Why Did You Lie? by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir, Katherine Manners, Hodder, Stoughton

dirty sock at him. Coffee slopped out of his mug and he dried the splash with the sock that he had caught in mid-air.
    ‘Would you mind waking him? I need you two to help.’ She made a face. ‘I want to blitz the whole house today. Get rid of everything associated with those people.’
    Nói tutted. ‘Are you thinking of the coat? We hardly need to go through the whole house; they’re sure to let us know if they’ve forgotten anything else.’
    ‘I doubt it. They left a bag of dirty laundry by the washing machine. I feel like throwing the whole lot in the bin. I’m certainly not going to wash it.’
    It was Nói’s turn to grimace. Other people’s dirty clothes revolted him as much as a clump of a stranger’s pubic hair. If it were up to him they would set fire to the bag. ‘What kind of idiots are they?’
    ‘Don’t ask me. Maybe they overslept and had to leave the house in a hurry. I can’t find the sheets that should’ve been on our bed either. And when I looked under the bottom sheet I noticed that the mattress protector’s missing too. It’s not in the laundry basket, anyway. And Púki’s litter tray was absolutely disgusting, as if they hadn’t let him out the whole time they were here. I almost threw up when I emptied it earlier.’ She sounded aggrieved. The house swap had been her brainwave: Nói had been utterly opposed to it at first, although he had caved in eventually. Impersonal hotels with clean towels and minibars were more up his street. All the time they were there he had lived in fear of opening a cupboard in search of a glass and finding something excruciatingly personal, like a sex toy or a leaflet on living with prostate cancer. Things he would rather not know about.
    The only reason he had given in was that Vala had been in such a state before the trip. Her sudden decision that they should go abroad had come in the wake of a bout of depression she’d suffered in the run-up to Christmas. She hadn’t seemed to care that it would mean taking Tumi out of school after term had started. Nói hadn’t wanted to rock the boat, and in the event he was glad he had gone along with her wishes because she was soon back in her usual good mood. She was the perfect woman in his perfect life and he was prepared to go to great lengths to keep her happy.
    ‘There’s no way they can have overslept. The flights to America leave in the late afternoon.’
    ‘They were travelling onwards to Europe.’
    ‘Jesus. Then I hope you haven’t invited them to stay here on their return journey. Is that why they left all their stuff behind?’ Nói felt overwhelmed with dismay. If that was the case, he would soon be getting that minibar and room service after all – he would damn well stay at a hotel if these people were going to make themselves at home in his house again.
    ‘No, you idiot. Of course not. They’ll only be stopping over to change planes.’
    ‘Couldn’t we take their crap out to the airport, then? Surely the airline can put out an announcement for them to come and fetch their dirty laundry.’
    ‘Yeah, right. The airport has a dedicated team for that.’ Vala slammed the washing machine shut. ‘Don’t be such a fool. Of course they don’t – they blow up any luggage that gets left behind.’ She stood up. ‘We’ll just have to post it to them. Collect all the bits and pieces we find when we spring-clean the house and chuck them in a box.’
    Nói sighed to himself. ‘Spring-clean the whole house?’ There was always a chance he’d misheard.
    ‘From top to bottom. There’s an odd smell I want to get rid of.’
    Nói sniffed the air and though he couldn’t remember what the house normally smelt like, it was still there, that faint, alien taint that had greeted them on their arrival this morning. It was neither acrid nor nasty, but disconcerting nevertheless. Still, he could live with it; he didn’t know how one got rid of smells but assumed it would involve a major – and