When I returned, I sat down on the sofa, looking at Michael on the floor. I felt numb. Weirdly disconnected from my body. Michael seemed miles away. Yet he was right at my feet. Vast and motionless. All at once, he looked very close. Such a big man. His mouth was open as if in shock, eyes shut. Two buttons on his shirt were undone and there was a yellow curry stain down the front. It took me a while to avert my gaze. I’d never seen him so defenceless. I looked at the phone in my hand. I’d been out all day, so maybe it was out of charge? It wasn’t. There was twenty per cent left. I raised my head. The French door was hanging on one hinge. We had good locks, so the frame had been forced too. The garden, long and thin, was illuminated by the moon. He must have legged it over the wall and vaulted into the next garden, I decided. It was high, the wall, but not insurmountable. I looked at the phone, limp in my hand. I must be in shock, I told myself, although I sort of knew I wasn’t. And I have to tell you, I was neither trembling, nor terribly scared, as I picked up Michael’s wrist again. This time the pulse was barely there. I sat on the sofa and waited. I felt extraordinary. Other-worldly. As if it wasn’t me sitting there at all.

At length, I tapped a number into my phone. Raised it to my ear. When the ambulance arrived, minutes later, from Charing Cross, the young team of paramedics checked Michael quickly on the floor, before placing a blanket calmly around my shoulders. The elder one sat beside me. She told me quietly and very gently that my husband was dead. I wasn’t really surprised. In fact, I wasn’t surprised at all.

4

Michael’s wasn’t the first life I’d had a hand in ending, actually. During the course of my writing career I’ve obviously seen off quite a few individuals; it’s something of an occupational hazard. But fiction aside, in real life, I’d killed someone else. It was an accident, of course, and years ago, but still, to this day, harrowing.