ログインChapter 137 Helen left mid-morning for a long stretch with Ava — coffee, the shops, a browse through the place they used to haunt before the accident. She took her time at the door, checking her bag, reminding Julian about a bill on the table, kissing Lena’s cheek on the way out. “We’ll be back after lunch,” she said. “Don’t live off toast.” The car pulled away. Oliver had already gone to campus with a bag and a short goodbye. The front door settled in its frame. The house emptied in stages until the only sounds left were the fridge cycling and the clock in the hall. Lena stayed in the kitchen with a glass of water she wasn’t drinking. She heard Julian move through the study, then the hallway, then stop in the doorway behind her. She didn’t turn around at first. She knew that silence. Full memory. No audience. The same held-breath quiet from the service lane behind the supermarket, from the locked study, from every hour they had sworn would be the last. “We said we wouldn’t
Chapter 136Helen went to bed early with a headache.Julian stayed downstairs longer than usual, then followed her up with water and the careful steps of a man who did not want the floorboards to speak. Oliver was in his room. The landing light clicked off. The house settled into the kind of quiet that had always been more dangerous than noise.Lena stood under the shower until the hot water ran thin, trying to wash the car off her skin — the fogged windows, Julian’s hand, the service lane behind the supermarket. It didn’t work. She dressed in a sleep shirt and shorts, opened her door, and found Oliver already in the hallway as if he had been waiting for the pipes to stop.He looked at her once. Then he nodded toward his room.She should have said no. The porch terms were still supposed to mean something. Tessa’s sounds through the wall were still supposed to mean something. Instead she crossed the landing and let him close the door behind her and turn the lock.Oliver didn’t speak at
Chapter 135Helen sent them out for groceries just after six.She was mid-recipe, missing cream and the right potatoes, and Julian already had the car keys in his hand when she listed the rest. Oliver was on campus. Ava was across town. Lena was the only other person in the house with free hands.“Go with him,” Helen said, not looking up from the pan. “He’ll come back with the wrong kind of cream and tell me it’s the same.”Julian didn’t argue. Lena took her jacket.The car smelled faintly of the coastal trip — salt and the paper air freshener Helen had hung from the mirror and forgotten. Julian drove the first stretch without speaking. Lena watched the houses pass and counted the number of times she had been alone with him since his memory came back. Too few for how much still sat between them. Too many for how careful they were supposed to be.“She was happy when we got home,” Julian said at a red light.“I know.”“I keep waiting for the house to give her a reason not to be.”Lena s
Chapter 134 Helen came home with shopping bags and a story about the market queue. Lena met her in the kitchen, took a bag, and put vegetables away while Ava’s absence still sat in the room like a door that had only just closed. Helen didn’t notice. She was full of ordinary talk — the price of tomatoes, a neighbour who’d asked after Julian, a reminder that the longer weekend away was still on the calendar in three weeks. Lena listened and nodded and washed her hands twice. Oliver got in after lunch. He dropped his bag at the foot of the stairs, took an apple from the bowl, and only looked at Lena when Helen left the kitchen to take a call. The look was mild. Unreadable. If he was waiting for a reaction to the night before, he didn’t ask for it out loud. “Tessa said thanks for the juice,” he said. “I’ll pass that on to the fridge.” His mouth twitched. Then Helen’s voice returned from the hallway and the moment folded back into the household’s usual noise. Campus the next
Chapter 133 Lena barely slept. The wall had gone quiet after Tessa left, but the sounds stayed in her head — the bedframe, the bitten-off cry, Oliver’s groan through the plaster. By morning she was short with everyone. Helen asked if the malaria was flaring again; Lena said she was fine and took her coffee upstairs so she wouldn’t have to watch Oliver move through the kitchen like the night before had cost him nothing. She texted Ava before nine: Are you free today. Ava: For you or for drama. Lena: Both. Ava arrived mid-morning with a paper bag and no patience for small talk. Helen was out at the shops. Julian was in the study with the door half closed. Oliver had left for campus early. The house was as empty as it got on a weekday. “You look like you want to break something,” Ava said, setting the bag on Lena’s desk. “Oliver had Tessa over last night.” “I assumed. The polite-boy version or the through-the-wall version?” “Through the wall.” Ava’s mouth twitched wi
Chapter 132 Oliver closed the bedroom door with his foot and turned the lock. Tessa set her tote on the chair by the desk and took the room in once — the narrow bed pushed against the shared wall, the wardrobe that didn’t quite shut, the desk buried under notes and a charger cable. When she looked back at him her mouth was already curved, not nervous. “Your house is very polite,” she said. “Downstairs, I mean.” “Downstairs is spoken for.” He crossed the small space before she could turn the line into a longer joke and kissed her. Tessa met him halfway, hands fisting in the front of his shirt, the damp ends of her hair cold against his wrists as she linked her arms around his neck. She tasted like mint and the outside air. Oliver walked her backward until the backs of her legs hit the mattress; she sat, pulled him down with her, and the bedframe gave a soft, familiar complaint under their combined weight. They did not bother with the overhead light. The lamp on the desk was







