The kids knew what they were talking about, though. She’ll probably make it through Christmas, one of them told me. But not much longer.

I wasn’t there when she died. I had to go home because Jack was starting school. Funny that I thought it was “home.”

My doctor confirmed what Ellen had already told me. Fractured pelvis. Broken ankle. They were scheduling me for surgery the next day. I was going to be on bed rest for the next six weeks.

I wondered how long Jack’s arm would take to heal.

“I don’t have any family,” I told him. I don’t know why I said that. Perhaps I thought he could prescribe me one.

“Well, you’re going to need to rely on your friends,” he said. “I noticed you had a visitor earlier. She seemed like a close friend, very concerned about you.”

He was talking about Ellen.

“Mmmm,” I said. “I don’t think she’ll actually be visiting again.”

“Oh,” he said. “Well, as I say, you’re going to need support, so you might want to call in some favors. Don’t worry. People love to help in a crisis. It makes them feel good. You know, useful. You’ll be surprised at how your friends will step up.”

“I’m sure I will be,” I said.

I couldn’t tell him that there was no one to step up, that I didn’t have that ordinary social framework, that there was just me, that there was no one I could possibly ask for help. This man had no idea that people like me existed: people who look and sound well educated and normal on the outside but are actually as lonely and crazy as a homeless bum.

Then I remembered that the difference between me and a homeless person is that I have money. I’ll pay someone to be supportive, I thought. There must be some sort of a service for people like me.

“You’ll get through this,” said the doctor.

I tried to smile politely, but my facial muscles rebelled as if it was an unfamiliar move, as if I’d never smiled before.

The doctor pressed the morphine clicker into my hand and patted my shoulder. “Give yourself some pain relief. Enjoy it while it lasts. We’ll be weaning you off soon enough.”

I pressed the red button.

Jack was sound asleep when Ellen got home. He was lying in his bed curled up on his side, looking tiny and pale, the arm in the cast over the blanket.

“The doctor prescribed him some strong painkillers,” said Patrick quietly, as they stood together in his bedroom looking down at him. He pulled the quilt up and let his hand rest briefly on Jack’s forehead. “He’ll probably sleep for hours.”

As they walked down the stairs together, Ellen felt Patrick’s fury rise steadily like a boiling kettle. They went into the living room and he began pacing back and forth, talking nonstop. He hadn’t yet asked where Ellen had been. He wanted to tell her about how he’d already phoned the police and they’d told him to come in to make a full report and begin the process of taking out a restraining order against Saskia, how Jack’s injuries could have been so much worse, how he thought Jack was dead when he saw him lying at the bottom of the stairs, and did she think that too, and that he should have taken the restraining order out so much sooner and he’d never forgive himself for that, never.

“I’ve been trying to work out how she got in,” he said finally.

“I don’t know,” said Ellen tiredly. While Patrick had been talking, she had lain down on her grandfather’s leather couch and put her forearm over her eyes. Patrick had offered her a cup of tea when she first got home, but so far it hadn’t materialized. “I moved the key after the last time.”

“What?” said Patrick.

Ellen realized her mistake too late. She opened her eyes. Patrick had stopped pacing and was standing frozen in the middle of the room. “What ‘last time’?”

She opened her mouth to speak and closed it again. She was desperately trying to find the right balance between honesty and enraging him further. She gave up.

“She left biscuits on the doorstep when we went up to the mountains,” she said. “I think she might have cooked them in my kitchen.”

“What? She broke in before and you neglected to tell me?”

“Well, I might have been wrong.” Ellen sat up and folded her arms protectively across her stomach. “I just had a feeling.” Patrick was looking at her almost as if he wanted to hit her. An image came into her mind of the way he’d grabbed Saskia by the shoulders as if he was about to throw her up against the wall.

“I’m not Saskia,” she said involuntarily.

“I know you’re not,” he said with an impatient, disgusted move of his hand. “But why did you not mention this to me?”

“I didn’t want to upset you,” said Ellen. “I know how much it upsets you.”

“You threw them out straightaway, of course.”

“Of course,” said Ellen. Honesty was often overrated.

“Because they probably had rat poison in them. Or, Christ, I don’t know, anthrax!”

“She doesn’t want to kill you, Patrick. She loves you.”

“How do you know what she wants?” said Patrick. “You have no idea what she wants. God Almighty, the woman watched us sleep last night!”

“I just talked to her at the hospital,” said Ellen. “I think it’s finished. I really do. She promised me. Anyway, she’s going to be stuck in bed for a long time.”