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    In the beginning, they were all sympathy. When Bell first started showing signs of depression they came to visit us, they bought her books and flowers. She was their charity case of the moment, and they’d help me fix her. And then things started getting really, really hard. Bell wouldn’t let anyone in our bedroom – then she wouldn’t let anyone in the house at all, which offended my mother to death. My mother just couldn’t understand that Bell didn’t mean to be offensive, that she was ill . That refusing to see people, refusing to invite people into our house had nothing to do with bad manners and everything to do with her distress. We lost nearly all our friends like that – only the most faithful ones remained. And that was fine, that’s the way it is with people and mental illness.
    No, wait a minute, that’s not fine at all. That’s awful .
    Okay, what could we do? People are stupid. But my own mother and sister, they turned their backs on Bell, mistaking her pain for ignorance, not bothering to even try to look beyond. To their eyes, the pretty, sparky Isabel, fresh out of Glasgow School of Art and full of talent and potential, had turned into some Mrs Rochester figure, barricaded into our home. All of a sudden, she was an embarrassment . My wife, so dear to my heart, so beloved, had turned into a big problem for them. “Angus’s wife has issues,” they would say to their friends and to the rest of our family, hush-hushing the whole thing because they were inconvenienced, they were ashamed.
    And still, my mother and Sheila used to love Isabel, in spite of what she’d done – what we’d both done – to Torcuil. They’d never showed much empathy with my brother, or consideration for him. They’d always openly favoured me, my sister following our mother’s lead – which had always upset me, because I could see how much it hurt Torcuil. They’d barely noticed Torcuil’s fiancée, but they certainly noticed Angus’s wife. That was the way their perception worked.
    Coming back to Bell – my mother and sister did love her . . . or maybe they simply accepted her. I don’t know, because certainly if you love someone you don’t throw them away when they’re ill. Like an old, broken toy. So first they accepted her, then they tolerated her while she sank deeper and deeper into depression. But then they resented her, and they couldn’t hide it. Actually, they didn’t bother trying to hide it. If only their resentment had had its roots in their love for me, some sort of twisted, selfish-by-proxy protective instinct, maybe I could have tried to understand – but all they could think of was, I knew for sure, our family’s status. And having a madwoman in the attic was not good for our family’s reputation, my mother would have said if she had truly spoken her mind.
    The only one who stuck by us was Torcuil, my brother. Even with the pain Bell and I inflicted on him years ago, when she left him for me, he still stood by me, loyal and steadfast. I don’t know what I would have done without him.
    Nothing, nothing could ever stop me from loving Bell, nothing could ever make me want to leave her. Not even what she had just done – especially what she had just done.
    Not even if she’d tried to kill me , by killing herself.
    There, I said it.
    Because if she died, I would die too.
    Let’s not talk about that anyway. Let’s talk about Bell, my Bell – the woman I married. She was a talented artist, her work was published all over the world and her books made many children happy. She had a studio in the attic, lying dormant and waiting for her to come back. Its door was closed, and I prayed and prayed that one day I would come back from a gig and I would see it open, and I would see Bell’s fingers stained with paint again. And that expression on her face – that mix