Chapter 31

• Renee didn't take a taxi directly to Camila's flat like she intended to. Not yet. She couldn't face the questions, the pity, or the sudden, intense warmth of human sympathy overwhelming the coldness she was feeling, so she went to her flat. That would make the dam break too soon. She needed a place to drown, first.
• She paid the cab driver in a detached, robotic fashion and fumbled with her keys to her own flat—the flat she was meant to move out of after her wedding. It was still packed with boxes: wedding favours, his favourite old rugby shirt, half a lifetime crammed into brown cardboard. It was a tomb of promises.
• The door clicked shut behind her, plunging her into the heavy, echoing silence. The only light came from the cold, clinical glow of the outside street filtering through the thin curtains. She stood in the narrow hallway, the bruise on her cheek throbbing, feeling the last vestiges of her carefully maintained composure crumble like dry soil.