Is it fate - or is it murder most foul?

IT’S a simple enough scenario. I’ll be interested in your response to it, especially if you’re a woman. Even more especially, if you’re an unhappily married one.

So, here’s the set-up. A couple have been in a deeply toxic marriage for years: toxic because of HIM. He’s a control freak; a psychological manipulator. Gradually he has worn her self-confidence away until she scarcely knows what to think or which way to turn.

Friends tell her to leave him, but by that weird alchemy that controlling, abusive husbands manage to achieve, she feels trapped, ensnared in the relationship, not least because he has insidiously managed to convince her that she is worthless, pointless, unattractive and a useless apology for a wife.

Perhaps he hits her sometimes, too. Physical and mental abuse often go hand-in-hand. Either way, he is a very nasty piece of work.

Then one day, as they sit opposite each other in the habitual brooding silence that accompanies their evening meal, he suddenly stiffens and clutches his throat. His eyes bulge; spittle dribbles from his mouth.

He doesn’t utter a sound. He can’t. He’s choking. Properly choking, windpipe jammed by a stray piece of brisket or an underdone piece of potato. He bangs the table with both fists.

He stares at her in mounting panic and fear and desperation. His eyes speak to her. “Help! Help me!” She rises from her chair. To go around the table and pound his back, to administer the famed Heimlich manoeuvre?

No. She calmly leaves the kitchen and stands waiting in the hall. She stands there, motionless, until a minute or so later she hears the dull thud of his unconscious body hitting the floor. Still she doesn’t move.

No, she waits at least four minutes – long enough for her darling husband’s brain-stem to begin to die because of oxygen starvation – before walking calmly to the phone and dialling 999.

“Ambulance, please – I think my husband’s having a heart attack.”

Or… she is staring out of the kitchen window at him as he mows the lawn. A few minutes earlier, he had treated her with his usual disdain and contempt. She loathes him. How she wishes he would just die, just die and...

Almost obligingly, at that very moment, he clutches his hands to his chest, bellows in pain, and collapses to the ground, quite motionless.

Does she rush to dial 999 before running outside to give CPR?

She does not. She puts the kettle on and has a nice cup of tea.

Now, do you consider either of these episodes to be cases of murder? Or manslaughter? More importantly, do you think such things happen in real life?

I do. In fact, this concept of an abused wife conspiring with fate to see her husband die underpins my current novel The Night Book – although Meriel, the wife in question, does give fate just a little nudge when the opportunity does arise.

In public talks and presentation about the book, I have been fascinated by women’s responses; in particular the sweet lady in York who, when I was signing her copy afterwards, whispered into my ear: “I saved my horrible husband from choking not once, but twice. And do you know what? I bitterly regretted it afterwards, both times. I wish I’d had a third opportunity to act differently.”

Let me know what you think: send a letter to Daily Express, 10 Lower Thames Street, London EC3R 6EN.