NOTHING HAPPENED after the incident with the wasp. Not a thing. For a second time, Emily made it out of the house apparently unseen, and Aurelia was absolutely fine.

Emily’s gnawing suspicion began to bite harder. She found herself watching Aurelia’s behavior more closely, and checking regularly on her whereabouts. On the “bad” days, when Aurelia was supposed to be “resting” in the family house, Emily often glimpsed her through partially open windows, running around in the playroom, or jumping on the sitting-room sofas. Once Emily started keeping track, she realized just how many pills Aurelia was taking. There were an awful lot.

But most of the time she seemed okay. A bit spaced out, sure, but fine. And after a few days, Emily decided to turn a blind eye. She wouldn’t mention the wasp—not unless Nina mentioned it first—because what would be the point? Okay, so maybe Nina was exaggerating the severity of Aurelia’s illness. Maybe the medication wasn’t wholly necessary. But Nina’s intentions were good; she was just being cautious. And Aurelia had everything she needed. She was loved and cared for, fed and watered. Yes, it would be nice for her to get off the property occasionally, make some friends, but if you had to stay home, then Querencia was the place to do it. And how Nina chose to raise her own child was none of Emily’s business.

She didn’t dare examine her feelings in any more depth than that. Because, deep down, she knew she didn’t want it to be her business.

In her quietest moments, lying in the dark at night, Emily thought about confronting Nina, and what that might do to their friendship. She thought about going home to her parents. She thought about Scott. Every day, she thought about him. And suddenly, her new life at Querencia felt like a priceless artifact balanced in the palm of her hand. She didn’t want to fumble and drop it.

So Emily pushed her thoughts to the very back of her mind and got on with her jobs. For the next three weeks, she mowed the lawn and fed the animals, mucked out Sebastien and collected the eggs from the chicken shed. She painted more walls, cleaned toilets, fished leaves out of the pool filter, and watered the plants. She helped Nina reorganize the cellar and the games room, making way for more unexpected deliveries: a pinball machine, a vintage jukebox, and astonishingly, a bouncy castle. There were more market visits and supermarket trips. Nina taught Emily how to descale, gut, and bone a fish. They cooked together using ingredients from the garden. Fig and apricot jam. Dauphinoise potatoes. Gazpacho. Homemade pasta topped with a fresh tomato-and-basil sauce. Emily played with Aurelia; they rode the quad bikes, played hide-and-seek, and chased each other around the property with water guns.

And eventually, Emily’s doubts loosened and dissolved. Nina would never hurt her daughter; she wasn’t hiding anything. And even if she was, Emily was too busy with food and wine to worry about it; too focused on the sun on her skin and the sand between her toes. Life at Querencia returned to normal.

* * *

They were down by the pool when it happened, having a pillow fight on the daybed. Surrounded on all four sides by floaty white curtains and fitted with custom-made cushions, the daybed was the perfect place to relax—or, if you were six years old, to bounce up and down on for hours on end.

It was late afternoon, and Emily had taken a break from peeling and deveining prawns to help Aurelia fix a pair of fairy wings onto the back of her dress. “There you go,” she said, patting Aurelia on the back. “A beautiful fairy queen.” As she walked away, a pillow hit her between the shoulders, and things escalated from there.

Aurelia’s arm was impressive; one shot almost knocked Emily into the pool. “Ooh, you’re gonna pay for that one.” Emily said, hurling an especially thick cushion as hard as she could. But as soon as it left her hand, she knew she’d gone too far. It hit Aurelia square in the face and sent her flying backward into one of the posts. There was a meaty smack as her head hit the corner, and suddenly there was blood everywhere.

After a moment of paralyzing, gut-churning fear, Emily rushed forward. “Oh my god … Aurelia? Are you okay?” She gently rolled Aurelia onto her side and pressed her fingers gingerly to the back of her head, parting her hair to reveal an ugly gash. It was deep but she’d seen worse. Her former roommate, Spencer, had once fallen off a balcony at a party and cut his head so badly you could see the white of his skull.

Aurelia stirred, and more blood gushed from her nose into her mouth. As well as knocking her over, the cushion had whacked her on the nose, opening it like a tap. “Oh my god, oh my god.” Emily ran and grabbed a couple of towels from the loungers, pressing one to Aurelia’s head, the other to her nose. “I’m so sorry, sweetie,” she said.

Aurelia started to wail.

“It’s okay,” Emily said. “Hey. Look at me—you’ll be fine.”

Obediently, Aurelia looked up.

Emily froze.

At first, she wasn’t sure what she was looking at. Was it a trick of the light? She looked closer. One of Aurelia’s eyes had changed color. The left was the usual amber brown, but the right was a pure, bright green.

And then, she saw something else. Sitting on the splayed tendrils of Aurelia’s black hair, was a tiny, pearl-like circle. It looked like half of a bubble—transparent, but dark against the white linen.

A contact lens. A colored one.

Placing her hands on Aurelia’s cheeks, Emily moved closer. Her pupils were so contracted that each iris was clearly visible. The brown eye was flecked with gold and ringed with a darker hue. The green was pale with a distinct yellow inner ring, like a corona.

Aurelia wears colored contacts? She studied the left iris, searching for the telltale ring against the brown. She looked back and forth, back and forth. But as far as she could tell there was no second contact. Both eyes were natural. One brown, one green.

Returning her gaze to the cushion, Emily stretched out a finger to touch the lost lens—but a sudden shriek made her turn. Above them, Nina was flying along the path from the house to the pool. “Aurelia!” she yelled, hurtling down the steps. And then: “Get away from her!”

Emily sat back on her heels and raised her hands in the air like a thief caught in the act. “It’s okay. She’s okay. She just—”

“I said, get away!” Nina threw herself onto the daybed and pulled Aurelia onto her lap. In seconds, her bare arms were covered with blood.

“I’m so sorry,” Emily stammered. “It was an accident. She just fell. We were—”

But Nina cut her off. “No, no, no, no, no,” she moaned. Tears flowed down her face, her mouth grotesquely distorted.

Emily opened her mouth then shut it again. It looks worse than it is, she wanted to say. But Nina was wailing as if Aurelia was dead. “Noooo!” She sobbed. “Please, no.”

Emily winced. It was all a bit dramatic. She started to clamber off the bed. “I’ll get the keys and bring the car around,” she said, but Nina looked up sharply. Her eyes were unsteady, like she’d just woken up.

“No. No. You stay here.”

“But—”

“No.”

“She needs a hospital, I—”

“I said no! No hospital!” Nina turned back to stroke her daughter’s matted hair. “She’s okay. She’ll be okay, won’t you, bubba? Mummy will make it better. Mummy will take care of you.” Gathering Aurelia in her arms like a bundle of wet washing, she got to her feet.

Emily stood with her. “Are you sure I can’t—”

“Just leave us the fuck alone!”

It was like a punch in the gut.

Turning her back, Nina staggered to the steps and disappeared back up the path, leaving Emily alone on the daybed. Stunned, she let her head drop. Blood trickled over the cushions and pooled between her toes. Through her tears, she scoured the white linen, the red splashes, looking for the little half bubble.

But it wasn’t there. The contact lens was gone.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

EMILY

SHAKING, EMILY stripped the covers off the cushions and took them to the laundry room, filling the washing machine with as much detergent as would fit. Taking a sponge and a bucket down to the pool area, she scrubbed every speck of blood off the daybed and its wooden frame. Then she went over the travertine tiles, wiping away even the tiniest of drops.