Eleanor collapsed onto the chair. Her shoulders heaved up and down, wracked with sobs it seemed, though I couldn’t be certain. Soon she half-stood and reached out for a bottle on the table. Her fingers closed around it and she sat back heavily, unscrewing the lid and tipping it to her lips, her face contorted with pain. She placed the bottle back on the table, then struggled to retrieve something from her pocket which she placed beside the alcohol.

Her small brown bottle of pills.

For a while she stared at it in some sort of motionless trance, then in one sudden movement leant forward and snatched it up. She twisted it open and upended it into her hand, shaking the bottle vigorously. I watched as she painstakingly laid a line of yellow pills in front of her. She then appeared to count them, touching each one lightly with the tip of her finger, her mouth moving almost imperceptibly.

‘Seventeen,’ I whispered. ‘There are seventeen.’

She picked two of the pills up, put them in her mouth, and washed them down with more alcohol.

I scanned the binoculars over to Max’s study, to the French windows on the far side of the house, but the curtains were drawn, a dim light hazing the fabric. The internal door, too, was closed. My heart quickened.

Eleanor moved and caught my attention. Again she’d reached forward. This time she collected up a number of pills and dropped them into her cupped hand, tiny yellow eggs in a trembling nest. Swiftly she threw her hand up and swallowed them.

‘Too many. You’re taking too many.’

As I realised what I was watching, what she was doing, my body grew rigid. I pressed the binoculars so hard against my face it began to hurt. I should stop her. I knew that. I should yell out. Run along the path and through the gate and up the lawn, screaming her name and shouting for Max. I should have talked to her. Told her not to. Told her this wasn’t the answer.

But I didn’t.

I sat and watched her swallow the pills in twos and threes. This woman who accused me of things I didn’t do. Who thrust a knife into my brother. Who kept me from the house. She didn’t deserve any of what she had. Her life was perfect yet she spat in its face. As I watched her I saw the deep unhappiness Jago, my mother and Edie had spoken of. How had I been so blind to it before? Eleanor Davenport was broken, rotten inside, past helping. It wasn’t my place to stop her. It was kinder to let her go, like a sick and dying animal. So I watched as she delivered the last of the pills to her mouth and then with a shaking hand she upended the bottle and drained it.