© 2009

Moments when your life changes: there will always be a before and an after, separated, perhaps, by a knock at the door. I had been interrupted. I was tidying up. I had cleared up yesterday’s newspapers, old envelopes, scraps of paper, left them in the basket by the grate ready to make a fire after supper. I had just got the rice bubbling nicely. My first thought was that it was Greg and he had forgotten his keys, but then I remembered he couldn’t have because he had taken the car that morning. Anyway, he probably wouldn’t knock but shout through the letterbox. A friend, perhaps, or a neighbour, a Jehovah’s Witness, a cold call from a desperate young man trying to sell dusters and clothes-pegs house-to-house. I turned away from the stove and went through the hall to the front door, opened it to a gust of cool air.

Not Greg, not a friend, not a neighbour, not a stranger selling religion or domesticity. Two female police officers stood in front of me. One looked like a schoolgirl, with a block fringe covering her eyebrows and jug ears; one was like her teacher, with a square jaw and greying hair cut mannishly short.

‘Yes?’ Had I been caught speeding? Littering? But then I saw an expression of uncertainty, even surprise, on both their faces and felt the first small prickle of foreboding in my chest.

‘Mrs Manning?’

‘My name’s Eleanor Falkner,’ I said, ‘but I’m married to Greg Manning, so you could say…’ My words trailed away. ‘What is it?’

‘Can we come in?’

I led them into the small living room.

‘You’re the wife of Mr Gregory Manning?’