‘Yes. I’ll try him tonight.’
‘I can pop round tomorrow and fill you in on my visit and you can tell me what he says then.’
Thursday dawned with a layer of snow two inches deep. Rare for Manchester, though the outlying hills get their fair share. The kids were delirious, out in wellies, coats and pyjamas before breakfast, scraping snow together to make a snowman. They weren’t making much progress. I went out and gave them a hand – showed them how to roll a snowball round, make it bigger and bigger. The snow was just right, made that delicious squeaking sound when we squashed it. We created a very short snowman complete with pebble eyes, a carrot nose and a baseball hat.
Ray took Maddie and Tom to school and was busy in the cellar when I set off to see Agnes.
As soon as I was in the room she crossed to the sideboard, opened a drawer and took something out. She came over and handed me a bottle of tablets. ‘I found these,’ she said, ‘Lily’s tablets.’
‘Where?’
‘She has these little boots, fur-lined. They were inside one of them.’
‘Do you think she’d hidden them?’
Agnes shrugged. ‘I don’t know. She kept the boots near the bed, like spare slippers, the bottle could have been knocked off. I didn’t find them till I was sorting through her other things.’
‘Dr Goulden will be relieved.’
‘I don’t want you to tell him.’
‘Why?’
‘Look.’ She pulled another bottle from her pocket. ‘These are the same thing, thioridazine – I had them for a while myself – but Lily’s are different, the colour and the markings.’
I took a tablet out of each bottle. True, they were different colours, Lily’s were a pale yellow while Agnes’ were white. ‘They could be a different dosage,’ I said, ‘or made by different manufacturers.’ I looked again at the labels on the bottles. Both said they were 25 mg. ‘They are the same strength but as far as I know doctors deal with different drug companies and some use cheaper versions of the more famous brands. I’m sure that’s all it is, the same thing from different places.’
‘Can you check,’ Agnes asked, ‘that they are what they say?’
‘You think they might have made a mistake with the prescription?’
‘It’s possible.’
I put the tablets back and screwed up the lids. ‘It would explain why Goulden was so anxious when they went missing. And why Lily got worse. Maybe that’s it – an awful mistake and he’d only just realised…I’ll have them analysed. I think I know someone who could get them into a lab.’ I slipped the bottle into my coat pocket.
Agnes sat down. I began to tell her about my visit to Kingsfield. ‘Lily didn’t say very much. The medication she’s on makes her sleepy. But she mentioned you.’