Then there was silence. Helen stared with disbelieving eyes at the sight of Peter impaled on a jagged shard of glass, blood seeping from his chest where it had pierced all the way through his chest, turning the glass from red to black. He had a look of utter disbelief on his face, shock draining the colour from his skin. For a moment he squirmed, his hands flailing loosely. He looked at his chest, then at Helen, then back to his chest as though it would magically correct itself.

His face was ghostly pale, depleted of all blood, which was now pooling and dripping onto the stairs.

Helen was the first to move. She rushed over to him, but didn’t know what to do. She crouched in the blood, her hands held out uselessly.

She could see the life seeping out of him. His body slumped in on itself and she heard his last slow breath, like a sigh. He died with a look of astonishment on his face, as though he had spent his last moments wondering how his life had come to this.

Hugh sat heavily on the stairs and started to mutter into his hands.

“Dad?”

Matt stood at the foot of the stairs, looking up at the carnage.

“Matt, it was an accident. A horrible accident. Go and check on the girls. Now,” Helen said.

“Dad!” Hugh ignored him. He turned his shocked face to Helen. “Helen? What should I do?”

“Matt, it’s ok. I’ve got this. Go on.”

He backed away, his eyes swivelling to the sight of the body impaled on the glass.

“Hugh, we need to think. Help me,” Helen said with urgency. Here she was, covering over the marks in the dust once more. “We could say self-defence. He attacked you in your own home. You fought back. He fell. Help me get him down, so that it looks like we tried to help him at least.”

Hugh was sitting and looking at his hands like Macbeth.

“HUGH!”

He jumped, looked at Helen vacantly, looked away again, still muttering unintelligible words.

“Hugh, think of Lydia! She is downstairs. Help me.”

At the mention of Lydia, he got to his feet, swayed a little and Helen worried he would fall too, then he seemed to pull himself together enough to help Helen lift Peter and lay him on the carpet. There was so much blood and Helen could feel herself starting to lose her grip on reality.

Hugh inhaled a long, shuddering breath into his lungs. “Go and check on the kids, take them outside,” he said, sounding a little more like himself. “I will take care of this.”