Buried alive under her shopping!
Joan was a private woman..
Saturday 7th February 2009
Hearing a commotion, I peered round my bedroom curtains. Is she back? I wondered, craning my neck to see my neighbour Joan Cunnane's house. Seeing it wasn't Joan, 77, but her friend, Roy Moran, my heart sank. Roy, 77, was struggling to force open Joan's back door, and looking panicked. So I wasn't the only one who hadn't seen her for a while…
I'd been living in the same street as Joan for three years. Not that we were friends, mind. In fact, she didn't like me much and complained whenever I had friends over.
'They're blocking my driveway,' she'd moan, even when there was plenty of room for her to get her red Rover Metro out. It's not like she ever had visitors of her own and she lived alone in that two-bedroom bungalow. But just because we didn't speak didn't mean I never saw her. Far from it. Every morning, like clockwork, she'd set off in the car. Always nicely dressed, she'd return hours later with armfuls of shopping.
She went everywhere in that car, and it was permanently stuffed full of shopping bags. Her garage was just as crammed, stacked to above head height with bags, kitchen appliances and garden stuff.
'I'm surprised there's a credit crunch with Joan keeping the shops going,' I'd joked to my daughters, Ellie-Grace, 2, and Poppy-Rae, 10 months.
The last time I'd seen Joan was Boxing Day, and now it was New Year's Eve. She couldn't have gone anywhere because her car was still parked outside. It had been playing on my mind, and now I could see Roy was worried too, so I rushed over to speak to him.
'I'm scared she's had a fall,' he said. 'I think we should break in.'
We started pushing the back door.
'One, two, three… heave!' I yelled, shoulder-barging it with all my strength. Eventually, it gave way, and we both took a step back and gasped.
'Oh. My. God,' I said slowly.
There was stuff everywhere. The hall floor was covered in jars of old sauces and pickles, leaving a 2ft- wide 'walkway' to the kitchen. In there, boxes and jars were piled on the sides, in the sink, over the cooker…
'Did you know she lived like this?' I asked Roy.
'No idea,' he replied, stunned. 'She always came out to meet me.'
I opened the fridge and the rancid stench of sour milk nearly knocked me off my feet. She obviously hadn't been shopping recently.
'Miss Cunnane?' I shouted 'Joan?'
No answer. By now, my heart was hammering. This was beyond creepy. I followed Roy into the living room for another shock. Against the walls were towering piles of videos, taller than me, each one labelled with Joan's neat handwriting. By the window was a semi-circle of magazines, stacked high, and behind them, thousands of fake flowers and ornaments. I couldn't even see a telly or a settee. It was really eerie. Edging in, I brushed against one of the piles of videos, and jumped as it came crashing to the ground.
'How does she get around in this place?' I said to Roy.
He shrugged, speechless.
The next door we tried may have been a small bedroom, but you couldn't see past a tower of boxes blocking the doorway.
'By the looks of it, no one's been in there for years,' I said, moving onto the bathroom.
Poking my head round the door, I saw there were even carrier bags stuffed full of clothes in the bath and sink. How on earth did she wash? She always looked so presentable.
All that was left was Joan's bedroom. I opened the door and through the gloom, saw it was full of hundreds of bin bags. Around the edge, they were stacked to the ceiling, and in the middle, there were yet more, stacked to waist height. The bulb had gone, so in the dark, we tried to start shifting them to clear a route into the room.
'They're too heavy,' I grunted.
Whatever Joan had filled all these bags with, there was no way a 5ft 4in woman and a 77-year-old man could move them, so I climbed onto them and walked unsteadily across.
Some of the bags were soft, stuffed with clothes, and some had boxes inside, the corners digging into me. I burrowed down through the bags, forcing my arm between them. Something wasn't right about this room. The others had been just as full, but stuff was neatly stacked and organised. This one looked as if there had been an avalanche of bin bags.
I had a terrible thought. Could Joan be underneath? No. It was too dreadful to think about.
Realising there was nothing I could do, I clambered out of the room, and Roy and I went back outside. That wasn't a home. It was a warehouse.
'Should we call the police?' I asked.
'Let's wait,' Roy said. 'There's no sign of her in there, she might have gone off with friends over Christmas.'
I wasn't so sure. And I was right to worry. On 5 January, a police van pulled up outside Joan's house. The next day, a huge skip arrived, and police in blue boiler suits began to empty the house. Before long, officers came to my house, and I told them what I'd seen.
'We found her in there,' one explained. 'She was buried beneath the stuff in her bedroom.'
'I-I was in there!' I gasped.
Balancing on those bags, I must have been inches away from Joan's body. It was like a horror film. I read in the papers that police found brand-new umbrellas, 300 scarves, candles, ornaments, clothes and electrical items. Sixteen years' worth of shopping.
Joan was buried alive under 3ft of it after some suitcases fell on her. Almost a month has passed since they found the poor woman. When I think about being in that dark room with her body, I shudder. By all accounts, she spent so much time shopping because she was lonely. How sad that, in the end, her beloved purchases were what killed her.
Roy said: 'Joan was an only child who never married. It gave her pleasure to buy things. None were essential.'