From a clutch bag, Mary withdrew a set of notes she had made the night before and proceeded to drop them on the floor. She mumbled a number of inaudible apologies as she retrieved her papers, then hastily picked up the microphone, causing a disagreeable noise to emanate from the small amplifier. All the while, the crowd maintained a deathly silence, something which increasingly weighed upon Mary as it made her progressively more self-conscious. For the last forty or so years, she had strived with her whole being to avoid being noticed by her neighbours and the rest of the undead - she had even been strongly against Peter’s requests to invite over Milch, even though she had given into them in the end – and now there were possibly somewhere in the number of four hundred or so eyes all directed on her. Not only that, but she had to admit to them all what she had been trying to hide all that time. In the crime books she had read, the capture of a perpetrator and the revealing of his misdeed often seemed to bring relief to the criminal. As she stood, staring back at the silent and waiting gathering of her peers, she found that she felt no sense of relief at all. Indeed, she would have done almost anything to return to her home, to her life of four decades, to a way of living she knew had been lost to her forever.
“Good morning,” Mary whispered into the microphone. She cleared her throat to give herself a moment to think about how to go on. The deputy had instructed her just to start at whatever she felt was the beginning and that she would soon find that the words would come. “I first came to this school on the tenth of January 1964. I’d only just had the birthday of my second life, as some say, on the Boxing Day just before. As far as I can remember, the weather was just turning and over the next few days it would bring in some snow, meaning my first experience of this place would be a distinctly wintery one, but at least it was not as cold as the winter of the year before.”
Mary paused and tapped her fingers on the lectern; how had she found herself talking about the weather? The room remained silent, but now the atmosphere did not feel quite as aggressive towards her as it had done before she had started to speak. She endeavoured to continue.
“I was only here for a very short time. We all know it’s only voluntary anyway and I was keen to return home. Home to Peter, that is. You see, I’d been at my sister’s when it happened and I was impatient to return to Radcliff to show Peter that I was not really dead: well, not gone, anyway.
“My sister did not know anything about what had happened either and I found out later – when I called to tell her where I’d been - that she’d reported me as missing. I told her quite bluntly that I’d left in a huff as the latest man she’d hooked up with was a disgrace, and that I didn’t have time for her anymore unless she left him. As far as I know, they’re still married to this day. This little lie to my sister was not so far from the truth, so it was not difficult for her to believe it was true.
“My prime concern, though, was to get back to Peter. After only a couple of weeks here, I made a promise to return to the school, borrowed a little money for the bus, was told about how to get blood in the future and left. I’ve not been back since.
“It happened just after I got back to Peter. I’d left the school in such a rush, I hadn’t really taken what they’d said about the hunger seriously. I only had one thing on my mind and that was to get home. When I appeared at the door, Peter was obviously shocked. He asked me questions about where I’d been, why I’d disappeared from my sister’s. I didn’t give him any answers, not then. He took me in his arms and told me that it was alright. It was then that it happened. I hadn’t even closed the door. I killed him. My Peter.”
Mary stepped back from the lectern and attempted to lean on a nearby chair, causing it to scrape across the wooden boards. Peter made to go to Mary, but the deputy held him back before attending to the woman himself. He calmly asked her if she was alright to go on. Though clearly still distressed, Mary asserted that she was fine and said she just wanted to get on with it. She took a further moment to compose herself - surprising even the deputy with her apparent ability to regain her control - adopted a resolute expression and returning to the podium.
“We were fortunate, I suppose, to be in the position we were in,” started Mary. “Well, I thought so anyway. You see, we’d only moved to Radcliff a few weeks before Christmas. Peter was without work so he had no connections in the town; he’d also long been estranged from his parents and his older brother. This all meant that no-one really noticed that he was no longer around. If anyone had been aware of him, then I don’t think we could have done what we did.
“This did not occur to me at first, of course. It took me some time, quite some time just to realise what I’d done. I must have
