She found a seat near the junction of Hamilton Terrace with the St. John’s Wood Road—there were a lot of seats round here—and sank onto it. I am too old for this, she said to herself, this is for a young woman who still has all her physical strength. I should never have gone. Why did I think that I, who have never done a violent act, who never gave one of my children a tiny slap, never smacked a pet dog, who rescued a trapped wasp rather than squash it, why did I think I could kill a woman? No, much as I hated her, I should have known killing was impossible for me. She put her head against the wooden bars of the seat back, felt her eyes close and her mouth fall open. That jerked her awake and she struggled to get up but made it. Freya lived near here, in a block of flats opposite Lord’s. Few people were about. She thought she could get to Freya’s, and she remembered that her granddaughter had given up work prior to the birth of her baby. She would probably be at home.
