I lumber upstairs, feeling light-headed. As if I am about to vomit. My legs are no longer legs, but stone pillars. Try as I might, I can hardly move them. Every step a mountain, I eventually climb onto the landing and hobble towards my favourite landscape painting. The one Rupert bought me on our honeymoon. I stop in front of it and close my eyes. For a second I am back on the beach with him holding hands, sun and sea spray in my eyes. He tells a joke. We stand looking at the sea, laughing. Sand between my toes. The lacy edge of a wave tickling my feet. The water feels warm. The water is soothing me. My dizziness is increasing. My body is swaying. I continue to stagger along the landing.

I sigh with relief as I enter the comfort of my bedroom. Pink, and pretty, and frilly. The floral patterns wrap themselves around me, and their familiarity lifts me. I sink into my bed. The mattress is soft. It caresses and engulfs me. My eyelids are heavy like my legs. Someone has put weights at the base of my eyelashes. I cannot keep my eyes open a second longer. I close them. I am no longer in my bedroom, but walking along that beach at Mawgan Porth with Rupert again. The first day of our honeymoon. Rupert young again. Rupert and I in the first throes of our love.

Then blackness descends.

139

Hayley

You and Saffron left early for work. I took the boys to school and returned home. I’ve put the washing in, tidied the kitchen, and there is still no sign of Caprice. She was so tired last night. I will make her favourite breakfast and take it to her bedroom with the newspaper. Breakfast in bed for a treat.

I boil two eggs for six minutes, just the way she likes them. I toast two slices of her favourite ciabatta bread. I pop into the garden, pick a red rose and place it on the tray with her food, coffee and carefully folded Daily Telegraph. Pleased with my efforts, I race upstairs, looking forward to giving her a special surprise.

I knock on the door. No reply. I knock again. Still no reply.

‘Caprice,’ I shout.

Silence.

I hold the tray carefully pressed into my stomach, turn the door handle and push the door open with my shoulder. Caprice, but not Caprice, is lying on her back. Instantaneously, without knowing why, I know she is dead. Even though I have never seen a dead person before. The difference between life and death so obvious yet so indefinable. A slight almost imperceptible stiffness.

The tray falls from my hands and crashes to the floor. The eggs crack across the carpet, coffee falls in a torrent and the red rose tumbles to the floor, followed by the vase.