“And was she suffering writer’s block before she died?” Kincaid asked, finding himself intrigued.
“No.” Vic put her cup on the side table and rubbed her palms together as if her hands were cold. “That’s it, you see. When she died, she was in the process of editing the manuscript of a new book, the best thing she had ever done. The poems have such depth and richness-it’s as if she suddenly discovered another dimension to herself.”
“Maybe that was it,” Kincaid suggested. “There was nowhere left for her to go.”
Vic shook her head. “At first I considered that a possibility, but the better I know her, the less likely it seems. I think she’d found her stride at last. She could have done so much more, given so much-”
“Vic.” Kincaid leaned forwards and touched her hand. “You can never be sure what’s in another person’s heart. You know that. Sometimes people just wake up one day and decide they’re tired of life, and they don’t leave behind any explanation at all. Maybe that’s what happened to Lydia.”
She shook her head, more vehemently this time. “That’s not all. Lydia died from an overdose of her own heart medication. Don’t suicides usually keep to the same pattern, escalating the violence if they’re not successful?”
“Sometimes, yes. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s always the case.”
“The first time she slit her wrists in the bath-it was only a friend coming in unexpectedly that saved her. The second time she drove her car into a tree and managed to give herself a serious concussion. Later she said her foot slipped from the accelerator just at the crucial moment. Do you see?”