Ex Chapter 6 - 138 miles for a macaroon

Hampstead Police Station

July 23rd

Police interview with Mrs M.

Recording re-commences.

14.26 Detective Sergeant Ulstram enters the interview room to join Detective
Sergeant Arnold.

DSU: Mrs M I have heard your account of the events of the 16th October but would
like to go over it one more time.

DSA: For the benefit of the recording, Mrs M shrugs her shoulders.

DSU: Can you explain why it was you came to Sainsbury's supermarket in Swanage
to do your shopping when it was 138 miles from your home in Highgate?

MM: They sold macaroons. Sainsbury's in Highgate had run out.

DSU: You drove 138 miles for macaroons?

MM: I like macaroons.

DSU: And there was no-where closer?

MM: That's exactly what my husband asked at the time, which is why I chose
Swanage.

DSU: In order to be facetious?

MM: I wanted to see how far I could test his patience before he snapped.

DSU: And how far was it?

MM: On the North Circular , just after joining a line of stationary traffic on Hangar Lane, - that's when he first tried to get out of the car. I didn’t want him to get out of the car, so I kicked the central locking button so hard that it disappeared into the engine cavity. That pretty much meant he was never going to be able to get out of the car again. It all went downhill quite quickly from there.

DSU: Please deal with the confrontation with Mr Masumba.

MM: I had just parked up outside Sainsbury’s in Swanage, climbed out of the car window and got on to the car roof with a spade. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary. This parking attendant told me I couldn’t stop my car diagonally across the entrance to the car park and I told him I obviously could because that’s exactly what I had just done. I told if he didn’t like it he should get on to the car roof and tell me he didn’t like it to my face.

DSU: And what happened?

MM: He got onto the car roof and told me he didn’t like it to my face.

DSA: I’m sorry, where did you find a spade?

MM: In the back seat of the car – Mr M always has a spade in the back seat in case he needs it - he has never really explained why and its not the kind of thing you ask Mr M about.

DSU: And where was Mr M during all this.

MM: He was still in the car – you’ve seen the size of him – he isn’t climbing out of a car window any time soon.

DSU: So Mr Masumba and you were on the car roof.

MM: Yes and I told him, sometimes you get a feeling inside you and it just grows and grows until its burning your throat and screaming into every facet of your existence to get out and it becomes so big that all that is left of you is that feeling, but it makes you afraid because you know it is too big and if you let it out there will be nothing left of you. It is horror and it is hope and it is everything that identifies you and everything that wants to destroy you. It is every mountain and every climber and every avalanche all at once. So I told him to let me be on that car roof because that was all that there was of me.

DSU: And did Mr Masumba understand.

MM: No he didn’t, so I twatted him in the bollocks with the spade and he fell off the car roof. He didn’t say very much after that.

DSU: Didn't your husband try to intervene?

MM: He did try to slide over into the driver's seat, presumably to drive off with me on the roof but at 25 stone, that arse hasn't seen much sliding action over the past 20 years.

DSU: So Mr Masumba was lying on the ground and your husband was stuck in the car.

MM: And I stayed sitting on the car roof until someone came, which didn't take long, what with Mr Masumba screaming and the continual sound of the car horn, caused by my husband's left arse cheek having been wedged against it.

DSU: Can you explain why you hit Mr Masumba, it seems to have been very much out of character.

MM: I was angry, angrier than I have ever been in my life. It was nothing to do with the parking issue really, just what my husband had said to me a few minutes before.

DSU: Which was?

MM: Which was that I had killed our little boy, our first son, well more that, if it wasn't for me, he would still be alive. Which wasn't true. Well maybe it was true but I had never allowed myself to think that way but once I did, after he had opened the bottle and let out that genie I could never, have never been able to stop thinking that.

DSU: But your youngest son was killed in a car accident, caused by another motorist.

MM: But if I hadn't been driving that day, if he hadn't been in the car with me, he was only 9, nearly 10 but never quite 10. I was pregnant with Daniel, on my way to hospital to have Daniel and I was late, I'm always late, the late Mrs M they call me. My husband was already at the hospital with Baz and if I hadn't dithered and gone back to check that the house was locked and the gas was off and the dog was locked in the back garden, except we did not have a dog, he died the year before, my fault as well. But that's another one of my issues, this, checking thing and if we had just left 30 seconds earlier then the lights would have been red and I would have stopped and….

DSU: But it wasn't your fault.

MM There a thousand degrees of fault Detective Sergeant and one less would have kept my little boy alive. I know I made my husband angry, very angry, but this could never be unsaid, I could never be unblamed and there we sat, Mr Masumba on the ground, me on the roof of the car and my husband, arse wedged on the horn of a car he never wanted all of us hating each other more with every breath we took. He stole everything from me with those words, he stole my family and he stole my life and in that moment I knew that all I had left was the sea.

DSU: Mrs M standing up and removing her microphone. Mrs M would you please sit down, Mrs M walking towards the interview room door and, she's collapsed, Mike, get her into the recovery position, interview ends at 2.42pm