Chapter 7 — No House Key
Ottilie’s key still opened the front door.
It was the only one that did.
She entered the Holland Park house at nine the morning after the injunction with Felicity’s assistant and a locksmith instructed to observe rather than alter anything.
The alarm panel accepted her code. The hall lights came on automatically.
Fresh lilies stood on the console beneath a drawing Ottilie had bought before she met Kit.
Nothing looked disturbed until she reached the archive room at the back of the ground floor.
Her brass key stopped halfway into the lock.
The locksmith photographed the cylinder and read the manufacturer’s date. It had been supplied six weeks earlier, before the show and before any public allegation. The installation invoice, visible through a clear folder on the hall desk, named Harcourt she wore borrowed trousers and Devika’s old jumper.
The intimacy of two nights ago lived in objects that had not received the news.
She opened the wardrobe and took enough clothing for a season, not a weekend.
Coats. Work trousers. Underwear. The black dress Kit had bought for their last anniversary remained on its hanger.
So did the gown she wore to his father’s memorial.
Selection became easier when she chose by ownership rather than memory.
Her passport was in the locked bedroom safe.
The code worked. Inside were jewellery certificates, two emergency envelopes of cash and a velvet case containing her wedding jewellery when she was not wearing it.
Ottilie took the documents, her grandmother’s earrings and the cash.
She left the diamond necklace given by Kit’s mother because it had never felt fully hers.
The assistant wrote each item on the collection list. The process was humiliating in an ordinary way: six pairs of shoes, one winter dressing gown, prescription skin cream, the charger Kit had put on his side of the bed because she always lost it.
In the kitchen, the household account card declined when Ottilie tried to pay the locksmith’s attendance fee. The card had Harcourt she loosened a screw and tried again.
The first night, bakery trays woke her at four. She knew the sound from Devika’s warning and didn’t reach for a security panel. By seven, she had showered, made a list of clothes still at Holland Park and confirmed a paid appointment with an independent archivist.
Leaving had not produced peace. It had produced a door Kit could not open and work scheduled under her own name.