“You might have imagined it,” said Julia.

“Probably not,” said Madeline. “Your sense of smell is so acute when you’re pregnant. When I was having Isabella, I once smelled—”

“No crumbs?” interrupted Julia. “Or any other signs? Things moved in your cupboard?”

“The opposite of crumbs,” said Ellen. “My oven was too clean. I think she cleaned it after she used it.”

“Why would she come to your kitchen and cook?” mused Julia. “What point is this lunatic trying to make? What’s the message she’s trying to give you?”

“I hate cooking in someone else’s kitchen,” commented Madeline. “I can never find what I want.”

Julia blinked slowly at her and then turned back to Ellen.

“What did Patrick say?”

“I didn’t tell him,” said Ellen. “When we got back from the mountains, he had to go straight to the office. He just dropped Jack and me off. There’s no point telling him. It just upsets him.”

She didn’t tell them that she and Patrick hadn’t been talking by the time they got back from the mountains.

“Did you tell Jack?” said Julia.

“I just said a friend of mine left them,” said Ellen. “He wasn’t that interested.”

“You didn’t let Jack eat them, did you?” asked Madeline.

“No,” said Ellen. “I thought I’d better not. I distracted him with chocolate biscuits instead. We ate them while we did his homework.”

“Biscuits before dinner,” murmured Madeline.

“But you ate them yourself! You shouldn’t have even touched them,” said Julia. “They could have been poisoned.”

“Not to mention the danger to your unborn child,” said Madeline.

Now the two of them were nodding in complete agreement, both with serious, responsible expressions on their faces.

“I know,” said Ellen. “I didn’t even think.”

And they’d smelled so good. It was ironic, but she’d been upset and disconcerted by the sight of the biscuits, and then, when she pulled one out and held it by her fingertips, it felt like exactly the thing she needed to make herself feel better. And then it was so good, she ate another one. So eating the biscuits made her feel better for the shock of receiving them. It wasn’t until after she’d eaten three in a row that it even occurred to her that they could have been poisoned, and then she’d spent the rest of the evening secretly hyperventilating and Googling things like “How long till poison takes effect?”

“You’ve been so weirdly flippant about this whole thing from the beginning.” Julia spoke at the same time as she tried to catch a waiter’s attention on the other side of the room. “This woman came into your home. She violated your privacy. Why aren’t you terrified? And why is this waiter pretending he can’t see me? You can see me, oh, yes, you can!”

“I don’t know,” said Ellen. “I am a little bit terrified.”

Ever since the incident with the biscuits, she’d felt a sense of slight breathlessness, as though she was running late for something important. The previous night she’d woken up just before dawn with the thought clear in her head: Something bad is going to happen. Saskia wasn’t going to stop until something happened. But what? What needed to happen?

It seemed to her that it wasn’t about Saskia and Patrick anymore. It was about Saskia and Ellen. It was between the two women. And if she could just work out the right thing to do, or the right words to say, maybe she could end it. But what to say? What to do? What? It felt like that endless moment just after you’ve knocked something breakable off a table, and instead of grabbing it in midair, you freeze with one arm outstretched, and after it smashes you think, “I could have stopped that from happening.”

“You should be completely terrified,” said Madeline sternly. “All the time.”

“Thank you so much,” said Ellen. “That’s extremely comforting.”

“What I don’t understand is why you haven’t got the police involved,” said Julia. “There should be a restraining order out against her, and then each time she breaks it, you call the cops, wham, she’s in handcuffs. Problem solved.”

“Patrick did go to the police once,” said Ellen. “And he keeps talking about going again, but then he doesn’t ever seem to get around to it. Also, I don’t think it’s quite as easy as you describe.”

“I’ve heard those restraining orders are pretty useless,” agreed Madeline.

“You go to the police then,” ordered Julia, pointing at Ellen, and ignoring Madeline.

There had been a moment, when she was holding her oven mitt, her grandmother’s oven mitt, thinking about the fact that Saskia had probably used it, slid her hands inside its soft cloth to protect her hands, when Ellen had been filled with outrage at the sheer audacity of this woman. She’d marched toward the phone to call the police, but then she’d stopped before she even picked up the receiver. How could she prove it? Sniff the air, Officer, can’t you smell the scent of baking? And just look how clean my oven is! I never left it that clean! She would have looked like a fool.

And besides, it was up to Patrick, and for whatever the reason, he still wasn’t ready to get the police involved.

“She’s never showed any signs of being violent,” she said feebly.