The Death of Us

The novel alternates between two timelines and two perspectives. In the present, Isabel Nolan, a fifty-five-year-old playwright, and her ex-husband Edward Hennessy, a litigation partner, attend the sentencing hearing for Nigel Wood, the man who invaded their South London home and raped Isabel 25 years earlier. Present-day chapters alternate with flashbacks spanning their relationship. Isabel's chapters take the form of a written address to Wood and serve as the victim impact statement she ultimately chooses not to deliver in court.

The novel opens the day after Isabel's fifty-fifth birthday, when a detective informs her that the South London Invader has been identified as Nigel Wood, a seventy-year-old retired policeman from Dorset. Wood was caught after his nephew submitted a saliva sample to an ancestry database that matched DNA evidence from multiple crime scenes. Isabel calls Edward. They have been divorced for years; he lives with his partner, Amy. Months later, a detective delivers items Wood kept as trophies, including Isabel's engagement ring and a teddy bear in a navy jumper. Isabel is asked to prepare a victim personal statement.

Edward arrives at the Rosewood Hotel in London and finds Isabel staying there as well. They share drinks, falling into their familiar banter. Isabel asks if he will hold her hand walking into court. He does not answer.

In flashback, Isabel recounts meeting Edward in 1990. She is nineteen, recently discharged after six months of hospitalization for depression. Their mutual friend Alison arranges the meeting. Over drinks, they connect instantly, but Edward reveals he has a girlfriend. Their courtship unfolds through nightly phone calls and visits. At Easter 1991, visiting Edward's dying grandmother's bungalow, Isabel tells him she loves him. They sleep together for the first time, graduate, move to London, and marry in 1997.

At the Old Bailey, London's central criminal court, the prosecution summarizes Wood's crimes: petty thefts escalating to home invasions targeting couples and nine murders between 2002 and 2004. Wood served as a police officer throughout. Edward learns that Detective Chief Inspector Etta Eliogu, a friend to both Edward and Isabel, once organized a support group for male victims. Edward attended once, met Andrew Pearson, the surviving husband from Wood's final attack, and never returned.

Isabel confronts Edward about his refusal to give a victim statement and his decades of silence about the attack. Edward insists he has nothing left to say. Meanwhile, Amy arrives at the hotel after seeing a newspaper photograph of Edward and Isabel leaving court hand in hand. She pleads with Edward to come home; he refuses, and Amy departs.

Isabel narrates the night of May 26, 2001. Wood enters their bedroom at 3:00 a.m., holds a knife to Isabel's temple, and forces Edward to bind her wrists and ankles before leading him from the room. Wood rapes Isabel repeatedly over five and a half hours, alternating brutality with grotesque tenderness. He stabs her beneath the collarbone and steals the engagement ring and teddy bear. After Wood leaves, Edward appears at the bedroom door, unrestrained and weeping. He cuts her bindings with kitchen scissors. Isabel notices he has dressed himself before freeing her, and she hates him for it.

The aftermath devastates them. Isabel gives her police statement to Etta, who treats her with directness and empathy. Isabel deteriorates: she stops working, lies about attending therapy, and sleeps on the bedroom floor. Edward buries himself in work. When Isabel discovers his secret promotion to partner through a colleague's phone call, she realizes he is ashamed of her.

Edward takes a leave, and they spend five months in southern France, where Isabel begins writing and their intimacy returns. Journalist Patrick Royce tracks them down with news that the Invader has begun murdering couples, and they return to London. Isabel finishes her first play, produced to acclaim. Edward asks to try for a baby. Isabel agrees but secretly continues taking the pill, terrified of motherhood while Wood remains free. When Edward discovers the deception, he is devastated. Isabel calls him a coward, meaning his emotional reticence, but Edward hears judgment on his behavior the night of the attack. Isabel does not correct him.

In 2004, Etta responds alone to Wood's final attack at the Pearson home, where Saoirse Pearson has been killed. Chasing Wood through the garden, Etta is stabbed with a kitchen knife but survives.

The couple's relationship is rescued, briefly, by Nina Bosko, the orphaned daughter of two of Wood's murder victims who found her parents' bodies at age four. In 2009, Etta arranges for Edward and Isabel to meet Nina, now 10 and living unhappily with her elderly grandparents. Over months, the three develop a genuine bond. Edward says he loves Nina. Isabel confesses her fear about motherhood and apologizes for the birth control deception. Edward replies: "I know" (262).

In 2016, Isabel spirals into affairs and self-destruction. Edward flies home to find her semiconscious on the bedroom floor, surrounded by empty blister packs. He drives her to a treatment facility. At the entrance, she asks if he will be waiting. Edward says no: "It's never been a question of loving you, Isabel. It's a question of how much loving you I can take" (300). They divorce. Etta dies of liver cancer in the years that follow, never having seen Wood caught.

During the sentencing week, Edward and Isabel visit Freddie Thomson, Edward's closest friend, who is dying of alcohol-related illness. Freddie tells Edward to tell Isabel everything and calls their reconciliation his dying wish. Walking to their old house on Camberwell Grove afterward, Edward surprises himself by announcing he will deliver a statement.

On the final day, Nina begins reading her statement, but Wood gives a contemptuous snort and she freezes. Edward climbs the dock barrier and seizes Wood by the shirt before security officers pull him away. The judge permits him to return. Edward delivers his statement, revealing for the first time what happened in the spare room. Wood ordered him to lie face down and told him: If he stayed, Wood would kill only him; if he moved, Wood would kill Isabel. Edward did not move through the entire assault. He tells the court he spent decades ashamed but now understands he did the only thing he could. Isabel is called to the stand and says: "I have nothing to say. He does not deserve a word of it" (269).

Wood receives a whole-life order, meaning he will never be eligible for parole. Edward returns to his room to find Andrew Pearson sitting on the bed with a pocketknife. Pearson has been the one following Edward all week, delivering the apple juice, laying out the suit, watching from the arcade. He accuses Edward of promising to help and then abandoning him. When Isabel knocks, Pearson turns the knife on himself. Edward wrestles the blade away, cutting his own hand, and presses a shirt to Pearson's wound.

Edward spends Christmas in the hospital after surgery on his severed tendons. Isabel brings him the Oxford bear and a stack of papers: her written victim impact statement. On Christmas Day, he takes a taxi to a restaurant in Whitechapel, where Nina and Isabel wait. Isabel's manuscript, which constitutes the novel itself, concludes not as an address to Nigel Wood but as a declaration to Edward: "See? See how I love you. In spite of our small cruelties, and bigger mistakes. I love you. Then. And still" (316). Edward sits at the table, puts down his menu, and turns to talk to his family.