The Woman in Cabin 10 Ch. 13 - 15

I didn't do four chapters this week because I went to see the new Mission Impossible movie today and that ate up two hours of my life that will never be given back to me.

I mean okay, I know these aren't deep thinky movies, but good lord, this was ridiculous. Even watching Henry Cavill run around beating people up didn't make up for this thing.

ANYWAY.

Chapter 13 starts off with Lo still at breakfast, contemplating whether or not she's losing her shit. Which she, and we, must be pretty sure she's note. One, there's the mascara, and two, she has a very distinct memory of the woman and the impression of her having been doing *something* which Lo knocked on the door. She's just...very real to Lo even though she can't prove to anyone else that she was real.

I like Lo's thought process, considering the reasons why it doesn't fit (on top of the fact that none of the staff look like the woman) for her to be a cleaner. Her clothes, her attitude, etc. why would she even be carrying around mascara if she was a cleaning woman? I mean I could argue with Lo that a cleaning woman would still take time and pride in her appearance - her hair, makeup, etc. but it's not important that Lo is wrong, just that these are the reasons that *she* doesn't think the woman was a member of the staff.

There's a good consideration of why Nilsson would like this whole problem to go away, but I think it's also important to appreciate that from his point of view there's no proof that anything has happened. Lo was, by her own admission, asleep and had been drinking. She *thinks* that she heard something like a scream and she saw something smeared on the glass. But there's no one missing from the ship and when they go into the room in question there's no evidence that anyone has been living in it and there's no evidence of a struggle or anything else.

At the same time, I like that Lo is very certain in what she heard.

"I knew what it was like to be that girl - to realize, in an instant, how incredibly fragile your hold on life could be, how paper-thin the walls of security really were."

Still, she knows that she has no proof for anyone else. All she has is the mascara - which I assume is also easy enough to get in Europe so it's not as if its some super rare item that can be traced down to a single store that only sells ten of them a year. Lo has this wacky thought about getting it DNA tested which...I mean sure? But like she realizes, it's not going to do her any good even if she can get it tested somewhere.

'Here's some random DNA.'

'Great. I'll put it with the rest.'

It's not like we have DNA databanks of everyone on the planet or anything. Not that the government will admit anyway. *shifty eyes* Not sure what it's like in Europe, or England in particular, but DNA testing is not done to every single person on the planet. I know that it's been in the news lately, what with the Golden State Killer being caught, and people are always dropping their DNA to Ancestry or 23 and Me (me too! listen, my family knows if they murder someone I am abandoning them - they got caught all on their own) but there are plenty of unsolved murders or crimes and they have DNA from the crimes, but they don't have a match in a suspect. You have to have the two things to have it make sense. A sample and something to compare the sample with.

Also, it's expensive.

The backlog of rape kits that haven't been processed in the US is just....*screams into the void* Which is not all about money, I know, there's a lot of factors that go into it, but it is a factor. Real world, police level processing is expensive.

Back to the fictional murder and violence.

Oh look, whoever went over board was definitely not Ben.

I'm so thrilled.

We also run back into Tina who I am not sure of. I like her one minute, when she's talking to Lo like a reasonable human being and then she's threatening her so clearly she was up to something the night before since she's so touchy about the whole thing.

Lo makes it back to her room to find that it's been cleaned.

And the mascara is gone.

DUN DUN DUUUUUUUNNNNNN

We get another one of the inserts, this time dated September 26th to tell us that Lo has been reported missing.

I like these little interjections from the outside world and the glimpses we get of what it looks like to people who aren't trapped in this little boat world. Now, the article mentions that Lo hasn't been seen according to the people on the Aurora since a stop at Trondheim which Ben mentions in the chapter won't be for another day.

So there's a narrow window for whatever is about to go down to go down.

Lo is panicking because the mascara is gone and that means that someone has been in her room, someone who knows that she knows there was some sort of crime on the boat and she is trapped on this ship with a killer. I like that she doesn't even consider that maybe the mascara was never real at all. Like...okay I know that seems insane but a lot of times in mystery books like this the woman gets gaslighted and she honestly falls for it - doubts her own sanity, thinks that she's hallucinating or dreaming or whatever.

Whatever Lo has going on, claustrophobia and anxiety and all, she knows that there was a woman in the next cabin, she definitely interacted with her and something super shady is going down.

Go Lo!

She does check with a cleaning woman in the hallway, but of course she didn't take it even though Lo probably looks like she's accusing the poor woman of stealing this cheap little makeup doohickey.

Lo calls Nilsson and he shows up, and is SUPER HELPFUL.

I mentioned gas lighting, right? Right.

Now here's where it would start to happen in many another book.

Nilsson pops in, all big and gruff and manly and listens to Lo talk about a missing mascara for like 2 seconds before he's telling her that what she says happened could definitely not have happened. And he does it so politely, so calmly, like he's dealing with a person on the edge.

"No. No, you don't get to do this......Call me 'Miss Blacklock' one minute, tell me you respect my concerns and I'm a valued passenger blah blah blah, and then the next minute brush me off like a hysterical female who didn't see what she saw!"

And I'm not blaming Nilsson for having doubts. It sounds like he went through as much of an investigation as he could. Like I said, there's no signs of a crime, no one is missing. But he is handling it as well as he can, I'm just saying that in another book Lo would fall for this line. 'oh, I must have been mistaken, I must have lost the mascara, maybe it was someone that got off the boat somehow, teehee' but no.

Lo Blacklock knows what she fucking saw and heard.

And then Nilsson tells her that he talked to Ben Fucking Howard that big mouthed little asshat why didn't he get thrown overboard? Why do I hate him so much?!?! Maybe because he can't stop talking! Did he tell Nilsson about how he groped Lo in the hallway?!?!?! I bet he fucking didn't! But he tells Nilsson all about her having been attacked and being on antidepressants and whoooo boy!

And Lo is on antidepressants and she's been drinking and of COURSE that means she can't be trusted!!!!

Woman! Mental Illness! Pills and Booze! SHE CANNOT BE TRUSTED TO KNOW THINGS!!!

I read on a kindle a lot and even when I read hard copy books, I do not throw them because I love my books too much to hurt them like that. So I keep a squishy brain and a squishy hulk nearby to throw in rage. The bounce and amuse the cats when I toss them.

I definitely threw squishy hulk.

So.

Okay.

Look.

My rage here is less about the existence of this moment in the book than it is about the way that it is handled in 10,000 other books and also in real life. There is a stigma attached to having to take mood altering drugs for any damn reason at all, or for having an atypical brain. I know way too many people who feel they have to be secretive and ashamed for taking anti-anxiety medication or antidepressants or anything else.

Now, I have to take a synthetic hormone because my thyroid doesn't work correctly. I have an autoimmune disorder and it messes up a lot of stuff in my body and sometimes my brain. But there's no shame to me telling people, 'oh, yeah, I have Hashimoto's, I have to take this little pill or my body starts trying to slowly kill itself'. But people say, 'Yes, I have depression, I take this pill to help me live the life I want to live' and people want to say, 'You just need more sun! Be happier! JUST STOP BEING SO SAD!' or anti-anxiety, 'JUST STOP BEING SO WORRIED!' or anti-psychotics or any of the other pills and medicines and therapies that we have scienced in order to make our lives better and let people who have mental illness live their fucking lives. AND THIS IS DUMB.

Mind you, I'm sure there's people out there who think if I just did XYZ then my thyroid would heal itself, but they're far less open about telling that to my face than people are dismissing treatment for any level of mental illness.

Now, this would be the part in a different book where we get Lo doubting herself and/or the dark back story that explains why she has depression, why she's anxious. You know, she saw her father murdered by a clown or she was abused, or something. Any of the million reasons that we know must cause people to be 'different' in every fictional story.

Except that what we get is Lo telling us that her childhood was good, that there's no 'on paper' reason for her 'problems'.

"The depression I fell into after university wasn't about exams and self-worth, it was something stranger, more chemical, something that no talking cure was going to fix."

People who have 'normal' brains and 'normal' bodies don't always get that. Mind, I don't understand on a personal level how someone with depression or anxiety or anything else feels and how they live their lives. But I do know what it's like to have your body just turn against you one day and it's nothing that 'happened' it's just something that happens and then that's your life and you have to deal with it the best way that you can.

And there's no shame to that and it doesn't automatically make you more or less reliable than the next person.

Okay, okay, back to the book.

More Ben, though I appreciate that it's Lo chewing him out but then she turns around and forgives him and takes him into her confidence about the whole thing? Listen, I know you used to date but he has proven to be a dick and an unhelpful one at that. Maybe stop telling him all the things?

Lo is thinking about going over Nilsson's head thanks to Ben's suggestion that she just talk to the billionaire owner Lord Bullmer who is a 'real down to earth guy' since he played cards with Ben and Co into the early hours but she can't remember if she let the mascara thing slip while she was talking to the crew so it could be someone else who slipped in and made off with the mascara. Because if she didn't, then Nilsson is the only person who knows.

Unless there was someone else in the cabin with Mystery Dead Girl - after all, Lo didn't see into the cabin when she was talking to her.

Please hold.

Okay, flipped back through the parts of her talking to the crew and I might have missed it, but I don't see her mentioning the mascara to the crew. So unless Nilsson mentioned it to someone while he was poking around, he's on a list of 'People Who Know the Mascara is a THING' which is a short list consisting of Lo, the Woman, and him. And maybe someone else in the cabin.