He lay in the dark for a moment, staring at the ceiling, and knew immediately that sleep was not coming back. He got up.
He did not turn on any lights. He knew the house well enough to move through it in the dark, every doorway, every step, every corner. He went to the kitchen, filled a glass of water, and drank it standing at the sink, looking out at the back garden where the mango tree was just a dark shape against the sky.
Benjamin’s voice kept coming back to him.
She looks like her. Victoria. Around the eyes, especially.
He set the glass down. He told himself again that it was nothing. Rebecca was a young woman who happened to have a face that reminded a tired, jet-lagged man of someone from 30 years ago. Benjamin had always had a flair for the dramatic. It was nothing.
He went back to bed. He lay there for 20 minutes looking at the ceiling. Then he got up again.
The storage room was at the far end of the upstairs hallway, a narrow room he used for old files and things he did not need often enough to keep in the study but could not quite bring himself to throw away. He had not been inside it in at least a year, maybe longer.