This is not trash, she realises as she comes upon it. This is a person. Her first thought is that it is Kenny, but it is not. It is a woman. It is a woman’s face, eyes staring at nothing, mouth opened for a soundless scream, pale and frozen features, and a woman’s body, lying half on her side, but her upper body twisted in such a way that she is staring at the sky. She looks vaguely familiar, but Faith cannot place her. The hair is blonde, but dark from the rain. She is very thin, alarmingly thin. In her right arm she is cradling a bundle of clothes, a T-shirt or something. Faith leans over the body and gently tugs at the fabric. When the arm of a baby becomes visible, she cries out and stumbles backwards.

  Back in the road she fumbles for her phone, but then she sees a light approaching. She stands in the middle of the road, waving for the vehicle to stop.

  She has never been so glad to see him. Tom stops, dismounts and takes off his helmet. Faith has run towards him and he has to hold her. Her voice sounds shrill in her own ears. “Tom, there is a dead woman over there, with a baby. A dead woman, with a baby…”

  “Where, Faith, where?”

  She points towards the shrubs. “I only saw her because I was on horseback. She’s dead, Tom.”

  Tom has jumped across the ditch already. Faith stumbles after him. He turns back to her after one glance, and the look on his face does nothing to calm her down. “I know her”, he stammers.

  “What? What do you mean, you know her? How do you know her? Who is she?”

  Tom puts his hand against his forehead. “I’ve met her in Dublin. And the last time I saw her was in Monte Carlo.”

  “Tom, the baby… is it… Is this…?”

  “No. No, this is not my baby. I didn’t know her like that.”

  She nods slowly. He says, “We have to call the police.”

  “Yes, of course.” Doing something, anything, is good. She takes out her phone again and talks to the police, describing what they have found. Yes, they can identify the body. No, they have no idea why she is dead, or why she is at the gate to Wake Hall. No, they are not going to touch anything. Yes, they are going to wait.

  Then she looks at Tom. While her panic has subsided, he seems to be seriously worried. And not willing to talk. She calls Ben and asks him to send someone to get her horse and Tom’s bike. Then they wait, Tom pacing up and down. She tells the gardener and the stable boy nothing , and they do not ask. It is getting dark.

  The police arrive eventually, with the coroner and someone from the SFIU, since this is a mysterious case, cause of death unknown. Faith explains to the young female officer how she had discovered the bodies while Tom is being questioned by the male officer. The SFIU man and the coroner are examining the body. Faith feels as if she has told the story a hundred times already.

  When they are through, the four people withdraw to their car to compare notes. The bodies have been photographed, a smartphone and papers have been retrieved. Once the officer comes to them and asks about Kenny. Faith calls Ben and reports that Kenny has not returned. Then the officer leaves them again.

  “What was that about?”, Faith asks, shivering in the cold.

  Tom says nothing.

  Finally, the police people return and they are being told what they have determined. Apparently, the woman had given birth during the course of the night and had walked up all the way to Wake Hall. She had been in need of medical help because she had been bleeding excessively. Her jeans, which Faith had thought were black, are in fact black from blood. This explains the reaction of her horse. She must have died in the early hours of the morning. Whether the baby had been alive at all is hard to say. The woman’s name is Liv. She must have been in poor health even before the birth, malnourished and exhausted. Faith’s thoughts trail off to the hours she had spent on the beach, in the sunshine. All this while, the woman had been lying right by her door…

  “But what did she want here? Why did she come here?”, she asks.

  The officers look at her weirdly, almost with sympathy. She does not get it. “What am I missing?”

  When the officers do not speak, Tom steps up. “Liv used to be Kenny’s girlfriend.”

  Faith stares at him and laughs. Everyone else remains serious. “You mean she was his girlfriend?”

  Tom nods. “When I met her in Dublin, Kenny had just ditched her. She had followed him around, like a groupie, I guess, and they got together eventually, and it seems to have been on-off for a while, until Dublin.”

  “How did you two meet?”

  “I found her alone in the street and took her home. She was on drugs, it was raining. Kenny had left. I took care of her.”

  Faith lets that sink in. “Okay.”

  “She wanted to go back to London, to try and find him again. I put her on a plane, and that was that. I didn’t hear from her again until a couple of weeks ago in Monaco. She wanted to…”

  “Monaco?” She remembers the message he had been so weird about. “You saw her in Monaco?”

  “Yes, I did. I bought her dinner. She looked awful, and she wanted me to get her into the Hotel de Paris so she could talk to Kenny. She never said that she was pregnant, and I never noticed.”

  Faith shakes her head to erase the memory of the Hotel de Paris. That ill-fated evening. Everything could have turned out differently. Tom seems to think into a similar direction, for he says, “I told her I could not do it. I gave her money, and she left. That was all. I do not know how she ended up here.” He points vaguely to where Liv’s dead body is lying.

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  “She was in Silverstone”, Faith says. Suddenly it all makes sense. “I saw her, with Kenny, they were talking, outside the hotel. I knew there was something going on, but we were so busy, and I did not want to fight with him, and…” She looks helplessly at the police officers.

  “Yes?”, they say encouragingly.

  “They looked like – lovers”, she says. “Like they were making an appointment or something. He was comforting her. And afterwards he was in a hurry to get here. Very impatient and angry when we had to delay our departure. And when we got here on Monday, he left. He must be looking for her. Oh God.”

  “We will need his statement, ma’am”, the woman officer says.

  “Of course.”

  “Tell him to get in touch, please, Miss… Mrs…”

  “Mrs Casadoro”, she says automatically. “I’ll do that.”

  Again, the officers withdraw into their car. Tom and Faith are standing at the gate with nothing to say to each other. She is shaking from the cold, wet through and through. Tom looks at her sadly. Then the officers come back.

  “What happens now?”, she asks.

  The man from SFIU says, “We are going to issue the death certificate. We have been able to determine the deceased’s identity, as well as the cause of death. We have also been able to find sufficient explanation for her being here. The whole situation is unusual, but we have agreed that the circumstances have been clearly explained.”

  Sufficiently explained, indeed. Faith can barely keep her teeth from chattering.

  “We still have to determine how she actually got here, but the data from her phone and your husband’s statement will surely clear that up.”

  She nods. “And what does that mean?”

  “Well.” The police officer hesitates. It seems to be a problem to spell things out. “With the death certificate, the body – or bodies, in this case – don’t need to be taken away by us. The cause of death has been deemed natural. We do not have to suspect a criminal offence. This means that the family, or whoever takes responsibility, can take over. Mrs Casadoro, I hope we have decided this in accordance with your interest. We could have proceeded differently.”

  Faith blinks confusedly. She looks at the police people uncomprehendingly. Then Tom clears his throat, but at last she is beginning to understand.

  “I see. Yes. Okay. I see.” Get a grip, girl! “I will see to it. Thank you very much. Of course, I will try to contact the girl’s family, if there is any. And I will tell my husband to get back to you. Of course. Thank you.”

  There is an audible sigh of relief. “We are very sorry, Mrs Casadoro.”

  Faith nods. These people are surely going out of their way and stretching procedures to the very limit, and they are doing it for her sake. The newly crowned queen of British racing does not want headlines like these. She ought to be thankful. And show it. “Thank you very much, indeed.”

  The police prepare to depart. Faith looks at Tom. “And we can call an undertaker now, you mean?”

  The coroner says, “I’ll send you the certificates within the hour. Then you can do what you think proper.”

  When they have left, Tom asks, “And what do we do now?”

  “Bring them to Wake Hall.” She has already switched on the flashlight on her phone and crosses the ditch.

  “What?”

  “We cannot leave them here, can we?” She probably sounds more determined than she feels. “Come on.”

  Tom follows her reluctantly. The coroner had told them that Liv had died around seven or eight in the morning. Rigor mortis had not fully developed yet because of the cold. Her face and neck were stiff, but her limbs were still flexible enough for Tom to carry her. Faith takes the baby, a boy it was, who is all stiff and must have died earlier. With her free hand she shines the light for Tom so he does not fall. They cover the distance to the manor in silence.

  Faith asks Tom to wait in the shadows by the main entrance, putting down the baby beside him. Then she finds Ben and explains everything as best she can, asking him to dismiss everybody for the night and get Nicholas. She clears the huge oak table in the room to the right of the entrance, which is rarely used, and lines the chairs up against the wall. After that, she calls Tom inside, and they put the bodies of mother and child down on the table.

  The looks on Ben and Nicholas’ faces reflects how horrific the two are to look at. Again, Faith explains what has happened, this time with more precise instructions. Nicholas is to print out the death certificates as soon as they arrive, and he is to call an undertaker, to come and get the bodies tomorrow morning.

  “Not tonight?”

  “No. There are things that need to happen.” The men look at her. They are not happy. She turns to Ben. “I’ll need hot water, and soap, and towels, and at least two, better three sheets. And trash bags, of course.”

  “What do you want to do?”, Tom asks.

  “They cannot stay this way. They deserve better. And I’m going to call Kenny, of course.”

  “I’ll help.”

  “No, you won’t. I’ll do this.”

  “It’s too much.”

  She does not reply. She locks the door when everybody has left the room and goes upstairs, trying to find some clothes that would have looked good on Live. For the baby boy she picks a soft shawl, the nicest she has. When she comes down again, Ben is waiting with the things she had asked for. He, too, asks her to let him help, but she sends him away. Tom is sitting on the stairs, staring gloomily ahead. She locks herself in.

  “I’m sorry, Liv”, she says when she approaches the dead woman on the table. “It need not have been this way.” She does not feel anything for this poor creature except a sense of obligation. She had died at her door – she had not come to see her, but she had died at her door. Circumstances had knit their lives together, their vastly different lives. Now that the woman is her responsibility, she wants to do right by her. She hopes that she would have wanted to do right by her, too, if they had met sooner.

  The job is harder than she had thought. She cannot undress the body; she has to cut the clothes from the limbs piece by piece. She washes the stiffening limbs, taking note of the many scars and bruised regions where the needles had gone in, and she also has to cut up the clothes she has selected for her because by the time she is done the body can hardly be moved at all. The worst thing is the face. There is nothing she can do about the wide open eyes and the silently screaming mouth. She arranges the hair around it as best she can, but it remains a gruesome sight.

  Then she washes the baby, wraps him into the shawl and places him beside his mother’s head. When she is done, she covers them with a sheet, up to Liv’s shoulders, cleans up the room, lights two candles in large candlesticks, and texts her husband. “We have found Liv. Come to Wake Hall.”

  She unlocks the door and waits.