Moira and Thomas were in the big freezer room below the kitchen. Neither could remember the last time they came in here. Usually the kitchen was full of staff, or the threat of staff, and had been a public space, but Moira had dismissed almost all of the live-ins.

She had kept Nanny Mary on for Thomas’s sake but they talked about it and Thomas said she needn’t have. He didn’t want her anymore. As he said it Moira watched the curl on his lip, not his eyes. He couldn’t be certain that she knew about Mary’s midnight creeping, but she agreed and called Mary in and said they couldn’t afford to employ her now. Mary seemed relieved, said she’d pack and be gone in the morning before they woke up. Then she shook both their hands, cold and professional, not searching Thomas’s face for anything or trying to look him in the eye. He watched her leave the room, her buttocks pert through her silk skirt, and he was struck suddenly by the impression that his father had ordered Mary to fuck him and she was glad it was over too. He did think it odd that she didn’t ask for references.

Jamie had taken two grand cash as an ex gratia payment. Moira hadn’t mentioned the choking incident and Thomas felt she probably wouldn’t now.

So the hall, the kitchen, the whole of the house was empty. They hadn’t had any supper and Moira had suggested an expedition to the kitchen.

The freezer room was warm and windowless. The whir of the motors bounced off the subterranean walls. It took them a while to find the light switch, a cord hanging down at the very bottom of the steep stairs in the pitch dark. Three big sarcophagus freezers purred quietly. One of them was padlocked shut. Moira went straight over and fingered the lock.

“This must be the meat freezer,” she said.

Thomas thought suddenly of a bed of meat, of a body in the locked cabinet, but it was just a spooky, unfamiliar room. That was all it was. It was dark and quiet and spooky.

He lifted the lid of the freezer next to him, looked down and found the contents were well ordered. Clear plastic tubs full of handmade gourmet meals prepared by their cook before he left, individual portions, each dish marked clearly on the lid in thick curly writing.

Moira had opened the other freezer and found it crammed with loaves of different kinds of bread, ingredients, frozen herbs and cheese, frozen juice. She held up a frosted cylindrical bag triumphantly by the tail. “Look!”

Mini pizzas. Cheap mini pizzas. “This must be what they eat,” she said, “the staff. Let’s have them!”

“What do you do with them though?”

“Put them in the oven.” Thomas was impressed until Moira explained, “It says it on the packet. I can do it.”

She hurried past him, up the stairs to the kitchen proper to cook a meal for him and prove she was able. But she had left the freezer lid leaning against the wall, the smoky cold crackling out of it into the warm room. Thomas waited until her ankles disappeared up the steps into the brightness of the kitchen then stepped over and shut it. She heard it slam and bent down to a crouch, smiling. “Sorry. Fell at the first fence.” She stood up and vanished into the kitchen.

Thomas looked at the locked meat freezer again. There was no one in there. Sarah Erroll wasn’t in there. Ella wasn’t in there. It was just a spooky room.

He took the steps up to the kitchen, emerging to find Moira with her head in the oven. For a moment he thought she was trying to gas herself, in an electric oven, thought of her gone and he found he didn’t move to yank her out.

“Oh, there it’s…” She pulled the top of her head out and smiled at him. “Electric. Silly me.” She pressed the button and turned the knob.

Thomas considered himself with a kind of horrified wonder, his capacity for callousness, and then changed the subject. “Mum, where did Cookie keep the keys?”

She pointed to a small metal cabinet on the wall behind the kitchen door. He opened it and found six key hooks, each occupied, each labeled. “Freezer 3” had a small key on a loop of pink string. He took the key, stepped carefully back down the steep steps to the freezer room and looked across to the padlock.

Small. Brass. He didn’t want to open it. Never wanted to see a mess like Sarah Erroll again. But the longer he left it the more frightened he became. Forcing himself to walk over, he stood in front of it, looking down at the white coffin. Blindly, he fumbled the tiny key against the hole, feeling for the lock, missing, feeling there was something sexual about this and it was terrible and soiling and filthy, but making himself go on because not knowing was worse and he wouldn’t sleep for thinking about it.

The padlock sprang open and dropped into his open hand.

He flicked the hinged shackle up, stood, looked and lifted the lid. A bed of frosty meat. Steaks, chops, venison, joints. A giant leg of lamb. No bodies, no blood, no dead Ella.

“Meat?” Moira had followed him down.

“Yeah.” He slammed the lid shut. “Just meat.”

“Did you think he’d hidden money in there or something?”

“No, I just…I wondered.”

As they waited for the pizzas to cook he cracked open a beer from the fridge and they enjoyed the quiet of the house. Moira explained that Lars’s business collapse had left them with no more than three hundred thousand a year. They’d need to sell the house and live somewhere else. The ATR-42 was owned by the business, as was the house in South Africa that Thomas had never even been to because they always went in term time, and most of the cars and the central London office space and the Stamford Bridge memberships, so they wouldn’t be seeing them again. Thomas didn’t care. He didn’t even like football much.

She took the pizzas out and put them on a chopping board to cut them up. They were delicious.

Thomas watched Moira eat. “Your mouth isn’t dry anymore.”

She looked back at him and knew what he was asking. “You’re right. It’s not. I came off them.”

“When?”

“Five weeks ago. Your father hasn’t been home much.”

Thomas wondered if she knew where Lars had been. Thomas knew exactly where he had been. With her, the other wife.

It was the last conversation he had with his father. Lars took him out the day before autumn term started, to Fortnum’s ice cream parlor, where every second table had a distant-eyed father in a city suit escorting an estranged brat. Thomas was older than the other kids, wondered if his father had even noticed how much older he was.

Thomas looked at Moira. She might know. She might not care.

“Why did he really kill himself?”

Moira shrugged. “They disqualified him. I think he knew he’d never be the big player again. He couldn’t live without the game. He’d no friends left, no other interests, I suppose.” She looked dreamy. “You didn’t know him when he was young. He was fun. Funny. He had a sense of humor back then. And early on, we really loved each other. We had friends. We could have been happy, instead of, you know what happened. God…it’s such a lot to squander.”

Thomas listened, nodding, until Moira looked at him and saw his eyes were red and told him to go to bed.

“I need a shower,” he said quietly. “I really need a shower first.”