That’s what you’re doing, you’re poisoning her—”

“She was found unconscious on your doorstep, Richard, in the pouring rain.”

“She was completely fine!”

“Then explain to me,” I said, “why you didn’t call an ambulance when she collapsed.”

There was a silence on the line then, and in it, for the first time in four years, I heard something in my ex-husband’s voice that I had never heard before.

It was a small flicker of panic.