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drowned three years ago – that is correct, isn’t it?’
    She nodded.
    ‘And following on that, you spent some months in hospital, in a psychiatric department. During that time you had frequent hallucinations about people drowning.’
    She saw immediately what he was suggesting. ‘Yes, but I was ill then. I’m OK now. I’ve been better for years. What are you trying to imply? That I imagined what happened today? That I made it all up?’
    ‘Did you?’
    ‘No! It happened. I tell you, I heard the girl drowning!’ Her voice rose, out of control, shaky. She swallowed, hating the sound of herself, got up, blundering against the table, barking her shins. ‘I want to go home!’
    ‘Very well, Mrs Grey, but we would like you to come back here tomorrow. We may need to interview you again.’
    They sent her home in a police car. She had left her car at the office. The young policeman driving the car did not speak to her. She sat in the back seat, staring out of the window at passing shops, trying to make sense of everything that had happened.
    How had they found out about Tom’s death and her months in the hospital? They must have talked to Sean, and Terry, who would have told them her history.
    She had accused his son of murder. He was going to be very angry. She couldn’t blame him. He would fire her, of course – he would have to, she could see that. Not to fire her would be to appear to believe her.
    She was so tired by the time she got home that she had a shower, put on a short cotton nightshirt, made herself some toast and peanut butter, and a mug of hot chocolate, her favourite comfort supper and went to bed. Chocolate was sensuous and soothing. She began to use the survival techniques she had learnt in hospital. To switch off your head. Stop thinking. Shut out worry, fear. Just do little tasks quietly, without thinking about them.
    She sat up against banked pillows. The phone began ringing, kept on and on, but she had switched it on to the automatic answering system, so she could ignore it. She would hear the messages tomorrow. By then she might feel stronger.
    But she could not shut off her head. Her mind kept ringing up questions, doubts, uncertainties. What had really happened in that bathroom? If the girl had drowned, where was her body?
    She nibbled toast and sipped the warm, sweet milky drink, feeling the warmth of the bed seeping into her cold flesh.
    She hadn’t imagined what she saw and heard. Or had she? From the moment at the engagement party when she saw that man across the room she had been expecting a death, hadn’t she? When death has come so close it is hard to believe you have shaken it off completely. You keep expecting it.
    When she heard the screams, the splashes, in the bathroom across the courtyard, hadn’t it all seemed inevitable, unrolling like a film she had seen before, knowing exactly what was going to happen? The echoes of past experience always made it easier to believe something was happening again, especially if you have been expecting it. The mind loves patterns, echoes, finding again what it has found before.
    So, had she imagined everything that happened? For a second she doubted her sanity, then she angrily shook her head. No, no, she hadn’t imagined any of it. That girl had drowned. But where was the body?
    It made her head hurt to try to think; she kept going round and round in circles, reaching no real conclusion.
    Opening a drawer in her bedside table she hunted for a bottle of sleeping pills that she had not needed to take for over a year and had hoped she would never need to take again. There were only a few. She shook two out into her palm, swallowed them with some water, and lay down in the shadowy room, her eyes wide open, the pupils dark with images she desperately wanted to forget, her head aching.
    Had somebody drowned in that bathroom or had she dreamt the whole thing? If it had happened, where was the body? Or was she going mad again?
    Next day she was up