I am sure the kids heard everything this time. They got off to school as normal but they weren’t themselves.

I reached for the notebook in my handbag and opened it to a page with her name at the top and a collection of notes beside a column of dates.

“What time did you say he got in?”

I scribbled and snapped a couple of pictures with my phone as she showed me the bruising around her arms and on her hip where she’d landed after getting thrown out of the bed.

Shakespeare had pithy things to say about alcohol, performance and desire. But this pretty lady had been educated by reality TV and magazines full of advertorials on how to please your man. Apparently, it is a woman’s job to be both compliant without being demanding while also enjoying paroxysms of pleasure at however her man chooses to bestow pleasure upon her.

Here, he’d made it her problem when he couldn’t perform after pouring the better part of a litre of whiskey down his throat.

I knew this because I’d been following him for a while now. Thanks to their ground level bungalow built next to the street and the open windows. I also knew that she had willingly let him into her bed after he staggered through the house, only to have him bellow his frustration not long after that.

I left and walked home a few streets away for a few hours’ sleep before I got up in time for this meeting with the bruised and worried wife.

“Well, you asked me to help you figure out if he is being unfaithful and I’ve been following him for a month.”

Her eyes were full of desperate hope. “And?”

“I’ve not seen him with another woman but I am afraid you’re losing him to the bottle.”

“What do you mean?” She asked her tone becoming defensive. “He just enjoys having a good time with his friends.”

Now that it had transpired that the problem was not another woman, she was not ready to accept that her husbands’ drinking of a couple of litres of hard liquor a day was a problem. She had to stand by her man.

I was dumbfounded at her because it was not the reaction I expected from a supposedly loving wife learning about her husband’s alcohol problem.

To be fair, I’m not a doctor. I’m just a private investigator. I’d answered the question she’d asked me to answer. I’d done my job. I totalled up my expenses plus the standard fee for my services and gave her the invoice. As she was handing over the cash, she managed an enormous smile, but it did not reach into her eyes.

That would have been the end of it but this client was a neighbour and I walked by her house almost every day.

A week later, as I was coming home at dawn from a long night of following a married man who was cheating on his wife with several girlfriends, I saw my neighbour’s husband slumped messily against the wall. His smart suit was rumpled and one knee was poking out from a large tear in the trousers. The front of his shirt was smeared with vomit. All his pockets were turned out and obviously empty.

Glancing around to make sure any possible attackers were not lying in wait for good Samaritans to be distracted by the mess, I held my breath and leaned in to try to rouse him awake. But he was not breathing.

I banged on the door to his house and the lights in the living room were on. His wife opened the door, fully dressed and freshly made up, which I thought was strange but I didn’t focus on it much.

“Yes?” she said expectantly when she opened the door to me.

“Look,” I gestured towards her husband’s prone form “I can’t wake him. You’ll need to carry him in.”

I was further alarmed when she pulled out what looked like her husband’s phone to ring the local police station with barely a glance at her husband.

“My husband is dead. You need to come immediately,” she said matter-of-factly. She brushed off my suggestion that she should call for an ambulance. “No need.” She said in apparent disgust at her husband’s bedraggled remains.

She didn’t even want to move him inside. I excused myself and left because I was not going to carry him into the house by myself. If the police had any questions they would know where to find me.

There was talk afterwards that the wife had inherited a considerable amount of wealth that would allow her to live in comfort and to educate her children at the best schools.

One of my pals on the police force invited me to buy him a drink one evening and asking me about my brief professional relationship with the wife and whether I thought the husband’s death was natural. We both had suspicions of foul play but there was no way to prove it.