Here he was, summing up her husband's crimes and suggesting he was mad (and the consequence would be: be declared legally incompetent and locked away), and she barely even needed to prompt him. She had expected to have to argue her husband's insanity to him, but instead, he was already going there, doing exactly what she wanted.

Quite the turn-on.

She managed to keep her face from smiling as smugly as she felt. Instead, she shook her head sadly. "No sir, not to my awareness, but I try to stay away from him if he does not demand to see me, so I cannot be sure of all his contacts. Anyway, if he does see a doctor, he has the money to find one who will tell him whatever he wants to hear."

Here he thought Darius had just been talking parasitic opportunism, and his own mother was suffering!

Zechariah nodded in acknowledgment, tea untouched as he pressed steepled index fingers together in thought.

“Your absence will not be noticed by him?” he clarified, hopefully.

Anne gave him a wry smile. "I can't tell... His behaviour is unpredictable, more so since... since our son's death." She paused for a second and her hand clutched her handkerchief. "He lives quite in his own world these days, and barely notices what's going on around him. And then there's the drink too. But then at other times, he will all of a sudden insist on harassing me and will not leave me alone. For the moment, I hope, the encounter with the police will get him off my back for a few days..." She looked down at her injured arm and then up at him, desperately. "But I dread to think what will happen after..."

And so the night went on, logistics threaded with sympathy seeking through a cloth of a falsely truly devastating circumstance.

How did he end up promising to talk to his landlord on her behalf? His favorite linen shop? The constabulary? (Alright. That was an easier one to answer.)

The spilt tea, caked with sugar in all the wrong places, remained untouched.

God. One night felt like it went on for months.