CHAPTER THREE

      SARA caught Beth as she slumped to the floor and staggered with her to the bed. Beth’s head fell back, her mouth was open, there were pills on her tongue, and when Sara put fingers into her mouth she gagged and heaved.

      ‘How many?’ Sara’s voice was hoarse and Beth wasn’t hearing. A bottle of pills was half-empty. A few more pills were scattered on the bedside table with an empty glass and a vodka bottle. Beth was no drinker—a couple of glasses of wine could get her giggling and silly, and spirits always brought on one of her migraines—but Sara was praying she only had a hangover to deal with here. When Beth’s eyelids fluttered Sara hissed in her ear, ‘How many pills have you taken?’

      ‘I swallowed some, I think,’ Beth whimpered.

      ‘Not those that were in your mouth.’ Sara shook her gently but insistently. ‘Don’t go to sleep. Wake up. Come on Bethie.’ She heaved her sister into the sitting position. ‘Talk to me; what are you doing? It’s going to be all right, whatever’s happened; I promise you, Bethie.’

      She rushed to the kitchen to switch on the kettle and scoop spoonfuls of instant coffee into a mug. Then back to Beth, who was still sitting up on the bed with her head dropping onto her knees, moaning, ‘Oh, God, I feel awful.’

      ‘Of course you do,’ Sara howled. Beth had come to the door with a fistful of pills. Sara had scooped three of them off her tongue and now she worked frantically, getting strong coffee down her.

      ‘Come on, Bethie, there’s a good girl, it’s going to be all right.’ Beth’s fuddled mind cleared enough for her to assure Sara that the sleeping pills in her mouth were the first she had taken.

      ‘Where are the children?’ Sara had been so caught up in the horror of finding Beth like this there had been no time to think of anything else, but for a moment now she was terrified.

      When Beth whispered, ‘I left them with Maureen before I went home,’ Sara breathed a prayer of relief. Maureen was a friend and neighbour of Beth’s, a sensible, middle-aged woman. The children would be safe with her.

      She had Beth stumbling around, drinking water now, and slowly coming out of the anaesthetic of alcohol into the despair that had made her lock herself in that room.

      When Sara asked, ‘Why?’ Beth began weeping.

      ‘It’s over.’

      ‘Has Jeremy left you?’ Sara thought that could only be a blessing.

      But Beth said, ‘Of course not. But this time there’s no hope at all.’ She sat down on the little sofa in the living room, hugging herself and rocking to and fro. ‘There are men after him, money lenders and that, who are going to half kill him, and then at work—’ Jeremy worked at an estate agent’s in town ‘—there’s big money trouble there. He’s got till the end of the month to pay it back and he can’t, and he’s going to end up in prison, in jail. And I can’t face it, Sar.’ She lifted a tear-stained, stricken face. ‘If you hadn’t come back early I wouldn’t have had to.’

      Sara’s blood ran cold when she thought what she would have found if she had returned at her usual time. ‘What about the children?’ she demanded. ‘How could you leave the children?’

      ‘They’d have been all right. You’d have looked after them.’

      Beth was a child herself, as loving and as vulnerable. Sara had always known that, and what she had to do now was make Beth see that nothing was so bad there was no hope. They couldn’t find the cash to save Jeremy. Sara had no assets and her credit rating was nil, but as she racked her brain a sudden thought came like a flash of light.