It's not a case of " me wanting Sheila to hit her mother "..
You know ( if you still believe so ) as well as most,that Sheila was like a coiled spring,who DID have a violent streak because she used to land out at anyone who happened to be in her way,including her children.
Now give me a valid reason as to Junes' injury and her reason for not informing her Bible class, when again,we all knew that she was an honest,Godfearing woman ,the type who wouldn't have let her friends down and who wouldn't have been so ill-mannered as not to reply or answer them.
Lookout, you must have realized that I an hugely concerned that Sheila was let down, but it doesn't mean I want to see, lumped onto her, every crime in Christendom in order to exonerate Jeremy.
Regarding her "violent" streak, I wonder where, when she wasn't ill, this would fall on a scale of 1 to 10. During what we know of her behaviour during psychotic episodes, the number of times she's been known to lash out at others without provocation, have been extremely rare. For me, there just isn't enough evidence, from any quarter, to make me think it was habitual.
June's "mysterious" absence from her Bible class. We are told that the Bambers requested that Sheila and the children visited them because they wanted to see the children before Colin took them on holiday. I can't believe that June wouldn't have been prepared to give ONE Bible class a miss because her family were staying but maybe she thought a couple of hours away from the house would help her unwind having had extras to cater for on top of harvest being in full swing. You say she wouldn't have let her friends down. What about her not wanting to let her family down? She may have FULLY intended to phone the person she was giving a lift to but become tied up with giving the boys their supper, bathing them and putting them to bed.
The black eye COULD have been the result of hitting a post -although I will allow that the explanation is somewhat trite- personally I'd be more inclined to believe one of the boys wopped her, accidentally, with a toy/book? PARTLY because I see punching someone in the eye deliberately as being a MAN thing to do. A woman, IMO, would be MORE inclined to slap. "Hitting a post" MAY have been a deliberate, throw away line because she didn't want to blame the boys. Neither the cleaner nor the farm secretary has mentioned seeing her with a black eye.