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Tom drowned; now she could not recall how long it had been before she slept a whole night without the dream, or spent a whole day without constantly thinking of her dead husband.
    She didn’t see the traffic she was driving through, or even hear it. Tom called her. She couldn’t get to him, only hear the choking, gasping cries. Love and guilt overwhelmed her. If only she had been able to reach him, support him, Tom might never have died.
    Tears filled her eyes until she couldn’t drive any more, blinded and sobbing. She knew it was stupid and dangerous. She would have an accident if she went on driving in this state.
    She pulled off the road and parked in the next layby. The traffic following her thundered on. She sat, trembling, rubbing her wet eyes.
    Trying to ignore the other vehicles passing, she leaned her head back and stared fixedly at a sycamore which bent overhead, the lobed leaves shimmering in sunlight, five-pointed, dark green, veined, like hands reaching down to her.
    If only she could stop shaking. Sweat poured down her back. Her shirt clung to her.
    She had begun to think she was really better, that the nightmare was over, or at least, locked away for good, but here it was again.
    Except that this time she had been awake. This time was different in other ways, too. She was not emotionally involved; she had not even known that girl.
    She found a packet of paper hankies in her handbag and blew her nose, wiped her eyes, dried the perspiration from her forehead and face. After combing her hair she felt almost normal.
    Staring at her face in the little mirror of her powder compact she couldn’t believe how ordinary she looked when her mind was in such chaos. Who would guess what was going on inside her at this moment? Even her breathing had calmed down and she could think clearly again.
    She should not have fled like that. She should have stayed in the office, rung the police, got help. That was what she should have done, not run away.
    She would have to go back, call the police, tell them what she had heard and seen.
    Should she first ring Terry and warn him? He wouldn’t be very happy if she called in the police without telling him. Sean was his son, his only child, and Terry thought the world of him.
    He was such a good man. She enjoyed working for him; he was an excellent boss. Over the last couple of years he had been very kind to her. He didn’t deserve this.
    At that moment, Terry was enjoying a long, fluted glass of champagne, lying back in a lounger, on the lawn behind his large, glossy country home, which was being extensively cleaned after the party yesterday. He had come out into the garden to escape the drone of vacuum cleaners, the bang of doors, the hum of the dishwasher.
    The bottle of champagne was thrust deep down into a bucket of ice standing on the grass beside him under his wide, dark green cotton umbrella. He could hear the cubes of silvery ice cracking, hear water dripping down into the bottom of the bucket. He loved the sound.
    It was a hot afternoon. In spite of the shade in which he lay, dressed in a sleeveless t-shirt and brief shorts, perspiration pearled his skin and he decided he would take a swim in a minute. The doors of the swimming pool stood open, he could just catch the inviting blue gleam of the water within.
    It was moments like this that he cherished. Here he was, drinking champagne, lying in the sun, about to go for a swim in his own pool – it was wonderful. A dream come true, most people would say, and they would be right.
    This was the life he had always wanted for himself, had daydreamed about, ever since he could remember.
    He had been born in a tiny, two-up, two-down, workman’s cottage in a narrow, red-brick terrace in the back streets of Victorian Manchester. His father was a big, broad, clumsy man with a face the same dark red as their house, and eyes that were either dull and lethargic, or hot with temper.
    Joe Finnigan wasn’t a drunk, but he drank heavily,