Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 124, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 757 & 758, September/October 2004

Hen Party by Neil Schofield

Neil Schofield currently turns his satirical eye on his native country from a little distance; for the past few years he’s lived in France, where he finds he has a better perspective on his countrymen and their habits. In this new tale we should perhaps says it is his countrywomen who come under caustic scrutiny. That and the life of the aspiring middle class. Mr. Schofield is a former finalist in the EQMM Readers Award competition.

What I’m going to do is this: I’m going to lie here for a bit on the sofa with my glass of scotch and think for a bit. That’s all I have to do for the moment. I’m thinking back to a day — almost exactly a year ago — when we were all together for the last time, Doug, Harry, Bill, and me. It was a balmy summer day, with a blue, blue sky with just a few little skeins of cloud here and there and the gentlest of summer breezes whiffling in the trees. And we were all sitting around the remains of the barbeque at Doug’s house. The wives had left, half an hour before. Suzanne, Doug’s wife, a superb, but I really mean superb blonde on the classic Hollywood pattern, had stood up and said, “All right, girls.”

And with a single movement, the other three had got up in formation. It was as though they were all radio-controlled and operating on the same frequency.

Caroline looked at me, and said, “Don’t drink too much, Tom.” I flapped a lazy hand at her.

And then they were off, the four of them, across the lawn, across the avenue to Bill’s house. And there we were, wives on one side of the road, us on the other. If I think really carefully about that afternoon, it’s Doug I remember most clearly.

“What the hell do you suppose they’re doing over there?” said Doug. He’s dead now, poor old Doug, crushed under his beloved Facel Vega one afternoon when he was working on it and the jack failed. Suzanne came back from a bridge game with the other wives and found him in the garage lying under those two tons of car. But on this afternoon I’m talking about, which is exactly a year ago, he was still very alive, pouring himself yet another brandy and looking rather sourly across the avenue towards Bill’s house.

It was a quiet summer Sunday afternoon in Greenacres. I don’t know if you know Greenacres, probably not. It’s the sort of place which was made for quiet summer Sunday afternoons. It’s not a suburb, Greenacres; it’s more of an enclave. Far enough from London to keep it quiet, near enough to make it easy to get up there. If you have to. We don’t often have to, Harry, Doug, Bill, and me. We’ve got things sufficiently under control not to have to.

Greenacres is a sort of staging post for those, like Harry, Doug, Bill, and me, who are not seriously rich enough to warrant the giant domains you find further down the Thames Valley. We’re taking a breather, you might say, before moving up to the next rung. All the same, in Greenacres, you won’t find a house going for much under half a million quid.

Here’s the sort of place it is: On a Sunday afternoon in Greenacres, you don’t hear lawn mowers or the hiss of hoses. Why not? Because all that’s been taken care of during the working week by working people who take care of all that annoying business of lawn mowing and car washing for us. So that our Sundays are left mower-free and car-washingless for us to concentrate on living. Living, which in most cases means lunching.

Were there ever two words that fit together so beautifully as Sunday and Lunch? Sunday and Lunch, in our case, means, in the summer, a barbeque at one of our houses. And on this occasion, the one I’m concerned with, and to be honest, still very concerned with, was at Doug’s house.

Doug and Harry and Bill and I take it in turns most weeks, when the weather is clement, to host a lunch al fresco. And I must say that Doug had done us proud. He has a double-size barbeque on which he had cooked first lobster en papillote, delightfully prepared by Mrs. Evans, his cook-housekeeper, and then tournedos Rossini, each steak delivered on its slice of fried bread, topped with a layer of foie gras, and accompanied by baked potatoes whose consistency was to dream about, and a selection of fresh vegetables.

During the meal, served on the lawn, Caroline, my wife, had eyed me in a very particular way which said, quite clearly, that we weren’t yet up to scratch in this area.

“Isn’t this wonderful, Tom?” she had trilled at me and I sighed. I knew that I would be searching in the next week for double-size barbeques and importers of Pacific prawns. Keep up, she was saying to me.

But that was earlier. Now, in the middle of the afternoon, wifeless and listless, we were at the stage where if you’re going to go on drinking, and we certainly were, Doug, Harry, Bill, and I, well, you’ve got a problem about what. Do you go on with the wine, which can get pretty heavy at four in the afternoon, or do you switch to alcohol and the hell with it. So we’d switched to brandy under the pretence that it was a digestif. Except for me. I had started unashamedly on the scotch. I like a drop of scotch and everyone knows it. And the hell with Caroline.

“What the hell do you suppose they’re doing across there?” Doug asked again. He was looking across the avenue towards Bill’s house, where our four wives had gone after lunch. We all looked across Doug’s lawn, which is expansive, followed by the avenue, which is wide, then across Bill’s lawn, which is the same size as Doug’s, so we were looking a fair distance, say a hundred yards, but we had a pretty good view. They were sitting in Bill’s sitting room, in front of the enormous picture window, huddled in a group, talking seriously, but every so often there would be the occasional burst of laughter which we couldn’t hear, but it was pretty obvious that they were laughing from the way they threw themselves about. I could even make out Caroline putting her hand over her mouth, which she inevitably does whenever she’s screeching with laughter.

“And what the hell can they be talking about that’s so funny?” Doug said.

Harry said, “In my experience, Doug, even if they told you, which they certainly won’t, you wouldn’t understand it. So don’t sweat it.”

Bill said, “Come on, Doug, siddown. Who cares anyway?”

And I said, just to get my four penn’orth in, “It’s probably dirty anyway.”

“That’s right,” Bill backed me up, “women are much worse than men when it comes to dirty talk.”

“Ever been in a women’s toilet?” asked Harry. “The things they write on the walls would curl your hair. Much worse than the men’s toilet.”

“When were you in a women’s toilet?” Bill asked, interested.

“When the Footsie lost two hundred points last Thursday morning,” said Harry, “everyone had to go to the john. And there are only so many stalls in the men’s room.”

Harry worked on one of the biggest trading floors in the City. You wouldn’t think it to look at him, but I’d been told by those who know that he was one of the hottest tickets around. The face of a choirboy and the instincts of a wolverine. Even lately, with the markets in free fall, he’d been holding his own. I knew that because he hadn’t cancelled the top-of-the-range BMW he had ordered from me two months before.

Doug stopped looking across the road and came back to the large rustic table where we were and sat down.

“I hate it when women talk dirty,” he said. I looked at him. He was an odd one, Doug. He was the same age as me — in fact, the same age as all of us, give or take a year or two — around forty-five, but he gave the impression of being older. He was stocky, broad-built, with a blocky face and steel-grey hair, sort of crispy. He looked like what he was — a man who had done heavy work in his life before he found a way to build a house and sell it himself instead of building other people’s houses for them. And now he had that sixty-four-house development going up over near Basingstoke. I had an idea that when that development was finished we wouldn’t see Doug for dust. He’d be off to buy one of those million-pound faux-manoir estates that we, or at least our wives, all drooled over. And I wouldn’t even get a new car order out of him. He’d be off to the Rolls-Royce dealership in Guildford. Well, that didn’t work out. But then, so many things don’t.

Bill said, “Doug, look around you. Here we are, it’s a beautiful, sunny, dreamy late afternoon in Greenacres. We’ve had a wonderful meal. The Great Unwashed are not yet at the gates wanting to burn our houses down. Our beautiful wives are across the road, so we don’t even have to worry about entertaining them. Life is good. Enjoy. Relax.”

So Doug sat down with the rest of us. And there we sat. In silence. Four men, approaching middle age, who didn’t, if we’re honest, have a thing to say to each other once we’d exhausted the usual male banter. If it hadn’t been for the wives, I doubt we’d ever have formed even the most distant of acquaintances. But as so often in places like Greenacres, it’s the wives that form the bonds, and we go along. I helped myself to another scotch, I remember.

I’d like another scotch now, as a matter of fact, but I just haven’t the energy to get up. The house is very quiet now, just the occasional purr of an appliance, the central heating, the refrigerator kicking in now and then, and the sound of the odd car passing down the avenue. There’s not a lot of traffic on the avenue and what there is expensive and quiet. There’s especially little on a Sunday. Like that Sunday when

that’s right... when Harry said, “Perhaps it’s a Tupperware party.” Harry’s dead now — him, too — three months after Doug. Tripped over that enormous cat that Tricia doted on. She came back from her night out with the other wives, did Tricia, and found him at the bottom of that enormous staircase, with his neck broken. The cat was dead, too.

But on this afternoon I’m thinking about, Harry was still alive and so was the cat.

“A what?” asked Doug, disbelievingly, “A what did you say?”

“A Tupperware party,” said Harry defensively. “They happen.”

“Tupperware,” said Doug, still incredulous. “Okay, hands up all those whose wives spend enough time in the kitchen to have any leftovers to put in the bloody Tupperware.”

Our hands remained clasped around our glasses.

Doug said, “Right. On to the next stupid comment.”

Harry looked a little down. I felt sorry for him. I tried to lighten things up a little.

“Okay,” I said, “maybe it’s one of those Ann Summers things.”

“What’s an Ann Summers thing?” asked Bill.

“You know,” I said, “where they model sexy underwear — panties with split crotches, stuff like that. And appliances,” I said.

Bill looked incredulous. I suppose that if you live with your head in a cloud of bytes and bits all day you don’t have much time for the outside world and its grubbier antics.

Harry merely nodded. He knew.

Doug, if it were possible, looked even more sour. He took a large bite from his brandy.

“Ann Summers,” he said, in the same way he’d said “Tupperware.” “Okay, hands up all those who spend enough time in the bedroom for their wives to need stuff like that.”

This was dodgy territory and we all knew it.

He looked round at us.

“Okay. This is how it goes, all right? You get up at six, you drive thirty miles to work and spend fourteen hours sorting out all the shit that has accumulated since the last time you were there. You maybe have time for a drink on the way home, you get home at nine, you eat, and you fall asleep. And that’s the way it is, seven days out of seven. Go ahead, tell me I’m wrong.”

He wasn’t wrong, and we all knew it. That’s the way it was.

“That’s the way it is,” said Doug, “and anybody who says it isn’t is a liar. Hands up anyone who has made love to his wife within — let’s take a low figure — the last month.”

No hands went up.

“Okay,” Doug said, “so don’t let’s have any more of this Ann Summers crap.”

Bill said suddenly, “How old is your wife, Doug?”

Doug sat up. “What the hell does that have to do with anything?” he said.

Bill shrugged. “Nothing,” he said, “just interested, that’s all.”

Doug seemed to decide that there was no trap in the question and subsided.

“Thirty-two,” he said.

Bill turned to me. “Tom?” he said.

I thought about it, and took a low figure. “Caro’s thirty,” I said. “She’ll be thirty-one in October.”

Harry said musingly, “Tricia’s twenty-nine.”

Bill nodded. “About the same age as Melanie,” he said. He pushed his glasses up on that pudgy little nose and sipped his brandy. His face had taken on a sort of inward-turned look, as if he were doing some sort of calculation. Very gifted for that sort of thing, was our Bill. At sixteen he’d been a sort of infant prodigy, creating a revolutionary kind of video game on the cutting-edge computer his parents had given him for his fifteenth. At eighteen he’d been hired by one of the software monsters, but he found that too restricting, left to found his own software shop. He’d invented some sort of digital doohickey that all the world fell over themselves to buy, he’d sold the licences, and at thirty he had been on the way to being rich. Since then he had consolidated things, regularly turned out new software products, and taken on a lot of staff. He’d told me recently that he was on the verge of some sort of giant breakthrough. He’d explained what it was, but I didn’t understand it. I believed him, but I didn’t understand it.

So, four rather pudgy men in our forties, we sat and thought for a bit. I don’t know what we thought about exactly, perhaps about the fact that we were all at least fifteen years older than our wives, and why was that?

I suppose we had all put it off for too long, the getting married, the settling down and founding a dynasty business. Too busy, too intent even to think about it. I knew I was leaving it too long, but when you’re climbing up the dealership ladder, you’re pretty preoccupied. By the time I had the two BMW franchises, it was pretty late. I know most men manage to do it, but there we were, presented for your inspection, four men who had reached the age of forty or thereabouts, looked around, and realised, Hey, aren’t I supposed to be married? Isn’t that how it goes? And so we all had. And with enough money to attract the right sort of female we had all married, not trophy wives — I’m not saying that — but the sort of woman who is beautiful, knows it, and demands and needs exactly the right sort of expensive setting to flourish in. The sort of setting that men like us were willing and ready to provide.

Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not that we didn’t love our wives. Far from it. I knew for a fact that Doug took on Mrs. Evans so that Suzanne would never have to lift a finger; Harry took Tricia to the south of France every year, or sent her, rather, since he found it difficult to leave the trading floor, especially in those rocky times; Bill gave Melanie free rein at Harrods; and for her last birthday, I had given Caroline the Japanese cabriolet she’d been pining after for so long. So you couldn’t say we didn’t love them, could you?

No, you couldn’t say that.

Bill said, “It’s probably just a sort of hen party.” Bill died, too, the little software nerd. Just nine weeks after Harry, as it happened. Melanie came home one night after a girls’ night out with the other wives and found him in the bathroom. Evidently he’d slipped on the soap and cracked his skull on the side of the bath. That hadn’t killed him outright, but he’d fallen facedown in the bath and drowned in nine inches of water.

Harry said suddenly, “I hate hens. And chickens.”

We all looked at him, then.

He looked back at us. “Well, I do,” he said defensively. “I hate them. I hate the way they walk around not really looking at anything. You ever looked into a chicken’s eyes?”

“Not for any length of time,” said Bill. No one laughed.

“Empty,” said Harry, “absolutely empty. No feeling, no sense. They just stalk around.” He got up and started to walk around us with that weird, hesitant walk that chickens have. He was making that soft, crooning noise that they make.

“And every so often,” Harry said, “they spot something, and they look at it.” He jerked his head and looked sideways at the ground. “Like that.”

We had to laugh, because even in his chinos and polo shirt, Harry did look like a hen, and that sudden darting sideways look was exactly like a hen’s.

My laughter was a little forced, though, because that look that Harry did so perfectly reminded me of the way Caroline looked at me sometimes. Usually when I’d said something she disapproved of, like one time at lunch with her parents when I had made a remark to her father that she considered out of place. I can’t even remember what it was I said; it was inoffensive enough, but enough to make her raise her head from her plate and give me that abrupt, sidelong, and strangely calculating look.

Harry said, “And now there’s another one joined the flock.” He was looking across the avenue at Bill’s house. “Look, they’ve got Deirdre with them.”

We all turned and looked, and sure enough, the four wives had been joined by Deirdre. Deirdre Balsam.

“Well, it didn’t take her long to get out of her widow’s weeds,” said Harry. We could all see that Deirdre was wearing a bright summer dress, and her hair, even at this distance, we could tell, was a bizarre shade of red.

I said, “She looks like one of those candles they sell at that New Age shop in town.”

“Still,” said Harry, “it’s three months. She can’t stay in purdah forever.”

Deirdre was the widow of George Balsam, who had shuffled off this mortal coil three months before. A freak accident, they had called it in the papers, but then any accident is freak for some papers. George, who was a model-engineering nut, had gone down the garden to his workshop to rewire his lathe, a big three-phase job. He had, quite unlike him, forgotten Rule One: When you’re doing anything like that, always take out the fuse and keep it in your pocket, and poor George had taken 440 volts up both arms. Odd that, because George was what you might call your Urban Worrier, a belt-and-braces man. There was a fuse in his pocket, according to what I’ve heard, but it was the wrong one, apparently.

Deirdre had come home from a night out with the girls and had found him down there, dead as a doornail.

“She seems to have got over her grief well enough,” said Bill. We were all looking across there. The sun was lower now and shining straight into Bill’s picture window. We could quite clearly see Caroline, Suzanne, Melanie, and Tricia sitting in a circle, listening to Deirdre, who was standing, apparently retailing some story. There was a lot of animation, gestures and waving arms, and the wives seemed to be completely enthralled by whatever she was telling them. At any rate, they weren’t moving.

And neither were we. We stayed like that, gazing in unison across the avenue to where our wives were listening to Deirdre Balsam tell them something.

“I see she’s still on the sauce,” said Bill. We could see quite clearly that Deirdre had a large glass of something in her hand.

“Well, she can afford it,” said Doug, “with what she came out with after George went.”

A squadron of turtledoves came swooping low across the top of Doug’s house making that flff-flff sound they do and that weird high squeaking noise. I’m not sure whether that’s their wings making that noise or if it’s a sort of panting for breath. They wheeled in perfect unison and described a perfect circle around the garden.

Bill squinted up at them.

“I’ve heard that nobody really knows how they do that,” he said. We all followed his gaze and watched the doves execute a perfect break right and swoop off down the avenue.

“Do what?” Harry asked.

“That,” said Bill. He held his hands up like a Spitfire pilot describing how he got Jerry over the Channel, and made a wheeling movement. “That formation flying. The leader’s leading. But how? Maybe they’re watching him for signals. But how do they react so quickly like that? Or maybe the leader’s communicating in some way. Nobody’s really sure.”

“Turtle Leader to Turtle Wing. Break, break, break,” said Harry.

Doug stood up suddenly.

“Okay. That’s enough fresh air for one day. Why don’t we go and play a bit of serious poker. Bring a couple of bottles.”

I sighed. I was in for another trouncing. Caroline was always astounded and incredulous whenever I told her I’d been playing poker with Doug. She knows I’ve got no head for it. She said it was simply peer pressure, fear of being left out of the group. Perhaps she was right.

Doug was already marching towards the house with Bill and Harry trailing him. I turned back to pick up the cognac bottle. In doing that, I was facing straight across the avenue and I saw them. The others were already on the terrace and nearly into the house so I was the only one. But I did. I saw them standing in a line looking across at us. All the pretty young hens. And they saw me.

“Me?” I’ve been saying this morning. “Oh, you know. All right, thanks.” And people have been looking at me with that wise look that they put on.

“No,” they’ve been saying, “you’re not all right. You will be, in time. But it will take time, Tom, you realise that.”

They’re trying to be kind. Everyone’s very kind. The coroner was kind. A very sympathetic, kind little man was the coroner, who had no difficulty accepting the expert testimony. A track-rod coupling is what it was, apparently, that had held its own until it was put under too much stress on that horrible corner by that pub, the Jockey, where it had caused Caroline’s little Japanese cabriolet to veer straight into that enormous plane tree that everyone has been saying for years was a danger and too close to the road and should be cut down. And that was that.

She’d been driving too fast, of course, on her way to meet the other wives — well, no, because by then they were all widows — the other members of the Greenacres mob. She’d told me not to wait up for her, and to be sure to lock all the doors and windows because apparently Tricia and Deirdre had told her of some unsavoury-looking characters lurking around the avenue. They’d already told the police, it appears, but she didn’t want to come back and find me murdered in my bed. Then she left, driving too fast.

Everyone knew that Caroline drove too fast, particularly on that corner. And everyone knew that I had been on at her for weeks, months even, to take that car in for regular checks. Everybody had heard me go on about it, I made sure of that. But that was poor Caroline for you. And everybody knew that, too. All you had to do was suggest something a little too insistently for her taste and she’d do the exact opposite.

So we had the inquest and we’ve had a funeral and everyone’s been very kind. And two of her sisterhood came. Tricia and Melanie.

Tricia flew in from Monte Carlo, where she had retired on the golden bonuses that Trader Harry had left behind him. And Melanie flew in from Mustique, where she’d retired after selling Bill’s software house for an astronomical sum to Microsoft or Sun or one of them, I can’t sort them out. I was a little surprised that Suzanne wasn’t there. She didn’t have far to come: She was still living in Greenacres. For the moment, anyway, until she’d finished ramming through the sales of the sixty-four-house development that Doug had started. But I had heard from Eric Porteous, the local estate agent, that she’d already been looking around a ten-bedroom manor over towards the Weald.

All the widows. The rich young widows.

In the cemetery after the burial service Tricia came up to me, her eyes glittering with grief, and placed a black-gloved hand on my arm. She looked into my eyes.

“Tom,” she said, “there are no words.”

I nodded.

She said, “This is a pain that only time will heal. But believe me, Tom, we know how you’re feeling, Tom. We know.”

I nodded again and she left me to join Melanie. A few yards away she looked back, her eyes still glittering.

“We really do, Tom. We know.”

I thought it was pretty unlikely.

At the house afterwards, it was pretty much the same sort of thing. I couldn’t wait for it to be over. I couldn’t wait to be finished with all that pablum that people dribble out when they don’t know what to say after a funeral, when they’re drinking your drink and eating your food and they feel in some indefinable way that they should be nourishing you. You’ve already given. But they come anyway and they eat and they drink and they put together the meaningless phrases and they say things like, “We’re here if you need us, Tom. Anytime.”

What does that mean, in fact? I’ve never understood it. What would the Wadsworths do if I rang them up at three in the morning and said, “I need you. Now. Get yourselves over here, both of you.”

They’d put the phone down and go back to sleep is what they’d do. That’s what I’d do, if I had been stupid enough to say, “I’m here if you need me.” But you go along, don’t you. You nod, and smile that sad little smile, perhaps pat the arm of the idiot who is mouthing these robotic formulae.

But at last it was all done. The drift towards the door had started early, and then I had to stand and say goodbye to these people, listen to the same things all over again and say the same things all over again. It went on forever. But at last they were all gone. And I was alone.

I wandered round the house for a while, idly picking up plates and glasses and putting them down again in the same place. The caterers would be coming in to take care of all that tomorrow. It could stay like that. But just for something to do, I wandered into the kitchen with a couple of unfinished plates of crab cakes and other miniature funeral bakemeats with the thought of putting them in the fridge. There’s no use in wasting good food, not when there’s so much starvation in the world, now is there?

The doorbell rang. I walked through to the hall. Behind the frosted glass door I could see some black shapes. I opened up and there were the absent widows, Suzanne and Deirdre. Suzanne was holding something, a round, foil-covered package.

“Well,” I said, “what can I do for you? I’m afraid you’re a bit late for the—” I was going to say party, but I stopped myself in time — “for the wake.” Is that what it had been? A wake?

Suzanne said, “We couldn’t bear the thought of it, Tom. We were sure you’d understand. All those people.”

Deirdre said, “We were very close to Caro, Tom. You can appreciate how we felt.”

“Well,” I said, “come in for a moment, at least.”

They came in. I led them through, these two black things, into the living room. I made a helpless gesture.

“It’s still a bit of a mess, I’m afraid. People have only just gone.”

“Oh, Tom,” said Suzanne, “don’t worry. It’s always like that. Deirdre and I went through exactly the same thing, didn’t we?”

Deirdre nodded.

She said, “Well, at least we can make a start on this.”

Suzanne nodded briskly, put down her package on the drinks table, and before I could say or do a thing, they were at it, piling plates, collecting glasses, emptying ashtrays, wiping surfaces, and in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, the living room was practically pristine, and they hadn’t even raised a sweat. That’s women for you.

Then we stood and looked at each other.

I said, “That was really kind of you, but really, it wasn’t necessary.”

Suzanne said, “Tom, we know how difficult it is to get started again. To do things. To look after yourself. To take care of things; even the smallest things seem difficult. We know.”

Deirdre said, “And so we brought you something.” She gestured to the foil-wrapped package. “Didn’t we, Suze?”

“We did,” said Suzanne.

I said, “That’s really kind of you, but—”

“It’s nothing much,” Deirdre said.

“Just a quiche,” said Suzanne. “I know you won’t feel like it just at the moment, but you will get hungry sooner or later and you can simply pop it in the oven when you feel like it and there you are. No need to worry about opening cans, preparing vegetables.”

I said again, “It’s really kind of you, but—”

“We’ll go,” said Suzanne, “and put it in the fridge. Come on.”

She picked up the thing and, with me trailing meekly in her wake, she led the way into the kitchen. Over her shoulder she said, rather forcefully, “No point in leaving it. Do it now.”

In the kitchen she headed straight for the fridge, stripped off the foil from the quiche, and put it on the top shelf. She did some rather pointless and irritating tidying up of the other things on the shelf.

She was in the middle of this when I heard very distinctly, from the living room, the clink of a bottle against glass. Suzanne heard it, too. She straightened up very suddenly, closed the fridge door, and spun round. Her face was tight with irritation.

“That bloody Deirdre,” she said. Then she seemed to make an effort to calm herself. “Tom, I just don’t know what we’re going to do.”

I said, “She’s still...?” I lifted my elbow slightly.

She nodded. “Fell off the wagon a week ago for the umpteenth time. I’m taking her down to her AA meeting tonight, for all the good it’ll do her. Still, what can you do?”

We went back into the living room. Deirdre was standing a good way from the drinks table, but I noticed that the whisky in my bottle of Glenlivet was swaying ever so gently, and Deirdre’s eyes were a little too bright for my taste.

Suzanne said, “Well, I think that’s all, isn’t it? We must be going, Deirdre. Remember, Tom, just pop it in the oven for half an hour.”

Deirdre said, “Personally, I think it’s best eaten cold.”

Suzanne said, “Whatever. But you must eat.”

And with that, they left. And for the first time since the police came to tell me of Caroline’s horrible end, I was alone. Alone and free to think my own thoughts, without other people putting their thoughts into my head, all the police, doctors, friends, coroners, more friends, undertakers, clergymen, and still more friends, all with their four penn’orth to get in.

I’ve been lying stretched out on the sofa and thinking about that afternoon at Doug’s house and how I had looked across the avenue and seen them looking across at us. Suzanne, Melanie, Caroline, and Tricia, the bright young wives with the dull husbands. And of course Deirdre, who had much to tell them, Deirdre who was giving a seminar, a master-class.

I’ve been thinking about how it really must have infuriated them that I was just too quick for them, unlike poor Doug, Bill, and Harry. And I’ve been thinking about that quiche in the fridge. Pop it in the oven. In a pig’s eye, I will. I wonder what’s in it. Something undetectable, knowing them. They’re very bright; I have to hand it to them, but not on a bloody plate. What did Deirdre say? “It’s best eaten cold.” I know what’s best eaten cold and I wouldn’t touch that thing even if I was starving.

The first thing I’m going to do is to throw the bloody thing in the waste disposal.

When I can move, that is. When this dreadful numbing cold stops creeping through my arms and legs and now my chest, which is making it very hard to breathe, and when I can move something and get off the sofa.

There’s a strange cottony taste in my mouth and I’m very, very thirsty. If I could move my arm, I could reach for the glass that’s still lying where it fell a few minutes ago. Or is it hours? There might still be a drop of whisky in it.

I like a drop of whisky. Everybody knows that.