The tap dripped on the pot lid, tink, tink, tink. The plumbing was old, the washer worn, there was no way to turn it off. At home, there'd be the noise of the lawnmower next door, the TV in the bedroom up too loud, the thud of the washing machine as it vibrated against the wall. The sound of Trevor yelling, 'Bring me the paper! Change the channels! Make me a cup of tea!' Here it was quiet enough to hear a tap drip, so steadily it could drive you mad.

Maybe this is punishment for my crimes, she thought, for not being there to listen anymore.

Outside the birds swooped and called. The breeze blew in through the missing glass. She'd broken in, with a cardigan wrapped around her hand, the way the criminals do on TV. She guessed she was a criminal now. Breaking and entering didn't sound very bad. Failing to provide the necessities of life, they could charge her with that. She imagined Trevor, still in bed, in soiled pyjamas, not calling out for tea any longer, but for water.

'Water, water,' he'd cry.

The tap dripped into the sink. Water went down the plug hole, wasted.

Her heart did not even prick, let alone bleed. She knew people would call her a cold hearted bitch. Maybe she deserved it.

'If someone doesn't bring me water I'll die of bloody thirst.' He'd be crying real tears now.

Perhaps he already had, she thought, died. Perhaps the charge against her would end up as murder. Manslaughter, at the very least. It wouldn't be so bad, she decided - though she knew she was being silly - to be taken care of for a change instead of being the caretaker. She laid her hands on the table, and looked at her wedding ring. Funny thing, that, she thought. They called her Caregiver on the forms.

The water tapped the pot lid.

'What Trevor wouldn't do for a bit of that,' she thought. She was meant to be a wife, not a nurse. Not a slave. Till death do us part, in sickness and in health, that was what she'd agreed to. No one had said anything about being ground down by a numbing voice and cutting bad temper.

'I have no sympathy,' she'd said to the doctor. 'No sympathy at all.'

'Well, I wouldn't tell him that at this point of time,' the doctor said, gently. 'He needs all the help he can get.'

'He's responsible for his own actions,' she'd said, regardless. Trevor had always told her he was boss.Right from when they'd first got married, he'd carried on about obey. Obviously, that made him his own boss too.

'He's responsible for getting hurt,' she told the doctor. 'He's responsible for getting better.'

'But once a back's broken, it can't be fixed,' the man said, like a child to a child, his expression earnest, his hand on her shoulder, cool and white.

'It's his own doing, is what I meant,' she'd said, retracting a little, but not retreating.

The doctor's brow had settled into a frown. 'Yes, well. I agree with you. But that doesn't help the situation now.' Situation?

The situation was, that once Trevor had been released from the hospital, Trevor was no longer the doctor's problem, but hers. He'd been belligerent when he'd been upright and mobile, operating as a whole man. Now that he was reduced to half, he'd just got worse. And it felt to her, that he blamed her, her, for the accident, the same way he once blamed her for his drinking.

'A man's got to have a beer once in a while or else he'd go nuts without warning.'

She often wondered, if the majority of women who came to visit, brought their sons, their lovers, their men, as a warning of a different sort. Have a care or else… But she'd found Trevor's line of reasoning insulting, inferring that she had not been a good enough wife, or vigilant enough to save him. That last afternoon she'd come into the bedroom to find Linda Wellington, bending over him so low her breasts scraped the pillowcase, wiping his brow with her T-shirt.

'It never would have happened, if I'd been looking after you,' Linda said.

For a moment, she'd thought Linda meant at the pub, but she'd understood rather fast, that what Linda really meant was at home.

The memory of it brought spots of heat to her cheeks. It was as if the whole world now thought she'd failed. Failed in her marriage, as a wife. That Trevor was now exonerated from guilt.

'What a hard life you've had,' she told the shadow on the wall. 'What a hard old life you've had!'

Back bounced the words Trevor had been shouting just before she'd left. 'Pyjamas! I want clean pyjamas! Sheets! I want new sheets!'

Suddenly, she smiled. The memory settled like a butterfly on leaf.

She'd left him. Left him to it.

She'd left him piss in the bed, to dehydrate, to die. She'd taken the keys into the bedroom and rattled them in his face. It was cruel but she didn't care. She wondered if she ever had. She'd lifted her shoulders, set them straight, walked away.

And here she was, alone at last.

The tap went tink, tink, tink.

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