The Collector

 She was lying with her head to one side and it looked awful, her mouth was open and her eyes were staring white like she'd tried to see out of the window one last time. I felt her and she was cold, though her body was still warm. I ran and got a mirror. I knew that was the way and held it over her mouth but there was no mist. She was dead.

 Well, I shut her mouth up and got the eyelids down. I didn't know what to do then, I went and made myself a cup of tea.

 When it was dark I got her dead body and carried it down to the cellar. I know you're meant to wash dead bodies, but I didn't like to, it didn't seem right, so I put her on the bed and combed out her hair and cut a lock. I tried to arrange her face so it had a smile but I couldn't. Anyway she looked very peaceful. Then I knelt and said a prayer, the only one I knew was Our Father, so I said some of that and God rest her soul, not that I believe in religion, but it seemed right. Then I went upstairs.

 I don't know why it was one little thing that did it; you'd think it would be seeing her dead or carrying her down the last time, but it wasn't; it was when I saw her slippers in the room where she was upstairs. I picked them up and suddenly I knew she wouldn't ever wear them again. I wouldn't ever go down and draw the bolts again (funny, I had still bolted her in, though), and none of it would ever happen again, the good or the bad. I suddenly knew she was dead and dead means gone for ever, for ever and ever.

 Those last days I had to be sorry for her (as soon as I knew it wasn't acting), and I forgave her all the other business. Not while she was living, but when I knew she was dead, that was when I finally forgave her. All sorts of nice things came back. I remembered the beginning, the days in the Annexe just seeing her come out of the front door, or passing her the other side of the street, and I couldn't understand how it all happened so that she was there below, dead.

 It was like a joke mousetrap I once saw, the mouse just went on and things moved, it couldn't ever turn back, but just on and on into cleverer and cleverer traps until the end.

 I thought how happy I was, feelings I had those weeks I never had before and I wouldn't ever have again.

 The more I thought about it, the worse it seemed.

 It came to midnight and I couldn't sleep, I had to have all the lights on, I don't believe in spirits but it seemed better with the lights.

 I kept on thinking of her, thinking perhaps it was my fault after all that she did what she did and lost my respect, then I thought it was her fault, she asked for everything she got. Then I didn't know what to think, my head seemed to go bang bang bang, and I knew I couldn't live at Fosters any more. I wanted to drive away and never come back.

 I thought, I could sell up and go out to Australia. But then there was all the covering up to do first. It was too much. The next thing was I got the police on the brain. I decided the best thing was to go to the police and tell them the lot. I even got my coat on to drive down.

 I thought I was going mad, I kept on looking in the mirror and trying to see it in my face. I had this horrible idea, I was mad, everyone else could see it, only I couldn't. I kept remembering how people in Lewes seemed to look at me sometimes, like the people in that doctor's waiting-room. They all knew I was mad.

 It came to two o'clock. I don't know why, I began to think her being dead was all a mistake, perhaps she had just been asleep. So I had to go down to make sure. It was horrible. Soon as I went down in the outer cellar I started imagining things. Like she might step out of a corner with a hatchet. Or she would not be there -- even though the door was bolted she would have vanished. Like in a horror-film.

 She was there. Lying there, all in the silence. I touched her. She was so cold, so cold it gave me a shock. I still couldn't understand it was true, how she'd been living only a few hours before, and just a few days back walking about, drawing, doing her knitting. And now this.

 Then something moved at the other end of the cellar, back by the door. It must have been a draught. Something broke in me, I lost my head, I rushed out and fell up the stair in the outer cellar and out. I locked the door down double quick and got into the house and locked that door and all the bolts home.

 After a while the shaking stopped, I calmed down. But all I could think was how this was the end. I couldn't live with her down there like that.

 It was then I got the idea. It kept on coming back, this feeling that she was lucky to be done with it all, no more worries, no more hiding, no more things you want to be and won't ever be. But finished, the lot.

 All I had to do was kill myself, then the others could think what they liked. The people in the waiting-room, the Annexe people, Aunt Annie and Mabel, all of them. I would be out of it.