‘Are you kidding me?’ she said to John. ‘He’s just drunk, or off his head on something, as usual.’

‘He’s had some ketamine,’ John said. ‘But he’s had a bad reaction. He’s paralyzed, he can’t move a muscle. It’ll wear off eventually, but you’ll need to keep an eye on him.’

John looked at her with a worried expression on his face. She wondered briefly how worried about him he and his colleague would be if they knew what their beloved Nathan had done to Tommy.

John jabbered on. ‘I’ve seen him take shitloads of drugs in my time, Grace, but I’ve never seen him like this. Ket just mustn’t agree with him.’

‘Which idiot gave it to him then?’ she asked.

John and the second man exchanged a surreptitious glance at each other, leaving Grace to suspect she’d rather not know the answer to that question.

‘Well, thank you for getting him home safe,’ she told them and quickly showed them out.

Grace lifted Nathan’s legs onto the sofa and lay him on his side in case he vomited. His skin was hot to the touch and beads of perspiration trickled down his forehead. She put a cold cloth on his forehead in an attempt to cool him down while she pondered their current situation. So, the great Nathan Conlon was paralyzed. And apparently unconscious. A terrible thought forced itself, unbidden, into her consciousness. She could put a pillow over his face right then and he would never wake up. It would all be over. But of course, she would never do that. Or maybe she could call the police? Tell them that he’d murdered Tommy McNulty. No, of course she couldn’t. She’d helped him cover it up. She was an accessory to murder. Nathan had made sure to explain that to her. And then what would happen to Jake? She couldn’t go to prison, and certainly not for her rotten husband.

So instead, she sat on the armchair and watched him, like she would do a small child who had a fever. He looked so helpless and pitiful, lying there, drooling. She remembered how he used to make her heart race just to look at him. How she’d feel dizzy with excitement whenever he touched her. She felt nothing but disgust for him right now. Totally off his face on God knew what. Ketamine, they said. What the hell was that? The great, Nathan Conlon – reduced to a dribbling wreck.

Why would anyone choose to live like that? To want so desperately to escape reality.