Blood flew out in a parabola of red. It spattered across Jessica’s face as she lay gasping on the decking. Matt staggered and dropped to his knees. He put a hand up to the shining splinter protruding from his neck. His fingers pulled at it and more blood fell, this time in droplets, thickly over his shoulder and onto the terrace.

I realised I had my hands clamped over my mouth. I could feel my eyes bulging.

Matt groaned. A fine spray of blood feathered through the air. His bleeding hand fell away from the mirror shard buried in his neck. He took one shuffling knee-walk step and fell, his face dropping onto Jessica’s leg. She cried out and rolled away and he fell onto the floor, face down. The piece of mirror shattered, half of it falling beneath his body, half of it remaining in his neck. It jerked with each bump of his pulse and, as I watched, the jerks grew fainter and fainter until at last the piece of glass grew still. Behind the blood dappling the surface, I could see the night sky reflected; a little sliver of darkness buried in the pale flesh of my husband’s neck.

My eyes met Jessica's. Beyond the awful bubble of silence that surrounded us, I could dimly hear the sounds of the city flowing on without us: car horns, a siren, a shout from the street below.

Jessica pulled herself into a sitting position and hung her head forward. She was breathing heavily, blood dripping from her broken nose. She put a hand up to her mouth.

"Shit," she said thickly and as her hand came away I saw a nugget of enamel in her bloodied palm, half a tooth that Matt's fist had knocked from her jaw. It dropped from her fingers and was swallowed up in the lake of blood that lay by Matt's downturned face.

I managed to take my hands from my face; my whole body felt stiff, as if I'd been welded to the spot and hadn't moved for hours. Slowly, I held out a hand to Jessica and helped her to her feet. We stood swaying, holding one another up.

"Are you alright?"  I asked.

"Not really." She looked at me, tears welling up. "Oh shit, Maudie. You killed him."

We both looked down at Matt's body, the blood surrounding him, the mirror shard winking grotesquely from his neck. I dropped Jessica's hand and stepped back.

"Oh my God, you killed him. What are we going to do?"

"Just wait-"

"Maudie, we're fucked. What are we going to do?"

I lifted a clenched fist and rested it against my chest, between my breasts. I could hear the study thump of my heartbeat beneath my breastbone, slowing gradually as my breathing grew deeper. The strangest thing was happening. Inside, I felt a core of something hard, and metallic, something steely, unfolding like a metal flower. Filaments were beginning to spread through me, molten iron sending out a root system of strength that straightened my back and lifted my head. For the first time in my life, I had no one to turn to, no one to take care of things for me. I had no one. And yet, for the first time in my life, I knew it didn’t matter. I can do this, I thought, I can cope. Yes, said a little voice inside my head, a sane voice, a voice of reason. You can.

I looked down at my hands. The terrace wall had broken open the scabs on my palms but there were no cuts from the glass I’d held, none at all.

I took a deep breath. I’d made my decision.

"You should go," I said. "Just go. Get out of here."

She stared. "But what about you?"

"Don't worry about me," I said. I looked at her, standing square-mouthed and crying like a child, and felt again that odd unfolding of steel within me.

"Just go”, I said. “I'll deal with this."

Epilogue

“I’ll have the smoked salmon and the scrambled eggs, please,” I said, handing the little plastic menu back to the guard. I looked across at Becca and raised my eyebrows.

“I’ll have the same,” she said.

I waited until he’d moved off down the train corridor. The carriage was quiet – this was the mid-week morning train to Cornwall and not many commuters or tourists used it.

Becca shifted uncomfortably. “Just as well it’s first class,” she said. “There’s no way I’d fit into an economy seat with this belly.”

I smiled. “You do look a bit as though you’re about to pop.”

“Oh well. Only two months to go.” She looked down at herself and sighed. “God, me, a mother. Who’d have thought it?”

“You’ll be fine,” I said. “You’ve always looked after me, haven’t you? You’re a natural.”

Another guard was moving down the corridor with coffee jugs in either hand. I smiled at him briefly as he refilled our cups and then walked away, staggering a little as the train rounded a curve.

"I'm sorry I haven't been round much," said Becca. "I'm just so damn uncomfortable I don't feel like walking any further than the kitchen at the moment. Even then, Martin’s doing most of the cooking."

"Becs, it's absolutely fine. I'm fine on my own, really. I'm used to it by now."

Matt's name hung in the air between us. Our eyes met for a second and then I looked away.

The guard came back down the corridor, proffering his coffee jugs again. As he moved past from our table, Becca spoke.

“How are you feeling about this?”

I looked down at the table. I tried to be honest about my feelings now, with people I trusted, but it took me a moment to formulate the answer.

“Upset,” I said slowly. “A bit churned up inside. Sad. But – but sort of relieved, too. That it’s finally at an end.”

Becca nodded. Then she said, even more cautiously, “And how do you feel about – about the trial?”

I picked up my coffee cup for the comfort of its warmth against my hand. The trial. Every time I heard that word I could see it in my mind’s eye, in thick, black capital letters. THE TRIAL. And there were other images that always accompanied it; wood panelled court rooms, a baying mob of journalists on the steps of the buildings outside, myself with my hands clenched on the side of the dock as the judge passed sentence upon me. There were sounds too; the thwack of the gavel as I was given a life sentence, the wail of sirens, the clang of the prison gate. The jeers and catcalls of the other prisoners. The sound of a key turning as I was locked into a cell.

Perhaps it wouldn’t be like that. But perhaps it would.

“I’m trying not to think about it much,” I said. “My chances aren’t good.”

Becca looked uncomfortable. “Surely your lawyer–” she began.

“He’s doing his best,” I said. I put the coffee cup down as my hand was starting to tremble. “But it’s not looking good.”

“Oh Maudie–”

“Please,” I said. I couldn’t deal with her tears as well as my own. “Let’s not talk about it now.”

We were silent for a moment as one of the other passengers came down the corridor past us. Then Becca spoke again, quietly.

“Do you think Matt always – always meant to do it?”

I put my coffee cup down. “What I really think? I just don’t know. I don’t think he planned it from the moment he met me. He must have thought he’d have a comfortable enough life as my husband; he knew he was marrying into money.”

“Well, yes,” said Becca.

I stirred my coffee. “He also knew I was vulnerable and a bit - damaged and when he started getting greedy, he saw how he could use that.”

“I don’t understand people like that,” Becca said. “It’s just beyond me. How could he be so cruel?”

I shifted uncomfortably, remembering I’d said exactly that to Matt on the night of his death. I always thought of it in those terms – the night of his death – as if his death was nothing to do with me, as if it had happened because of someone else entirely. I had to think like that – it was the only way of staying sane.