A Lovely Day to Die Read Free

in the event it was going to be like this—the victim so peaceful, so cooperative almost, the bedroom so quiet—had she only known that this was how it would be, she’d have done it months—nay, years—ago.
    But how long did she have to stay like this, clutching and pressing down on the pillow? How long do you have to hold a pillow over a person’s face before you can be sure—quite, quite sure — that the last breath is gone from them? For the first time she comprehended the awful loneliness of the task she had undertaken, with no precedents to go by, no one in all the world to give advice or guidance.
    She bent low, pressing her ear against the pillow, as though trying to catch some whispered last words, some final message from her once-beloved mother.
    It was breathing she was listening for, of course; and there was none. No sound; no stir of movement … and yet still she dared not release the pressure, not just yet. Edging the weight of her body further over the pillow, to make sure that it stayed in place, she slid her hand beneath the blankets and felt for the old woman’s heart. The ribs stuck out like the slats of a plate-rack, the pouches of wrinkled skin that had once been breasts lay still and flaccid beneath her touch.
    No heartbeat. No flutter of breath. Nothing. It was over! So quietly!—so decently! It was beyond belief!
    And then, suddenly, like a great yellow sea-monster rising from the deep, her mother’s face lurched upwards, grimacing, contorted … a howl like a wolf burst from the parched lips as with hands like claws the creature wrenched the pillow from her daughter’s grasp, and flung it to the ground …
    *
    Millicent woke, sweating with terror, to find herself safe in bed, in her own neat, austere little bedroom just across the landing from her mother’s; and for a moment she lay still, breathing deeply, recovering from the nightmare: reorientating herself, reassuring herself that she was awake, and that none of those awful things had actually happened.
    Yes, it was all right. It had only been a dream—one of those unnerving nightmares that had been troubling her increasingly of late.
    She really ought to consult Dr Fergusson about these bad nights she was having, get him to prescribe something. He was a kind man, and, so far as his busy schedule permitted, concerned for Millicent’s plight. Always, after his routine visit to her mother every Wednesday, he would make a point of asking Millicent how she felt? Eating all right, was she? Not overdoing it? She must remember that she wasn’t getting any younger—sixty-two wasn’t it, this year? More than once, he had insisted on taking her blood pressure, had tut-tutted, with slightly raised eyebrows, at the result, and had urged her to take things easy for a while, to try not to do too much. He had known as well as she had that with a senile,bed-ridden old mother of ninety-two in her sole charge, there was no way Millicent could take things easy, no way she could not do too much; but since there was nothing that either of them could do about it, they had smiled appropriate politenesses at one another, and he had gone on his way. At least it was nice to know that he cared.
    *
    It was useless to hope for any more sleep that night. Already the light was beginning to show round the edges of the curtains, and outside the twittering of the first birds had begun. Through the open door across the landing (both doors were kept wide open at night now, lest Mother’s low moans of distress should fail to rouse her) Millicent could see the outlines of Mother’s vast mahogany wardrobe, glimmering greyly in the half light of early dawn; and beyond it, deep in the shadowed heart of the sickroom, she could hear the harsh, rasping snores that for so long had been the backdrop of all her days and nights. Only occasionally, now, did the old woman rouse herself from this ugly, uneasy sleep; to moan, or babble, or sometimes to plead wordlessly,