I Know What I Saw

10 Thursday

When I shut my eyes, these walls move silently towards me, to compress me. And then as I flick open my eyes, they move soundlessly back. They won’t be caught out. They are relentless.

This time when I open my eyes, I shall keep them open. The air in here is stale and smells of disinfectant. My stomach turns a little when I absorb this. I have to get out of here. There is air outside, just feet away, clear and crisp and wet and fragrant. Cold February air.

Though a February night is not a night to yearn for. The ice in the air can freeze everything useful on a human in minutes. But when the fingers begin to sting with cold, everything in the world vanishes. That’s a good thing. I need to get out of here. I can’t be here for another hour, let alone a day or more. I wouldn’t last a day.

I close my eyes from tiredness, but when I open them I see the ceiling recede back into place. A second longer and it would have been too late. It would have crushed me.

When I saw him over her I could have done something.

I sit up at once. When I blink rapidly she appears in the creases of the darkness, her face familiar now.

‘Let me out!’ I shout. ‘Let me out!’

The pounding in my head returns. If I call for a doctor, perhaps somehow he could explain to them why I need to be out of here, and how it will corrode me if I am left any longer. Soon the hatch will open so they can check I am alive. If I scream when it opens, would that get me out?

Minutes drip by.

Then there’s a noise at the door. I make ready to scream at the hatch but it’s not the hatch but the whole door that opens. The light blazes on causing me to shield my eyes.

‘Come on, Mr Shute. You can go.’

I look through my fingers. It’s Blake.

‘What?’ I say, getting up.

‘We have an address for you,’ she says.

When she sees the look on my face, she adds, ‘Thirty-two Cross Street. SE22.’

‘What?’

‘That’s the address we have on the PNC,’ she says. ‘You were arrested in 1989 for Common Assault. Cautioned.’

I know that address. It rattles in some hollow place in my brain. ‘But that’s not my house,’ I say.

‘I know,’ she says, her tone flat. ‘It belongs to a Sebastian Matthews.’

That name and a catalogue of memories it spins with come crashing around me.

‘I’ll take you back to get your personal property. Don’t forget your return date in two weeks,’ she says and hands me a paper with the date on it. I take it and crumple it into the pocket of my tracksuit bottoms.

If I keep quiet I can leave. There is no need to upset everything with truth – the truth that I don’t live there and that I don’t know him any more – that he wouldn’t want me there. I’ll walk out of this police station and straight to some sheltered nook or station waiting-room. I don’t need to upturn this tiny conspiracy we share. She knows I won’t go to that house. She knows it’s not an address I can use. She’s just finding a way to help me.

‘And count yourself lucky we haven’t charged you with Being on Enclosed Premises. Don’t go breaking into any more houses, even if you think they’re empty,’ she says.

Blake leads me out to get my things. The fag ends are the only things that I can see through the window of the paper bag they hand me.

‘I am sorry,’ I say at last to Blake as she turns to go. ‘Tell her family I am sorry.’

She smiles but there is no joy in it at all.

‘I can’t go out in these,’ I say indicating the jogging pants and thin grey sweatshirt they have given me. The plimsolls are the things that make me feel most vulnerable. ‘Can I at least get my boots back?’

‘Evidence,’ Blake says, shaking her head.

I am about to protest when I remind myself that she has pulled strings to get me out of here.

‘Thank you for finding a way to get me out,’ I say at last.

She frowns a little at this as if confused. ‘Don’t thank me. Thank him,’ she says, nodding at the space behind me.

My breath catches as I chase her meaning. I look across the low aluminium gate and see him for the first time in years.

‘Seb?’

‘You look like crap,’ he says.