The Beauty of the End by Debbie Howells Page A

be fine here on my own.”
    â€œI’m hardly going without you,” I told her, imagining walking into Will’s alone. “And we can see Will anytime.”
    It was true. I called him and explained. Then we saw the New Year in, just the two of us, April curled up against me, revived enough by midnight to share the champagne we’d been planning to take to the party.
    The next day, she felt better. In just a few days, she was herself again. And then the holiday was over and it was back to work.

15
    2016
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    A s I stand at the back of April’s cottage, nowhere is there any sign of forced entry. Had the door been open when the police found her that night? No doubt they’d have locked up when they left and taken the key. I’m wondering also if there’s a spare key, hidden for whoever might need it, somewhere not too obvious. When I’d moved into my aunt’s cottage, I’d found my own front door key where I’d been told it would be, under the clichéd upturned flowerpot, cracked from frost. Mad, I’d thought at first, inviting just anyone into your home like that, until I’d seen the old windows and rusted, ill-fitting locks that wouldn’t keep anyone out. That sanctuary was illusory.
    Here, the windows are locked tight and there’s no upturned flowerpot, just a flat, moss-covered stone placed deliberately near the door. When I lift it enough to feel underneath, I find what I’m looking for.
    The key fits the back door, and as I push it open, the wind suddenly picks up. Then out of the corner of my eye, I see a cat watching from a corner of the garden, before it streaks toward me and without hesitation vanishes inside.
    I’m not sentimental, but there’s something poignant about walking in on April’s life, frozen the moment she left. Her coat thrown over a chair, the suede boots left underneath where she’d slipped them off, the heels faded from wear; her keys on a work top, as if she’d just come in from a walk.
    In the middle of her kitchen table are unopened letters, next to a bowl of green apples and a pile of newly folded washing on which the scent still lingers; in a heavy jug on the windowsill are stems of lilac, cut, I’m guessing, from the bush I’d noticed in her garden.
    As I explore, there are so many signs, small, but of disproportionate significance, that she hadn’t planned to kill herself. From the seed packets, a neat bundle held by a rubber band waiting to be planted once the soil had warmed, to the page ripped out of a magazine advertising a weekend break in the French Riviera—in autumn. A half-written shopping list, tickets for a theater production in a month’s time—all of it suggesting she was planning on being here.
    The more I look around, the more I’m convinced I’m right. It’s a home that’s cared for, a refuge, that feels loved. Nowhere is there any indication of a disturbed mind. If she’d been in the grip of depression, there’d be no flowers, no bowl of apples, no neatly folded laundry.
    April would have tidied, too, I’m sure of it. Left things in order, hidden her most private self from the prying eyes she knew would come here, after. The police, her next of kin, all picking through the remnants of her life. It wasn’t her way to leave herself on display to strangers.
    Something must have happened between her and Norton that night, whether she killed him or not, that was so terrible, sent her somewhere so dark, so hopeless, that ending her life was her only option.
    I’m wondering what it could have been when my eye is drawn to a sudden movement in the doorway, as the cat reappears, staring watchfully at me, before arching its back. I take a step toward it, stopping when it yowls ferociously. As the hairs on the back of my neck prickle, in a moment of absolute certainty, I know without any shadow of a doubt.
    April wouldn’t have