as immediately as it began, the wind dropped and there was silence. It was the creepiest thing I’ve ever known.
Emma: To get to the cottage, I had to walk around the pool. I wasn’t paying much attention to anything and certainly didn’t want to accidentally catch Daniel’s eye. I was almost past the area where they stack sun loungers when I realised Mum was sitting on the edge of a bed next to Daniel and Liz, close to the water.
Liz: Beth got back from the hospital and not one of her kids were there for her. Good job she had us.
Emma: I went across and asked how she was. She looked so tired. I know that shouldn’t have been a surprise because she’d spent the night at the hospital – but it was deeper than that. I think you can tell the difference when you see people. Someone might look like they need a good night’s sleep, but, other times, it’s like their eyes haven’t closed in days. Their whole face hangs and there’s a small delay when they try to talk, as if you’re in different time zones.
When I asked Mum how she was, it took a second for her to blink her way up to me and open her mouth. She said she was ‘all right’, but only in the way people do when they don’t know what else to say. I think it’s a British thing, almost like our national catchphrase. Someone could have been hit by lightning and crawled their way across a county to the nearest hospital and then, when a doctor asks how they are, they’d say ‘all right’. It’s what people do. It’s what I said when Mum visited me in prison for the first time.
I asked about Dad and she said he was breathing for himself now and making progress, even though he was still unconscious. I think she’d forgotten that she asked me to look for flights because she never mentioned it.
Liz: Beth just wanted a rest. She’d been up all night, the poor thing. Instead of leaving her be, Emma kept on at her, asking how she was, how Geoff was, all that. I wanted to tell her to go away, but it wasn’t my place.
Emma: Mum said she was going back to the hospital later in the afternoon and asked if I wanted to go with her. I told her that of course I would.
Liz: It was obvious to anyone watching that Emma didn’t want to go. Beth put her on the spot, where she couldn’t say no.
Emma: I asked Mum what she thought of the cottage – but she didn’t know anything about it. I had to tell her that the manager had moved all her things to a private cottage, instead of the main hotel. Nobody had told her and, when she got back from the hospital, she’d gone straight to the pool.
I ended up walking with her around the back of the pool out towards the cottages. That’s when I noticed the flowers.
Julius: I only saw it later. The staff had put together this display of flowers next to the door of Mum’s cottage. Fair play to them.
Emma: Someone had put in a lot of effort. They’d woven the flowers into a heart shape and then rested it up against the wall. Mum burst into tears the moment she saw it. She kept saying how kind it all was, but I was more worried about her physically. I was having to hold her up because she was so frail. I ended up guiding her over to the door and then I let her in with the key that the manager had left me.
It was a lot cooler inside because of the air con, but Mum was like a ghost. She was drifting aimlessly around the room while constantly catching herself on the corners of things. She barely seemed to notice and I did wonder if she’d taken something. I didn’t want to ask.
She said she wanted to take a shower, so I left her doing that while I waited in the bedroom area. There was a king-size bed and I remember thinking that Mum was going to find it very empty when it came to sleeping. She was having a hard enough time of it as it was – and that was before what happened to Dad.
…
I realise I contributed to everything that went wrong.
Julius: After Emma got her sentence, she wasn’t around to see how