that I should have been trying to record her, though I didn’t know how subtly to get to my phone.
She plucked at the maroon jacket, scratching the fabric with her nails, and then scratching at her wrists. Her skin looks sore at the moment. ‘And his pupils, Verity. It was so weird. They were just black, like an animal’s, and he was clutching at his neck and his mouth was hanging open still, and all this saliva everywhere, like a dog frothing. You know? I’ve never seen it, but how you imagine a dog with rabies, like that. It was inhuman. He was writhing, contorting like his body wasn’t his; his forehead was covered in sweat. He was still looking at me. The look in his eyes . . . And he had been so sick – it was all over his shirt and the kitchen floor, and I couldn’t find any kitchen paper, so I was using loo roll.’
‘Was he still at the table, at that point, Ailsa?’ It was something the police had kept asking.
‘I think he had left the table. He’d slid off his chair onto the floor.’
‘So he was on the floor. And you were – standing? Or had you got down?’
Crows flapped in the branches behind us. Her voice rose. ‘I’d got down. I’d got the water.’
‘Oh yes.’
A flighty wind was playing in the tree next to her, leaves spiralling past her shoulders.
‘If I’d rung an ambulance immediately would I have saved him? Was it already too late?’
I opened my mouth to answer, trying to control my expression. If only I had been near that night. If only I’d known he was home. ‘I don’t know.’
Maudie had disappeared from view, and even as I was concentrating on Ailsa, I made room for a small amount of mild panic. I fought the urge to stand up and call.
Ailsa’s head was making small darting movements, her eyes flickering with shadows. ‘They said the hemlock was what stopped him from breathing?’
It was a couple of seconds before I realised it was a question. I said: ‘I believe it paralyses the nervous and respiratory systems, and that is what leads to death.’
Her hands had fallen limply by her side. ‘I often said I wished him dead.’ She had begun to cry. ‘That things would be so much better if he were. But they’re not. It’s not fair. Everything always goes wrong for me. I wish I could turn back time.’
I felt impatient with her then and I stood up. ‘We’d better get going,’ I said crisply, and I pulled her to her feet – all those years fussing about her weight; I’m not sure these days she’s even eight stone – and, once I’d pinpointed the dog, I sort of frogmarched her home.
She’s asleep now. We’ve made her a nest in the front room, in one corner of the sofa, and she is conked out there. She was sweet when we got in. She held my hand to her cheek when I brought her her rooibos tea, said thank you for standing by her. I’ve been watching her – the tiny muscular flickers under her eyelids, the way her mouth opens, blown apart by her breath, then gently falls back into place. It’s a dear little face, really, heart-shaped, with the widow’s peak (ironic now) in her tawny hair, those distinctively upward-turning green eyes. The small dent of an old scar runs for an inch or so under her hairline. I don’t know how it got there. There is so much about her I don’t know.
She has a meeting with the QC this week. Until now I haven’t been too worried; I’ve been complacent. I thought it would work itself out. I told myself nothing on the surface was wrong with their marriage – they were the perfect couple. The case would be dropped, I assumed, or dismissed; after expressions of unending gratitude for all that I’ve done, she and the children would move back next door. Now, I don’t know. My head is full of thoughts. Who is she? How have we come to this?
Her tone this afternoon – I keep thinking about it. There was shock there, of course, and self-pity: her own particular ‘why does this have to happen to me?’ vein (the consequence, I think, of being slightly spoilt). And fear, and horror – watching Tom dissolve into something animal and unrecognisable before her eyes: ‘like a dog frothing’. All of this is understandable. Each