“I opened my bedroom door and the heat knocked me off my feet. I mind looking up at the ceiling, and it was black, like there was a sea up there made out of night. One of the cats, I don’t know which one it was, it came running in and it was on fire and I could do nothing for it. I couldn’t get down the stairs, so I crawled to the window and I opened it. I mind falling, but that’s all. They tell me I was lucky I wasn’t killed. The police wouldn’t listen to me. Nobody would. But I telt them, and I’ll tell you, I didn’t start that fire.”

Sara thought of what Mr. Buchanan, the grocer, had said about her father-in-law.

“Did someone want to buy your house?” she asked.

“Aye,” Mary said. “There was a man came round the house one day, hoking about the place. I telt him to get away wi’that, I wasn’t for selling no matter how much he wanted to give me for it.”

“How much did he offer?”

“Och, I don’t know. Maybe a hundred pounds.”

Sara couldn’t help but smile. “I think it might have been more than that.”

“Well, whatever it was, I’d no use for it, so I telt him to get away on back to wherever he’d come from and not to come near my house again.”

“How did he take that?”

“He was annoyed, I think. But men are like that. They think everything’s theirs and nothing’s ours except what they give us. This man was the same. I don’t say bad words, but I near said some to him.”

Mary tilted her head and examined Sara. Sara knew then that she was present, here with her now. She might not have been when Sara first entered the room, but at this moment, Mary was here, fierce and alive. She glanced at the rings on Sara’s finger.

“You’re married,” she said.

“Yes. It was my husband who brought you back here yesterday morning.”

“Oh, aye,” Mary nodded, remembering. “He was awful cross at me, so he was.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t say sorry for him. You didn’t do anything. Anyway, I’m the one who should be sorry. And I am. Barging in on you like that. Sometimes I’m not at myself.”

“It’s all right. Are you—”

“Is he good to you?” Mary asked, cutting off Sara’s question.

Sara searched for an answer. She felt this woman would know a lie when it was uttered.

“He’s not,” Mary said, answering for her.

“We have good days and bad days,” Sara said, a small and resentful anger building in her. “Like all couples do.”