Chapter 10: The death of Ms Esther Beckman

The death of Ms Esther Beckman hit me hard. She would’ve lambasted me for calling her name that way but I feel like it’s important that people remember it in its entirety. Essie was special, she deserves that much.

I didn’t get to spend long with her, but I was grateful that I’d met her at all. The committee’s initiative to shop for vulnerable residents during lockdown had been devised to benefit those residents but I believe that I had needed Essie more than she ever needed me. She’d become my lifeline in that short time. The only distraction from my atrocious misjudgments. And she was gone.

When I got off the phone from Terri I lit up a cigarette for Essie. I quietly sobbed at my fold up table into my cup of tea. I couldn’t understand why she would do what she did. Walking into the lift between 1.11 and 3.33 as the creatures who inhabited it were at the height of their frenzy was an unmistakable suicide.