Serena's POV
It starts with my face.
That's the first thing the wall shows me. Not Dominic's four names, not the thread, not the map. A line of photographs at eye level, pinned in a neat row, one for every day.
Monday. Lobby. 8:55 a.m. Coffee on his shirt.
The woman in the picture has her head down. Her red hair is falling forward. A man's hand is closed round her arm, and her mouth is open on a word.
Tuesday. First day. Corridor.
Wednesday. Posy's desk.
Thursday. The noodles.
Me at a window, in a grey blouse, with my hand at my throat. Me on the stairs of Brandt's townhouse, looking down. Me asleep at my desk at four in the morning with my cheek on a file. I never knew anyone saw. Me in the corridor with a paper cup.
He took these.
Under each photograph, a strip of white tape. A date. A time. A neat note in blue ink.
Counts steps. 17.
Turns invisible ring.
Drank the cortado. Did not ask.
My eyes go to the next, and the next, and the cold slowly rises up my legs.
Hummed in powder room. Tessa heard.
Asked about the surprise. Doesn't know I didn't send it.
And then, in a different hand, a bold black capital script on a sheet of lined paper, tacked beside the photographs:
DAY 4. 6:40 p.m. D. SAYS: SHE'S SERENA. HE'S CERTAIN. I'M NOT. D. SAYS: LET HER. DON'T CONFRONT. DON'T TELL ANYONE. KEEP HER CLOSE. KEEP HER SAFE.
M.B.
I read it.
The paper is cold in my hand.
Day 4.
Four days after I walked across the marble in my borrowed heels, shaking, certain I'd fooled him.
He knew.
I look at the photograph in my other hand, the little curled snapshot. Across the bottom, in blue ink, he's written one word.
SERENA.
It's his handwriting. I'd know it in the dark. Tight and slanted, pressing too hard on the downstrokes.
The cold has reached my heart.
I think of a cup on my desk. A lily on a dust sheet. A clam shack in Red Hook. Tonight, just be. A dark, warm bed, and a man's voice saying please.
All of it. Every look, every gentle, careful, patient word. A man standing at the edge of a diving board for four weeks.
He knew.
"Serena."
"Serena. Please."
It's the first time he's said it.
It's the first time anyone has said it in three years. And it comes out of his mouth as if it had been waiting at the bottom of a well, cracked and rusty and enormous, and falls on the concrete floor of the room like a stone.
"Don't," I say.
"Let me explain."
"Don't say it."
"It's your name."
"It's not." I turn round at last. "It's not. It hasn't been mine in three years. You don't get to... you don't get to say it like that."
He's dressed. He's very white. His hands are open at his sides, as if to show me he's holding nothing, and his eyes are the saddest, bravest, most terrified I've ever seen.
I want to hit him.
I want, so badly, to be twenty-eight again, and not know.
"When?" I say.
"The lobby."
"The lobby."
"You counted the steps." His voice is hoarse. "Seventeen. Your lips moved. And you had your eyes."
"You knew in the lobby."
"I was sure by the cortado."
"And you let me..." My voice cracks. "You let me stand in front of you. For four weeks. You let me lie. You let me say I'm Vera, I was born in Halifax, I never loved anyone. You watched me do it. You watched."
"Yes."
"You watched me rehearse in the mirror."
"I didn't..."
"You put me in my own studio! With a lily! And watched what I would do!"
His face contorts.
"Every single thing you did. The coffee. The canary trap. It's on your map, Dominic, I can read, you had a man at every site. You let me think I was clever."
"You were clever."
"You were helping me!"
"Yes."
"And last night," I say.
The blood leaves his lips.
"Last night." I can hear my own voice, small and strange. "You took me to a clam shack and told me about a charity auction. You asked me what I wanted to be called. And I thought..." I swallow. "I thought you were being kind."
"I was."
"You were being careful."
"It wasn't like that."
"No? You knew, Dominic. You knew who I was. You held my face and said please." My voice breaks into pieces. "Did you make love to me, or to the dead woman?"
"I made love to my wife."
"I wasn't your wife. I was your project."
"That's not..."
"You put my picture on a wall!"
"I put it there so I'd stop going mad!" It rips out of him. He takes a step, and I step back, and he stops with one hand outstretched. "I put it there because I couldn't sleep, I couldn't breathe, I couldn't believe it was real! I needed to see you, I needed to see you every day, to be sure I wasn't..."
"You could have told me."
"You'd have run."
"You don't know that!"
"I know you."
"Do you?" I say, very low.
He stops.
"Do you know me?" My voice is a whisper. "Because I don't think you do. I think you know the woman you married. I think you know a girl in a green apron who liked lily-of-the-valley and hated being told what to do. But I'm not her. She died on a boat. I've been somebody else for three years, and you never asked who."
"I wanted to."
"Then why didn't you?"
"Because I was afraid."
"Of what?"
"That you'd say you were never coming back."
They fall into the cold room, and lie there.
"You should've given me the choice," I say.
"I know."
"It was mine."
"I know that. I was going to tell you this morning. I swear it on..."
"Don't."
"I swear."
"Don't swear on anything." I wipe my face with my wrist. "Don't. You've no idea what it's like. To be so alone for so long that you'd do anything for one person to look at you and see who you are. And to find out that they have. That they always did. And that they let you stand there anyway, in front of the whole world, and be a stranger."
"Serena..."
"You let me lie to your face for four weeks," I say. "And I let you. And that's the worst part. I'd have done it for a year."
I put the photograph on the desk.
I put the log beside it. Very carefully.
I walk past him.
He doesn't try to stop me. He stands with his back against the door-frame, shoulders rigid, hands flat to the steel. As I pass, I feel him tremble.
"Please," he says.
"I'm going to get dressed."
"Don't go."
"I need to."
"I can't lose you again."
I stop.
I turn my head, just a little. I look at the man who dived into the Atlantic four times. Who broke three ribs. Who has worn my ring on a chain for three years.
I love him.
It's a quiet, stupid, enormous fact, like the sea. I've never stopped.
And it makes no difference at all.
"You didn't lose me," I say. "You kept me. You kept me in a room. For a month."
"That's not fair."
"No. It isn't."
I walk to the bedroom.
I put on my clothes.
My hands are steady, which is a surprise. I find my shoes, my coat, my phone. I leave his shirt on the bed. I don't look at the sheets.
When I come out, he's standing in the passage.
He doesn't move.
"Don't follow me," I say. "If you follow me, I will never forgive you."
"Where will you go?"
"Away."
"It isn't safe."
"I know."
"Take Marcus."
"No."
"Serena..."
"Don't call me that."
I open the front door.
I step into the corridor, and the door closes behind me with a quiet, expensive click, and I walk to the elevator with my head high and my eyes dry and the whole of my life collapsing silently behind my ribs.
The doors open.
I step in.
In the polished steel, a woman with red hair and a scarred neck looks back at me.
I look at her for a long time.
Then I press the button for the lobby, and the doors close, and I slide down the wall, and I put my face in my hands.
My phone buzzes against my hip.
An unknown number. No name. One line.
Good morning, Mrs Hale. We should talk.