‘You’re lucky,’ said her husband, in a shaky voice. ‘Do you know how lucky you are? That’s an expensive brand. Some brands are nothing but fat, and tubes, and minced up gristle. Mind you, I should think that even Alpo has its fair share of offals.’

Elizabeth chewed and chewed, tried to swallow, and gagged. Saliva and half-chewed dog meat trailed from her lips.

‘God,’ breathed John Frederick Walters, ‘what are you doing? What about Jenna? How’s Jenna going to survive if her mother doesn’t eat dog meat to turn into milk? How are any of us going to survive?’

Elizabeth was weeping. She gagged again, and held her hand over her mouth to keep the food inside.

John Frederick Walters told Fort Wayne police officers early Friday morning that ‘I acted quick.’ He said, ‘I never thought the day would have to come when a wife of mine would have to eat dog food to nourish our baby, and I never thought the day would have to come when my girls would go without a meal. I’m not rich, I know that, and we could never afford much since my accident, but this is America, isn’t it? How come suddenly there was nothing to eat, and no prospect of nothing to eat?’

As Elizabeth choked over her mouthful of dog food, John Frederick Walters pulled down the frayed cord which was suspended over the stove for drying the girls’ undervests during the winter, twisted it twice around his hands, and then once around Elizabeth’s neck. She fell backwards to the floor, hitting her head on the beige linoleum. Her eyes bulged at John Frederick Walters in horror, but she was unable to speak, unable to breathe, and her face turned grey and shiny, the same colour as grey leather shoes. After five minutes, with the string cutting into his bare hands John Frederick Walters decided she was dead.

He went upstairs, leaving Elizabeth lying in the kitchen. Alice and Wendy shared a bed in the small second-storey bedroom over the living-room. They were both asleep in the darkness, in their white flock cotton nightdresses, and John Frederick Walters stood at the end of the bed watching them – their upraised wrists, traced with blueish veins, their thin ankles. He reached down and held Alice’s bare toes in his hand, gently and lovingly. He wanted to kill them, he knew he had to, but he didn’t know how. How do you kill children you love? How can you instantly end their lives without hurting them?