“Vienna?” Peter says. “Holiday? Will didn’t mention that.”

“Not holiday; a conference. Will was the key speaker.” Alongside his work at the university, Will—disarmingly enthusiastic on his subject, and blessed with a decent head of hair and a beautiful speaking voice—has somehow managed to recently become a household name, presenting a popular science-for-laymen television program called How the World Works and publishing books that actually sell. I’ve known Will far longer than I’ve known Jana or Peter: he and I were in the same undergraduate year at the same college, and quickly became part of the same friendship circle. In our last year, we had adjacent rooms and nursed each other through the pain of finals; nothing cements a friendship quite like surviving panic, despair, caffeine overload and sleep deprivation together. But now it’s Jana that I see more—often daily—as she works in my department.

“Ah, yes, the poor man’s Stephen Hawking. And all this time I thought research papers were the key to career advancement.” Peter shakes his head with a grimace that turns quickly into a grin: a theatrical display of mock enviousness meant to amuse. Though I rather suspect there’s a streak of genuine envy there too: Peter is nothing if not ambitious, and he absolutely keeps score.

“Jana messaged me to say that the gala dinner last night was a ton of fun. I expect they’re traveling with hangovers.” Jana loves the attention and the perks. It wouldn’t occur to her to pretend otherwise, though given the pair are deep in IVF struggles, perhaps only Will is likely to be suffering from overindulgence.

“Well, that’s some consolation, I suppose,” Peter says, tongue deliberately in cheek.

“The next leg of the journey is a train to Saint Gervais, right?”

“Yep, with a change at Annemasse; we should reach Saint Gervais midafternoon. Then we have a choice: short taxi, then long hike up, or longer taxi, then télécabine, and then a very short hike down.”

If I were Jana, I would ask which is quicker, but I really don’t care enough. “How long is long and how steep is up?”

“At least two hours, and decently steep in places.”

Two hours uphill, carrying my rucksack all the way. It doesn’t appeal. “Short hike down, please.”

“Oh, thank God.” That quick, mischievous grin again. “If you’d said the other, I’d have had to do it without complaining to preserve my male ego, but really I’d much rather take the easier route.” He cocks his head, attempting to inspect my footwear—Converse All Stars—in the confined space. “Those should be fine for the walk down since it’s dry.” He sounds a mite doubtful. “Do you have anything sturdier with you?”

“I’ve proper hiking boots in my rucksack.”

“Ah, good.” Then he pauses; I can see he’s steeling himself. I’ve gotten used to this too: the fear people have of even mentioning my husband’s name. “Was, um, was Nick supposed to be coming too?”

“Yes, but only for a couple of days. It was kind of Robert to invite him, given he was at a different college. I was going to stay on whilst he went to visit his mum.”

Peter’s mouth twitches. “I bet you were quite happy to leave him to do that on his own.”

I adopt an angelic expression. “I couldn’t possibly comment.”

The twitch explodes into a laugh now; Nick’s mother is legendarily difficult. I’d had plenty of material for mother-in-law jokes, though secretly I’d wondered if we might have forged a bond if kids ever came along. I should call her, I think, though I can’t imagine anything I could say that could be of any help. She had surely been looking forward for months to the visit from her cherished only child; she was expecting a whole week of him to herself, and now she has exactly what I have: a hole where he ought to be. Words can’t fill that. But still, I should call her from France.

“Emily?” says Peter, so hesitantly that I wonder what expression is on my face to warrant it. But when I glance at him, it’s not concern I see, but something else. Anxiety, perhaps. “I, erm, I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“What?” We are taxiing along the runway now, picking up speed and noise.

He blows out a breath. “It’s nothing, really, except . . .”

I stare at him, bemused. It’s clearly not nothing to him. “What?” I ask again against the backdrop of the high-pitched whine of the engines.

“The last time I saw Nick, the last time we spoke—well, we argued. Properly argued, not just academic discussion: raised voices and everything. And I feel so wretched about it.” Indeed, his expression is the very definition of wretched. “It was silly, really, just something about work, but it’s so hard to think that our last words were in anger.” He’s staring down at the papers held in both his hands. I don’t know what to say. Nick never argued with anyone, ever. He was simply far too logical for that. Peter risks a glance at me. “Did he . . . did he tell you about it?”

I shake my head. “No.” His face clears a little, as if that’s some small kind of absolution, as if it couldn’t have mattered so much if Nick hadn’t bothered to tell me. I don’t have the heart to tell him that Nick would have had to take the time to process the conflict internally, to turn it over and analyze and classify it, before he felt capable of presenting it to me. We’re in the air now; I feel that extraordinary moment when the aircraft suddenly becomes light, as if shrugging off all tethers to earth, including gravity. Peter, though, still has the weight of the world in the lines of his face. “Peter,” I say gently, “you and he were friends for years. He wouldn’t have let a minor disagreement color what he thought of you.”

“You really think so?” He looks as if he daren’t quite accept the secondhand forgiveness I’m offering, as if I might snatch it away at any moment.

“I do,” I say firmly. I have no idea of what this skirmish was about or what Nick thought about it, but Peter shouldn’t have to carry this through life. He looks at me for a second, then closes his eyes briefly with a nod. His face is visibly lighter. After a beat, I can’t help but ask, “Nick really raised his voice with you?”

Peter makes a sound that sits precisely halfway between a laugh and a sob. “Well, the balance of the raised voices may have been entirely on my side,” he concedes. The laughter that escapes me dances along a knife-edge; if it treads too heavily, it will rent and tear. After a moment, he says, “He really didn’t say anything?”

“Nothing.”

“Huh.” He stares at the papers in his hand for a moment, then visibly shakes himself. “Well, back to keeping up with the competition,” he quips, picking up the top one to read. I catch a glimpse of the first few words in the title: Van der Waals Heterostructure Polaritons with . . . The book that’s in my lap, a thriller that has had everybody abuzz but somehow can’t hold my interest, looks rather lightweight by comparison. I pick it up anyway, but my attention is on the window—not the view through it, but on the three thin panes themselves. Such a thin, seemingly fragile boundary between life and death. I can’t imagine why we allow planes to have windows.

By four p.m., we’ve successfully navigated the train journey and reached the télécabine Peter mentioned. There’s not a cloud in the vaulting blue sky and the snowcapped mountains that rise from the valley floor are astonishingly close and extend much farther toward the clear blue heavens than seems possible. It’s a vista that stretches one’s field of vision, that forces a reassessment. The world seems bigger here. Bigger and wider and startlingly open.

The Prarion lift building is a brown wooden structure that appears to be suspended over the whirring mechanics of the lift itself, as if the Perspex bubbles shuffling in their semicircle beneath it were holding it up rather than the other way round. Given the time of day, most people are descending, either under their own steam or via the télécabine, and they’re all dressed for hiking; it’s an extraordinarily wholesome picture. If I’d closed my eyes in Geneva, I could have convinced myself I was in an English summer—hazily, drowsily warm such that even the image of it in one’s mind blurs at the edges—but it’s different here. Everything is cleaner, clearer, sharper. I can’t feel an edge in the air, but I know it’s there, just waiting for the sun to abate.

We pay at the desk and climb into one of the télécabines, which Peter assures me is meant for eight people, though I imagine that must be a squash. And then we’re skimming up over the mountainside, rising steeply over a carpet of dark green pine forests, rent in places by raking scars of pale green open meadows that are clearly ski runs and the occasional gray-brown gash of a gravel track, as if some mythical beast had gashed at the mountainside with its talons.

“Can we see it from here?”

“What? Oh—the chalet.” Peter has been oblivious to the landscape we’re speeding over, instead checking his emails on his mobile and typing replies at a comically rapid pace. He looks up briefly. “No, it’s the other side of the mountain. You should check your messages; the chalet has virtually no reception. Last chance and all that.”

I nod, but he’s already focusing on his mobile again. I don’t bother fishing out my own; there’s nobody waiting to hear from me. It occurs to me that all my threads have loosened, the ones that keep me in place. It’s a terrifying realization, how easily I’ve become untethered. I’d had ambition too, hadn’t I? My own intentions and goals? What has been the point of the life I’ve built up to now if I can shrug it off so effortlessly, like an unwanted jacket? I’m suddenly unnervingly aware of my own pulse beating away beneath my skin, hammering in my very core. It’s trying to take over, to bully me, hurry me, to race my breathing and ravage my heart—

Stop it, I tell myself. Breathe. You’ve been spending too much time alone. You’re overthinking everything, and it needs to stop. When I glance at Peter, he’s still focused on his emails and hasn’t noticed my discomfort at all. I breathe carefully, evenly, again and again, concentrating on each inhalation and exhalation, and gradually feel myself calm.

The télécabine is approaching the top station. I twist myself sideways on the bench seat to gain space to pull my rucksack onto my shoulders, and think carefully, resolutely, about nothing, but the pulse is still there, deep inside my chest, beating away implacably. Trying to ignore it is like trying not to hear a dripping tap; the obsession with it could become as maddening as the noise itself. But I don’t know how to stop either.

3

The chalet seems to conjure itself into existence from nothing. One minute I’m focusing on picking my way, my gaze flitting between the ground beneath my feet and the faded blue of Peter’s technical rucksack ahead of me, and then the next minute I look up properly and the chalet is somehow right there, bathed in late-afternoon sunshine, at the end of an incongruously well-cleared lawn—boasting cricket stumps, no less. Despite having seen it in photos, the rectangular two-story building, glowing reddish brown in the sunlight, is larger than I expected, but just as old and rustic. A terrace wraps around the upper floor, topped by a disconcertingly basic steeply pitched gabled roof made of, as far as I can tell, corrugated iron. I recall that the original building burned down in the early twentieth century and was replaced by this one; it looks every bit of its one hundred or so years.

“Here!” says Peter completely unnecessarily, but with such triumphant relief that I realize he’d been worried about his navigation. The walk down the broad main path was, as advertised, fairly easy, despite the loose rocks and stones, but the final section involved a turn onto a tiny trail, barely more than a rabbit track, that would have been all too easy to miss. The narrow path wended its way through stretches of tall wild grasses, over a tiny wooden bridge spanning a small stream and through a woodland, leaving me thankful for wearing jeans, which, despite being a little hot, at least protected my legs from the tough grasses and bushes.

“Ah! Welcome!” The small, stout figure of Robert, in utilitarian hiking shorts and boots and with a pinkish tinge of sunburn on his balding head, is ambling across the lawn to greet us. “Peter, welcome back, I should say.” They shake hands enthusiastically. “And Emily; excellent, excellent.” He reaches out and clasps my outstretched hand in both of his, his pale blue eyes assessing me keenly from behind his small circular spectacles. “How are you, my dear?”

It’s a genuine question, full of kindly concern. I want to answer him properly, but not here and now. “Good, thanks.” I wince internally: my words are bright—too bright, almost dismissive. I hurry on. “I’m so sorry to have been delayed. You got my message?”

“Yes, but not until this morning.” We start back across the lawn. “We weren’t too worried, though—you wouldn’t have been the first to decide to enjoy an impromptu overnight stay in a hotel in Saint Gervais before joining the melee. Still, better late than never. We’re only short of Will and Jana now.”

“Yes!” Robert raises his eyebrows at this unexpected passionate response from me. “That means I beat them here,” I explain. “Jana gets very competitive.”

“You didn’t tell me we were in a race,” grouses Peter.

“As does Peter,” I add to Robert, my lips curling up in amusement at Peter’s chagrin, “which is why I didn’t tell him; the journey would have been unbearable. But I’ll take the bragging rights nonetheless.”

Robert’s lips are twitching too. “The bragging rights are indeed all yours.”

“Tanner’s here already too?” Peter asks.

“Alas, no. His wife has been unwell—nothing serious as I understand it, but he’s likely to be delayed by a day or two, as he doesn’t want to leave her on her own.” I murmur something sympathetic. I know Tanner quite well—Professor Tanner, whom absolutely everyone calls by his surname; I’m not even sure I can recall his first name—as he’s rather senior in Nick’s department: he’s lined up to be the director of the newest, swankiest engineering lab in all of Britain, and had been pushing Nick to apply to be his deputy. Robert switches tack. “Now, I posit a cup of tea wouldn’t go amiss?”

“Lovely. Thank you.”

“Same, thanks.” Peter is looking around. “Where is everyone?”

“One or two are taking a nap. The rest went up to the Hotel Le Prarion, foraging for chocolate and phone reception, I believe, so you might have a quiet ten minutes before they return and disturb your peace. Sit out here and enjoy the sunshine. I’m pleased to say that the weather is set to be fine for the whole week; the Alps are having quite the summer this year. Dare I say it, but they’ll actually be hoping for rain if they don’t get some soon.”

Five minutes later I’m seated in a deck chair in front of the chalet, enjoying a cup of Earl Grey in a somewhat battered tin mug. Peter and Robert settle into deck chairs beside me. I ought to be sociable—perhaps asking about the rest of the party, trying to imprint their names onto my mind (never my strong point, despite years of practice through teaching)—but the view is simply too breathtaking. I hadn’t taken it in properly on the walk down. Once again, I think there’s something incredibly clean about it all: the verdant greens of the slopes before the gray alpine cliff faces emerge majestically, topped by pristine white snow. Up here, I can feel that sharp fresh edge to the air that I sensed on the valley floor, even as the sunshine warms through to my very bones. I close my eyes for a moment, savoring the feel of the rays on my skin, though I don’t feel at all sleepy. If anything, I feel like I’m waking up.

“Jeez, is that—” Peter mutters, then stops. I open my eyes, blinking in the light. He’s looking across the lawn at something, a slight frown on his face. I follow his gaze: it’s not possible to see clearly because of the low-angled rays of the sun, but it appears that an enormous bear of a man is approaching us. I hold up a hand to shield my eyes. It’s not a trick of the light: this man must be at least six foot three and built like an American football linebacker.

“Ah, yes,” says Robert, yawning. It occurs to me that he looks older, and more tired, than I’ve noticed before. Is he seventy? I’ve never thought to pinpoint his age before. “The triumphant hunters return. I’ll put on another pot of tea. Oh—Akash there is our treasurer for the week, so give your kitty money to him at some point, please.” I belatedly realize that the giant is followed by a gaggle of youngsters, strung out in a line on the narrow trail. It puts me, rather incongruously, in mind of a mother duck with her ducklings.

Peter has extracted himself from the deck chair and scrambled to his feet. “Mike, I had no idea you were coming.” It’s not the most enthusiastic of greetings, but he reaches out a hand to shake the other man’s with a friendly enough smile. Peter is not small, but this man genuinely dwarfs him. “Were you a late addition?”

Mike glances at me. “There was a free spot.” He knows who I am, I realize. Or more to the point, he knows who my husband was. “No, don’t get up.” But it’s too uncomfortable to twist my neck to look up that far; I keep struggling awkwardly in the deck chair and he reaches down to offer a hand to me. “Mike Shepherd,” he says, pulling me up smoothly with no visible effort, then turning the grip into a handshake. “Visiting fellow, engineering.”

“Thanks. Emily Rivers. Research fellow, theoretical physics.” His hand is quite simply enormous. My own feels tiny and as light as air when he lets it go. Suddenly, I make the connection. “You must be Big Mike, Nick’s squash partner.”

“Guilty as charged.” He smiles, and it’s like watching granite rearrange itself: until I saw it happen, I wouldn’t have thought it possible. Craggy, I think. Jana would be less kind; she would say, Neanderthal. Mike’s smile fades. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be at the funeral; I was in Canada. I heard it was incredibly well attended.” His gray gaze is steady and clear; there’s something calming about it that gives me license to answer freely. I don’t have to worry that anything I say might rock this man.

“It was.” I shrug. “It was a good day, I suppose, in as much as it could be,” I add, almost surprising myself. “And also completely and totally awful, of course.”

He nods. “I can—” But the ducklings are among us now, chorusing welcomes to Peter and myself. We all shake hands in an awkward dance of crossing arms and shifting positions, and I attempt to attach faces and names inside my head; I vaguely recognize the five undergraduates—three men and two women—from having seen them around college, though they all look rather more disheveled than normal, as if the chalet has already rubbed off on them. Caleb, Julie, Akash, James and Sofi; I repeat inside my head like a chant. Sofi. Hmm, I’ve heard of her, I think. The staff members are not completely deaf to the undergraduate gossip; we only pretend to be. If it’s loud enough, it always reaches our ears—and the young woman in question certainly looks like she could make some noise. Her long brown legs, almost entirely bared by the shortest of cutoff denim shorts, could spark a clamor all by themselves. I can’t quite remember what I’ve heard about her: a prolific sex life, yes, but that’s not so very uncommon. It would have to have been something more than that for the noise to reach me.

Julie—an athletically built jolly-hockey-sticks type from the home counties, with straw-colored bobbed hair, and shoulders and nose so heavily freckled that her milk white skin is almost entirely camouflaged—offers to show me where I’ll be sleeping. I follow her, asking about her subject—chemistry, as it turns out—as the easiest of all icebreakers, with Sofi trailing behind us. We cut through the dust motes that dance in the sunlight just inside the doorway to the chalet, and pass onward through the salon and up the stairs to the bedrooms. A long corridor runs the entire length of the chalet on this upper floor, with rooms on either side, giving something of the impression of a dorm.

“This one,” says Julie, pushing open a door at the far end that protests audibly. The room beyond it is simple and small, wide enough only for its two single beds with a gap of perhaps three feet between them, and dim, given the lack of electrical lighting. The only light comes from the windows of the top half of a pair of doors that open out onto the terrace, but even that is partially blocked by the steep roof, whose protection extends as far as the edge of the terrace itself. The width of the room is such that, if the terrace doors were opened wide, the beds would partially block the egress. I place my rucksack on one of the beds and glance through one of the windows. A game of cricket is commencing on the lawn.

“We kept it for you,” Sofi says, pulling my attention back into the room. Her accent is intriguing; Scottish, I think, though I haven’t quite heard enough; it could actually be Irish. “It’s small enough that you ought to be able to have it to yourself.” There’s something feline about the way she moves, the deliberate grace of each motion, even if it’s only to push her ink black hair behind one ear as she does right now.

I look at the pair of them hovering in the doorway. Poor Julie, I think. Even with her startling coloring, does anyone ever notice her with Sofi around? “Thank you both. That’s kind of you.”

“We’ll leave you to get settled, then,” says Julie, and they do, thoughtfully pulling closed the door behind them, though it’s slightly warped and doesn’t quite catch. I have to give it a hard shove afterward to get it to close properly. There’s a feeling of dry wooden dustiness to everything I touch; I worry that the wood might splinter and crumble on my fingertips. I’m beginning to understand the disheveled look of the rest of the party after being here for only a day: the hundred-year-old chalet is literally rubbing off on us. Eventually there will be nothing left of it at all.

More noises float up from outside. There’s a key in the lock of the terrace doors, so I turn it and venture out, cautiously leaning my forearms against the wooden balustrade; it seems sturdy enough, despite appearances. Peter is winding up to bowl from the far end of the lawn. He starts his run toward the chalet, unleashing the red ball in an unexpectedly coordinated cartwheel of limbs. I don’t quite see where it goes, but I don’t need to: he thrusts an arm in the air in triumph as a collective groan breaks out. “Who’s next to face the firing squad?” he calls.

“Me, but I’m not going in without protection,” calls a voice below me. I look down to see Sofi sitting on the grass, long legs akimbo as she attempts to put on some very grubby cricket pads. She’s struggling to secure one of the straps around her leg, the smooth, dark, vulnerable skin of her inner thigh exposed beneath those shortest of shorts. “Mike, can you help me?”

“Nope” comes a cheerful reply. I look for the man behind the voice; he’s over near the chalet door, by no means the closest helping hand. He moves farther toward the chalet, presumably to go inside, and my view is cut off, but the voice floats up nonetheless. “I’m on dinner duty with Robert.”

“I’ll help you, Sofi,” says Caleb (or is it James?) with deliberate comical alacrity.

“And me! And me!” chorus Akash and James (or is it Caleb?), and Sofi laughs, having finally got the reaction she wanted, if not from the man that she wanted it from. It’s all so very transparent, watching from up here. For an instant, I remember being her age, or perhaps I’m remembering being younger, a teenager: the destructive, chaotic, ravenous storm of every emotion, be it desire, despair, jealousy, ambition; the pin-sharp hurt of every minor slight or rejection. When did I change? Was I still like that when I met Nick? Yes: I wanted things then. I wanted him, and I wanted other things too; I remember the wanting. Now I can’t think of a thing that I have the energy to want.

It’s not just the grief. Even before Nick died, I’d begun to feel like I was going through the motions: teaching courses that I could cover in my sleep because I’d taught them several times before, collaborating with the same people on ever-similar topics to publish in the same journals. I remember Nick standing behind me with his hand on my shoulder as I turned from a research paper to look up at him. “Are you . . . are you happy?” he asked me cautiously. I must have said yes, I suppose—that’s the only possible answer that wouldn’t have alarmed him, and I certainly didn’t want to do that. I wasn’t unhappy.

Sofi is in front of the stumps now, bending herself awkwardly to the cricket bat in front of her. I should go down and join everyone; I don’t know why I’m hesitating. It will be easier when Jana and Will are here, though waiting for them feels a bit like cheating, like taking the easy way out. The whole point of coming here was to try and find a way to climb out of the rut of grief. So start climbing.

I leave the small room and go downstairs, meaning to go straight out to the lawn, but as I cross the salon, my attention is arrested by a shaft of sunlight that illuminates a large object I hadn’t noticed before: a clock. A grandfather clock, in fact. It’s almost as tall as I am, in a rich brown oakwood case, with ornate ironwork decoration around the clockface in the upper section. But it’s the pendulum that has stopped me in my tracks. It’s a deeply burnished brass color, with an intricate pattern etched into the surface. I lean forward, trying to get a sense of the swirls and twists and whorls of the lines, but the pendulum is of course constantly moving, with the light rippling across it, running like liquid along the different etched channels, such that it almost seems to be a living, changing thing; I can’t get a sense of it.

“It’s an odd beast, isn’t it?” It’s Richard: I jump a little at his voice. He’s surprisingly light-footed for such a stocky man.

“How old is it?”

“Probably mid-eighteen hundreds, but it’s an odd mishmash of styles—the hands suggest even earlier, but they may have been salvaged from another clockface. Horloge comtoise.” He rolls the words across his tongue, relishing the feel of them. “Horloge comtoise,” he repeats. “That’s the French for grandfather clock. Ordinarily the pendulum would be embossed in enamel with a country scene—a horse pulling a cart, or a man at work in the field, that sort of thing. This is quite the oddity.”

“It’s . . . it’s hypnotic.” It could be a floral pattern, or musical symbols, or some long-lost script—or all three, or none at all, as mesmerizing as the flames of a fire. I could be lost to it, I think. Those lines and swoops could cast out and ensnare me in their intricate, dancing net of light, dragging me into time itself.

“It’s actually quite famous around here; some of the older locals call this le Chalet de l’Horloge—the Chalet of the Clock. As far as I can gather, it was one of the few things salvaged from the original building after the fire. The wood needed some restoration work, but the clock mechanisms were entirely unscathed. We actually thought it had been lost.” He pats the side of it as if petting an animal and falls silent, his eyes on the pendulum.

“Lost?” But Robert doesn’t reply. “Lost? How so?” I prompt.

“Oh.” He visibly pulls himself out of his reverie. “Well, it went missing for decades, but would you believe it? It was in the loft the whole time under some moth-eaten blankets. It was found when the roof was inspected at the beginning of this summer.” A bemused look crosses his face. “I can’t imagine why anyone put it there. Anyway, we had it cleaned up and here it is; it arrived back only a few days ago. It’s working just fine, albeit in its own fashion.”

I check my own watch reflexively. “It’s fast.”

“Sometimes. And sometimes it’s slow. But somehow, over the period of a day, it’s pretty much bang on. As I said, it works in its own fashion.”

“What?” I stare at him, then back at the clock. His eyes crinkle in mild amusement at my consternation. “Surely that’s not possible.” I don’t have any detailed knowledge of timepieces, but I know that they work on repetitive motions, such that the timekeeping is standardized: a clock can be consistently fast, or consistently slow, or consistently accurate, but not all three.

“Yet nonetheless it’s the case.”

“Is it down to temperature changes?” I can imagine that if the ambient temperature were to vary considerably, the pendulum rod might expand or contract enough to noticeably affect the timekeeping.

“Seasonal temperature changes can be expected to affect a floor clock such as this; they tend to run slower in summer. But one wouldn’t expect changes on an intraday timescale.”

“Has anyone examined it to determine the cause?”

He shrugs. “Not to my knowledge. And anyway, I prefer to leave it as one of life’s little mysteries. There are more things on heaven and earth, and so on.” He looks at my expression. “I can see that doesn’t sit well with you.” If anything, his amusement is increasing. “A scientist through and through?”

“I don’t . . . I just . . . I would want to know. I do want to know.” It’s almost a wail.

“But in not knowing, you might open yourself to all sorts of possible solutions you wouldn’t have otherwise considered.” He smiles again at my discomfort, but not unkindly. “Consider it an experiment, my dear Emily. If you fling the windows of your mind wide-open, who knows what might blow in?”

4

Ems, come on, it’s not fair—you are even thinner than when I left you last week,” Jana pronounces. We are sitting together at dinner, practically hip to hip at the dining table; twelve fit, but only just. The table itself is a polished dark wood, with sinuously curving carved legs; earlier I thought it looked a little forlorn, sitting incongruously in an isolated chalet when it’s clearly more suited to the dining room of a grand English pile, but it’s certainly being put to full use this evening. “Maybe what I need to do to lose ten pounds is bump off Will.”

“Jana!” But I’m laughing. Jana’s directness, and absolute lack of apology for it, is always so utterly refreshing. “And anyway, you really don’t need to lose ten pounds.” It’s true, she doesn’t. Her curviness is exactly right for her.

She ignores my words. “Or I suppose I could stop with the cheese and the red wine.” She picks up her glass and eyes the deep burgundy contents, then sighs. “No, bumping off Will would definitely be easier.”

“Do I hear that my life is under threat?” calls Will from across the table.

“Yes, but it’s nothing personal,” I assure him.

He quirks his eyebrows in mock alarm. “That doesn’t make it any more palatable.” James—blond, boisterous, public school manner and manners—laughs more than is strictly called for. If Sofi is also equally enamored of the television personality that is Will sitting between them, she is handling it with much more aplomb. I glance again at Jana’s glass: she’s definitely drinking, not just pretending. I feel a pang of guilt: I must have lost track of where they are in their IVF process. Another unexpected side effect of grief: it turns you into a bad friend.

“Coming through, coming through.” Mike enters from the kitchen with five plates of the starter stacked efficiently up his arms, with Robert just behind him, a measly two plates in his hands.

“Show off,” calls Peter to giggles around the table.

“Misspent youth catering events at the rugby club,” Mike explains as he starts to off-load his cargo. “Pass them down, folks.”

“Wouldn’t you have been more useful actually on the pitch?” I ask. For some reason, laughter breaks out. “What? What am I missing?”

“I take it you’re not a rugby union fan,” says Robert as he passes me one of his plates. “Our boy here played for England.”

“And for the Lions,” adds James. Lions. That rings a bell, though I don’t quite know what it means; James makes it sound as if it’s even more significant than representing one’s country.

“Oh. Good to see my finger is nowhere near the pulse, as usual.” My self-deprecation kicks off another wave of hilarity. I’m almost having fun