She knelt and pushed the bed back against the wall.

Oh God

She bowed her head, wondering if she’d left it too late.

God Almighty

She should have taken better care.

One-two.

It was inside the room, it was with her.

She made her choice.

She closed her eyes.

Chapter 28

28

‘I should have been quicker,’ said Gina. ‘I left it far too long before I decided to come and see what was keeping you.’

‘There’s no point thinking like that,’ said Nell. ‘It doesn’t do anyone any good.’

They were sitting in the garden, Nell and Gina. Chris was in the hospital, thirty miles up the coast, with Maude. They had been assured there was no need for him to be there. Maude was responding well to treatment and there was nothing he could do – but he couldn’t, wouldn’t, be parted from her.

Nell drank her tea, regular builder’s tea today, and looked at the view. Late spring was tumbling into summer, the garden was flourishing, and purple and white columbine nodded their heads in the breeze. After gentle inquiries about Maude’s health, the conversation had circled back inevitably to Carolyn. ‘And you are not to blame,’ she said, ‘for her . . . fixation.’

‘Well. I should have realised there was something up.’

‘How? You couldn’t have known. Nobody else did, apart from poor Evie. She knew something was wrong long before the rest of us. Really, Gina, it’s OK.’

‘Only just.’

Sepsis. Hard to diagnose, and no one’s fault, they’d said at the hospital, a complication from the cut on her foot seemed to be the general consensus. There had been a difficult twenty-four hours, but Maude had stabilised, and the prognosis was good.

Once she had started to improve, Chris and Nell had begun commuting to the hospital. But that morning, when Nell had said she was feeling tired, Chris hadn’t tried to persuade her to drive up with him. There was still so much to say, and neither of them seemed to have a clue as to where to start. Nell had spent the morning pottering around the house, unable to settle to anything before deciding to call on Gina.

‘So, have I got this right? Maude had the shoe all along?’

‘She couldn’t bear to give it up, and Carolyn – well, she persuaded her she was on her side, that she’d look after it for her. She had her believing that I’d picked on her at school, that I deserved to be – upset.’

That was as much as she’d been able to piece together. And while Chris had apologised, for leaving them, for not being there, Nell was far from sure that she herself had been forgiven for the mistakes she had made, the poor decisions. ‘The other stuff, the things she’d put in the attic, the pebbles, the salt – I think Maude was trying to protect herself.’

‘Against?’