‘Emergency personnel are on the way, ma’am. Please remain calm and stay on the line.’

Stephanie is barely listening to what the 911 operator is saying to her. Stephanie keeps repeating, ‘Oh God, oh God,’ into the phone as she stares at the carnage. She needs to remove her glass from the table to wash it. But then she realizes she probably shouldn’t open the cupboards and disturb the mess there, and she doesn’t want the operator to hear her washing the glass. She sobs, ‘Please hurry!’ and disconnects the call. She rinses the glass and slips it into the dishwasher. Then she turns around and surveys the scene. Patrick is slumped over the kitchen table with a gaping wound in his head. His eyes are wide open. On the table is the bottle of whisky and a single glass – and his fingerprints are all over both. She was in the shower when she heard the gun go off. It’s okay that she’s been in the kitchen, that there’s blood on the bottom of her robe. Any wife would look.

She stares at her husband until she becomes aware of flashing red lights in the dark outside, through the wavy glass of her front door, and hears heavy steps coming up the walk. She somehow makes her way to the front door and opens it wide. Police and ambulance personnel have arrived at the same time; they spill into the vestibule.

Now that she’s done it, shock sets in. She begins to shake uncontrollably as she points them towards the kitchen. One police officer and the paramedics enter the kitchen; another police officer remains beside her, near the front door, watching her. Stephanie lets herself fall apart. She thinks she’s convincing. She just has to be careful what she says.

The officer helps her – crying, incoherent – into the living room and onto the sofa. ‘Put your head between your knees,’ the woman says. She sits beside Stephanie, solicitous, concerned, one hand lightly on her back.

Stephanie keeps her head down and tries to listen. It’s quiet in the kitchen. There’s nothing they can do for him. More arrive; suddenly there are many people in her house, and she can’t keep track of anything. There’s too much going on, too much noise. She can’t think straight. She has to pull herself together. She must be careful now, not make a mistake. She can hear murmured voices, the sound of photographs being taken.

She’s still slumped on the sofa; she doesn’t know how long she’s been sitting there – time has stopped. It’s sinking in. She’s rid herself of him and all his baggage. He can’t ruin her life any more. And she’s still here, she and the twins. She still has the house, her money. Everything is going to be fine, as long as she keeps her nerve.

The police officer who has been in the kitchen approaches. He sits down in an armchair across from her, and leans in.

‘I’m so sorry for your loss,’ he says. He looks weary, and he seems to mean it.

She looks at him and swallows. Her focus is coming back. She’s starting to recover from the shock of what she’s done.

‘Can you tell us what happened here tonight?’ he asks.

She takes a deep breath. Clutches the tissues in her hands that the woman officer beside her provided her with at some point. ‘I was in the shower.’ She pulls the robe more tightly around herself, as if embarrassed that she is naked underneath. Her hair is still damp and tangled down her back – it has soaked through her robe, and she’s cold. ‘Patrick was drinking in the kitchen when I went upstairs. I was just finishing my shower when I heard the shot. I ran down to the kitchen and – I found him—’ She breaks down, sobbing, and it’s heartfelt, it really is. She’s been through so much, lost so much.

‘Take your time,’ the officer says, and waits patiently.

Finally she pulls herself together and tells them, ‘He’s been under a lot of stress lately.’ She stops. They probably aren’t aware yet of who Patrick is.

‘What kind of stress?’

She says, her voice bleak, ‘I told him, tonight, after supper, that I was going to divorce him.’ And then she tells them everything, who he is, and the same lies she told Hanna and her attorney about his state of mind. When she finishes, the man is watching her as if he, too, is overwhelmed by their troubles. Finally he asks, ‘Do you know where the gun came from?’

‘It’s probably his gun,’ she whispers. ‘He keeps it in a safe upstairs in our bedroom closet.’

‘Can you show us?’

She gets up off the sofa and leads them upstairs to the bedroom. She points at the closet – the door is open, and on the shelf, on Patrick’s side, is the safe, wide open, the way she left it. They look at it.

When they go back downstairs, the body is being removed from the kitchen on a gurney, in a zipped body bag.

The officer glances at the empty baby swings, looks at her then and says, ‘Have you checked on the children, ma’am?’

And suddenly she’s so deep in her own lies, her fantasies, her fears and justifications that she panics about the twins. She feels her face go white. She races up the stairs to the nursery and flings open the door and turns on the light. The twins are there, in their cribs, untouched. Of course they are. The officer is standing close behind her, his breath coming rapidly; she can feel it warm against her neck.

‘They’re fine,’ he says, clearly relieved.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

ON THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1, the medical examiner determines that Patrick Kilgour’s death was suicide. It’s in all the news. Along with a recap of the death of Lindsey, the inquest, the arrest – everything. It’s all fresh in the public mind again, on everyone’s tongue. But that’s fine, Stephanie thinks; everyone believes he killed himself. Soon it will die out for good. It will all die with him.

Stephanie hadn’t really expected there to be any question, but nonetheless, the relief she feels at the official determination is profound. It’s over. She can move on. Still, since she did it, she feels shaky, unmoored, not herself. Her mind is not quite right. She could never have predicted any of this. It’s all bound to have an effect, she tells herself, staring catatonically at the twins. It will take some getting used to.

The evening it happened, the police were in the house most of the night. The kitchen was off-limits. They suggested she go stay with family, but she had no family to stay with. Hanna, like most of the neighbours, had been drawn out onto the street by the flashing lights and emergency vehicles. They finally allowed Hanna into the house. Hanna insisted she gather up the twins and come home with her, and Stephanie was glad to have somewhere to go.

Once they were finished, by the next day, the special cleaners came in and did their job. Stephanie was relieved that she wasn’t expected to clean it up herself.

That night she was back, alone in the house with the twins. She forced herself to go into the kitchen and make herself some tea. Everyone had gone, leaving an unnerving silence behind them. She wandered around the house until the early morning hours like she had before, unable to sleep.

It was the same last night, too, but now she no longer tortures herself with doubts about Patrick’s guilt. She no longer thinks endlessly, obsessively, about what she should do. It’s done. But she keeps seeing it, over and over, the moment she pulled the trigger. The way she shoved the gun into his hair against his skull, and the rain of blood and gore that blew out the other side. She can’t believe she did that. It’s as if it were someone else.

Hanna comes over to check on her. No need to stay away now that Patrick’s gone. She has Teddy with her in the buggy, and lasagne she’s made herself. She stands on the doorstep with her offering, obviously concerned about Stephanie’s well-being. Stephanie hesitates, because she’s keenly aware of her kitchen right behind her. The professional clean-up team has scrubbed and scoured and it’s perfectly presentable. You can’t even tell something awful happened in there three days ago. But still, it’s going to be weird, having Hanna in the kitchen.

‘I can come back,’ Hanna says, ‘if this isn’t a good time.’

But Stephanie shakes her head and says, ‘No, come in. I’m glad to see you. Nobody else has come.’

Who was she expecting? Niall? His wife? They’ve stayed away. So have her friends from work, where she’d spent four years of her life before going on maternity leave. Really, there’s no one but Hanna, and right now she’s grateful for her.