‘I’m so sorry. I’m using up all your Kleenex. It’s just all so upsetting.
‘I’d only gone up there, to the North End, to scatter my mother’ s ashes. I’m sorry. I didn’t ask if it was allowed. It’s probably frowned upon isn’t it, but it’s hardly illegal, is it?
‘No. I’ll be okay in a moment. It’s just a lot, you know.
‘No, I didn’t see anything suspicious up there. Nothing suspicious. No.
‘I didn’t see Hannah anywhere. I didn’t see the guests who were attacked – the two women from Falcon, wasn’t it? Poor souls.
‘It’s terrifying to think some madman was on the loose up there when I was out walking with—
‘Yes, I did see Sam’s wife heading that way. She cycled up to me and asked if I’d seen her husband. But I hadn’t.
‘Was there anything suspicious in the way Christie was 300behaving? Well, she was shouting. But that might have been because the wind was so loud.
‘I honestly can’t remember what she was wearing.
‘No, I didn’t see anyone else up there.
‘Yes, of course. I’ve seen the notices you’ve put up in the Old Ship, advising women not to walk or cycle anywhere alone. Isak Mensah is always kind enough to walk me back from the pub.’
Somehow she managed to answer their questions. Stuttering, garbling. She doesn’t think she said anything incriminating but she must have looked guilty as sin. Of course she wasn’t to blame for the attacks or for that woman going missing. But no one is entirely blameless are they?
She doesn’t tell them that she saw him up there. At least she assumes it was him – the man wearing a balaclava, running across the path on the right side of the cliff, the other side to her. Someone else might have had a black balaclava, but she could tell it was the same man who was in her bathroom all those months ago. She just knew.
She didn’t see the one he chose, Charlotte. Could hardly picture her.
She told the police nothing of that because she would very much like to deal with the situation in her own way. She can’t wait to run into him again.
If she hadn’t been startled by Sam’s wife, she might have gone after him that afternoon, but Christie had come right up to her and shouted in her face ‘Have you seen Sam?’ She didn’t tell her Sam had gone round the outcrop near the top a few minutes earlier, because Christie looked so furious. And Maisie 301likes Sam. He always helped her with her mother’s wheelchair. The police didn’t need to know he was up there. He wouldn’t hurt a fly, Sam. Such a polite chap.
As she walks away from the community centre, almost shaking with relief, Maisie thinks of that afternoon again, wondering why the man in the balaclava chose someone else and not her? She’d thought they had a connection – she felt it the first time she saw him in the bathroom. If only he’d come after her. The thought was thrilling …
She imagined him taking hold of her arm and she would have whirled around and smashed her mother’s urn into his face, splattering his nose across his features, the gristle and blood—
When she gets back to the holiday cottage, Maisie makes herself a nice cup of tea.
It is so restful here without her mother.
All night long that bloody machine – the Darth Vader breathing. She slept like a baby, but her mother’s sleep apnoea kept Maisie awake hour after hour. She’d tried earplugs, but they made her itch and of course her mother refused to shut the bedroom door just in case she needed something in the middle of the night.
She always needed something in the middle of the night.
Maisie sometimes thought it must be what it was like having a newborn. Chance would be a fine thing. No time for relationships when you’re a full-time carer. Precious little time to do anything except tend to her – the bloated queen bee. All Edith did was eat and grow fatter.
There wasn’t enough physio in the world to help Maisie’s back, screaming with pain as she struggled to lift and turn her. 302She screamed internally with the lack of sleep.
That last night …
They’d already resorted to giant nappies – ordered specially from the chemist. And that still didn’t stop Edith Willis bleating that she needed changing.
Maisie waited until her mother had fallen back to sleep.
Then she unplugged the machine and for an hour or more listened to the snores, loud as a pig’s, on and on – and then the silence. And she counted the seconds – five, six, seven, eight – and then the gurgling fight for another in breath.
Her mother’s huge breasts weighing heavy on her rib cage. Crushing her.
It had started to get light when Maisie decided she just couldn’t stand it any longer. She gently removed the facemask from her mother’s mouth and nose. Edith didn’t wake.
She waited another half hour.
And then she held the pillow over her mother’s face, pushing down with all her might until there was no more movement.
And no more sound.