Before she had time to ask herself what such a late arrival could portend, Caroline looked up to find that Rona had let herself in, and was lurking in the doorway, staring back at her. There was something, almost, unearthly about her presence : which Caroline sensed intuitively as she stood there. Her eyes seemed strangely unfixed, now intruding, now quite vacant : as if she had ridden a high, but was coming back down now... fragmenting.

In her left hand she was grasping a Browning automatic, close by her side : this she recognised, as Rona fingered it, because Fraser had one himself; in her right hand, a carrier-bag. She seemed to have gashed that hand and there were smears of blood, dabbed on her creased white top, and a tear.

'What do you want?' Caroline asked coolly and quietly.

'We need to talk,' Rona said grimly, swaying slightly.

Her hair was swept back, yet dishevelled.

'There's nothing to say, Rona. I made myself clear.'

'We need to fuckin' talk' she shouted loudly.

She tossed the firearm down on the settee and, still standing, fumbled in the bag. Her arms were shaking.

'I suppose you think that I'm a whore,' she sneered stridently. 'I suppose you hate me. But what I do, I do because I choose to. Not because he wanted me. Not because his marriage was fucked up. To please myself.' She threw a handful of jewellery, loose, on the table. 'You have them,' she added, her teeth flashing. 'They make me feel unclean. He tried to buy me.'

'I don't want these...' Caroline began.

Rona pointed angrily at her.

'Don't think you've won him off me. Do you think I care?' Her head was shaking, and she was smiling bitterly. 'You'll never understand him, darling.' As she wandered about the room, she plucked some flowers from a vase and tossed them down disdainfully. 'He used to say you only picked up every fifteenth word he said, and even then you didn't listen...'

Caroline could smell that scent again; the stale perfume that savoured of decay. Rona looked at her and tried to focus.

'You're not right for him - why don't you face it?'

'I already have' Caroline answered quietly.

'And?'

'That's my business.'

Rona looked through her and saw the portrait of Fraser behind the chair, looking down in a posture of masculine pride and conceit.

'Besides' she smiled 'you're best rid of him. Fucking Charlie's a fuckin' let-down.' The room echoed with her hollow laughter, that rang of defeat and disillusionment.

'There's more to a man than that' Caroline replied.

'Is there?' Now she seemed to be stifling a sob, like a sense of loss and a broken dream.

'I thought he was a real man!' she complained. 'But he's a loser, a child : that's all he is... a little child...'

Caroline's mind seemed to struggle with this, and vagrant thoughts invaded her calm. That's all she'd ever seemed to do : mother him, bear with his indiscretions - and yet... she could still feel residual care and affection, and tried to defend her husband again.

'But you seduced him.'

Rona recoiled. She felt debased and unfairly maligned.

'I tried to set him free to be himself. Is that so wrong?'

'No.'

Then quietly, surprised, she continued.

'But he's weak, you see...' Her eyes were glistening.

'I know that...' Caroline answered without great passion... 'and when he starts being soft, being weak... I can almost love him.'

Rona shook her head.

'You've got it all so wrong. That's pity, not love. But I tried to dignify him, to bring him alive, to draw the strength out of him. I wouldn't let him be a child. My love was not demeaning.'

'I don't think it was love at all.' This surface lust devoid of beauty : it seemed so cheap in Caroline's eyes, compared to parenthood and love.

'What right have you to say that, when I've at least been honest to my feelings? But you - I think you're scared of lust, and scared of a woman's real power.' She reached, in a darting movement for the Browning, and stared wildly, distractedly.

'But I'm strong, Caroline. I have strength. Do you understand? I am strong and free...' she seemed to be fighting for control of her emotions, all the assurance on the surface seeping away... 'only' she murmured 'he's disappointed me, because I thought he was strong as well, but he deceived me.'

'I'm very disappointed, Caroline!' she shouted...

'I wasn't unfaithful to him' she almost sobbed. 'I would have given him everything. I've been badly wronged.'

Caroline looked directly at her : at the brittle surface, cracking, fragmenting. Below, she peered but could only find - emptiness : while the woman tried to sustain the surface with combative self-assertion. Another surge of high insistence coursed through Rona's erratic awareness.

'I am strong, you see. You know that I am. I could do anything, Caroline. Anything, do you hear?' She raised the weapon, then her lips twisted, and she looked into space.

'But men are frightened of women who are strong, of what we can do to them. He was frightened by my strength, my power... and he ran away. Just ran away.'

Her whole body seemed taut and strained.

'I can't believe how he's treated me. Just treated my feelings like a piece of shit. It's disgusting. It's sick.' She looked at Caroline. 'Your husband's a bastard.' She spelt it out.

'I don't believe that.'

'All men are bastards! You're best shot of him.'

Then she focused on the gun, and handled it tensely.

'But I won't go quietly, Caroline. I won't go quietly. I'm going to teach him he can't just treat me like that.' She pointed the barrel, on an impulse, toward his dogs, who looked up trustingly. Caroline rose.

'Not them...' she protested passionately.

'Who then?' shouted Rona, turning the weapon at her.

'You bastard!' she screamed. The shot rang out, and the two dogs bolted.

'Arsehole!' A second blast ripped into the portrait behind Caroline.

'Shit.' Defaced.

'Wanker.' Split apart.

'Scum...' The fifth shot brought the picture down.

'Serves you fucking right...'

Then she turned to Caroline. Calmly - though her pulse was racing - she murmured : 'Put it down, Rona.'

The young woman swayed, and the weapon dropped to the floor. She let out a squeal and rocked in sobs, tears flowing freely all at once. Caroline ran her hand through the mess of tousled hair, stared at her soiled clothes, then pulled away.

'I thought I loved him.'

'I know... and so did I...' his wife said coolly.

Scott appeared in a night-gown at the door; Annie the housekeeper peering, concerned, behind him.

'Shall I call the police?' he asked.

'No. Fetch us some coffee, Victor - oh, and take this away.' She pointed to the Browning on the floor.

Yet there was a raw courage of sorts in Rona, as she fought the turbulent tide of her feelings, refusing to submit or bow. She breathed in deeply, clenching her fists, the tears still rippling across her cheeks.

'I'm going to be alright,' she told herself. 'I'm going to be alright - because I am strong, Caroline. I am strong, you see.'

Scott left the room.

'You understand - the reason I'm breaking up. It's not for him. It's fucking Charlie...'

'Did you take a line tonight?' Caroline asked.

She nodded.

'Coming down's not so much fun...' she sniffed.

'Then give it up' Caroline tried to reason.

'No, why should I?' Rona answered sharply. 'But as for the rest, and all the others' - she paused - 'the game is up.'

'Good : let's hope your friend can keep his mouth shut.'

'He will,' she muttered.

The portraits seemed to cast disdain upon them, looking austerely down at the strewn disorder : the debris of cups and books and wood spilled out across the floor; flowers overturned; and fragments of china. Beyond, too, in the gaunt darkness, a crack in a window, the smell of decay.

Rona started to leave before Scott could return, but swung round at the door.

'I'm not going to apologise,' she asserted, 'because I've done nothing wrong.'

'I don't really care,' replied Caroline bluntly.

'I've done nothing wrong' she insisted. 'I have a right to be happy. All women do. A right to determine my life for myself.'

'Yes you have' said Caroline. 'We all have.'

Yet something was tripping up Rona's justification.

'I hope the children will be alright.' The words stuck in her throat. 'I never wanted them to be hurt.'

'Well they are.' Ungiving.

Rona smiled, unable to accept the remark.

'Not by me...'

She swayed, and felt a distaste. At that moment she knew that she needed to leave. Caroline watched her depart, in her rumpled clothing, her empty presence : and she seemed diminished, somehow; somehow, abused.

Afterwards Caroline Maclean was left with her thoughts : wondering about the three children again; surveying the fragments of her fracturing world; and reflecting on her right to determine her life for herself as well.

Annie the housekeeper came in quietly, carrying the coffee, observing the scene with inscrutable calm.

'I sometimes think the world's gone mad' Caroline sighed.

The old woman smiled and waved her hand. 'Ach. I wouldnae doot it, Mrs Maclean. It has a habit o' fallin' aboot frae time tae time, but it aye gits isseln thegither agin...'

'I used to wish I could stay in my garden for ever,' she sighed dreamily, 'safe from the outside world - its demands, its madness...' and she smiled... 'as if only there, I could be myself, know myself...'

Annie just cast her a subdued smile of acceptance. She set about clearing the floor.

'I remember once,' Caroline continued, 'I was watching the news, and they filmed a hospital in Sarajevo : a hospital for the mentally disturbed, they said. All through the terrors of the Bosnian war, a brave Serb doctor had looked after Moslems, Croats, Serbs inside this compound. They showed grown men, holding hands like children, broken down but helping one another, protective, kind. Once, said the newsman, the security fences existed to keep those patients locked in. Now, nobody wanted to leave anyway, and the fence only served to keep others away. They knew that the world outside had grown madder than theirs : that in a world of meaninglessness and hate, their essential sanity was all that kept them safe...'

Annie muttered quietly.

'Aye well. I'm thinking the world's a gie strange place. But there's that much joy an' beauty, if ye seek it. It a' depends on hwere ye look fae it...'

'I didn't quite understand at the time,' Caroline laughed to herself, sadly. 'The only sanity I've got is my own... if I try to conform to the world as a whole, God knows what I might become...'

Annie tidied the table a little, and smiled silently, as if trying to encourage Caroline. She was a gentle old lady, who seemed to have found wholeness in such little things : in the calm of the conversation, in the person before her, in a few belongings, and little acts of thoughtfulness and love.

So much joy and beauty, yet the world fragmenting and passing it by, along the veneer and surface of its driven urgency.

Caroline shivered, though the night was mild.

'I long for some warmth and music in my life' she thought. 'I long for someone close.' Then aloud, she said 'Goodnight' and parted.

Annie watched after her, interested, and fond. A few more minutes and she, too, could return to her bed. She surveyed the debris in the calm of summer night. Quiet rest awaited her, at least.

* * *