It is a lovely peaceful night; Finn, a big boy now, into everything, a dead weight, fast asleep next to her on the sofa as she watches TV with the volume low, her feet up on the little beanbag Tommy likes to sit on. She helps herself to another Malteser and nuzzles into him. It’s rare that she has a chance to put her feet up. The twins and Tommy are with their dad. Finn’s full of a cold so she kept him home.
When Sam was living here she could never settle at night, waiting for him to come home, always on edge, listening out for him whether she was sitting down here on the sofa or up in bed. Now she knows he’s not coming back, she can relax. She falls asleep easily.
Yeah, some nights she has to get up and come down for a few drinks until she feels able to go to sleep again. But not often.
Those are the nights she’s back at the North End. Those nights she jerks awake. 381
If she’d got to the bloody barmaid that afternoon she would have gone for her, she knows that. But, in the end, she didn’t have to. She stood in the gale and the driving rain, pressed herself into the lee of the rocks, her hip pushed hard against the unforgiving granite crag, and she watched Beatrice Wallace do the job for her.
Christie might have stopped her or tried to. Didn’t.
If the police had come after her, if they’d found her pink coat, she would have told them what she saw. But they didn’t push it, so she didn’t need to.
Because if she told the police she’d seen Beatrice Wallace attack the barmaid, Beatrice could just as easily lie and say Christie had done it. And who would they believe – someone like her, or someone like Beatrice?
Best leave it be.
She has enough on her plate with the boys as it is.