I Know What I Saw

14 Friday

They’re still talking about dark matter in the magazines. The maths is still the maths and the theoretical physics is still as it was, theoretical. The only thing that ever changes is the intensity with which they remind us that we know nothing. When I think of dark matter, it always brings me straight back to Rory and the conversations we had. I didn’t have anyone else to talk to about this stuff – only he understood it well enough.

‘Ninety-five per cent of the Universe is dark matter and dark energy,’ I said to him once. It might have been for one of Dad’s ‘debates’.

‘So?’ he said.

‘So, none of it’s ever been observed. It’s pure hypothesis.’

‘And?’ He was doing that thing I hated, lifting an eyebrow with his finger.

‘So er-bloody-go, we only know what five per cent of the Universe is. We don’t know what ninety-five per cent of it even is.’

He lets this sink in. ‘No,’ he says finally, ‘that’s not the same thing.’

I stare at him.

‘It’s not the same thing. We don’t know what it consists of, elementally, but we know what it is. It’s dark energy and dark matter.’

‘No. That’s just a bloody hypothesis. It’s theoretical. It doesn’t exist outside some physicist’s head.’

Dad had been in the room, I remember, because I was always aware of him. He was reading his paper but he was listening. Mum might have been hovering, glasses hanging from a chain, but equally she might have been in the study, writing a paper.

Dad smiled because he saw something that I didn’t and he was enjoying it.

‘I disagree,’ Rory said. ‘It does exist.’

‘How do you know that? Has it ever been seen? Has it ever been detected?’

‘It could be a weakly interacting massive particle. If it interacted too weakly for detection. What with neutrinos and everything.’

‘It’s not a WIMP,’ I say.

‘No, but that’s not to say it doesn’t exist. It just means that it doesn’t interact with light or electromagnetism or any way that we have now of detecting its presence. But neither do thoughts or dreams. All we know is that ninety-five per cent of the Universe isn’t ordinary matter. So, it stands to reason that it’s something, whether it’s called dark matter or an elephant, it still exists. If, that is, you still want a standard model of cosmology, which you have to unless you want to throw Einstein out?’

‘That’s just bloody sophistry,’ I said, but I knew he was right. I left the room. In my bedroom I lay down, Psychedelic Furs playing at full volume on my ghetto blaster. Halfway through the first track, there was a knock and he spoke through the closed door.

‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean to win all the time. It’s – just – I know the answers. Sometimes,’ he said.

I didn’t reply.

He stood knocking at the door for some time. Calling my name but I remained silent.

‘You okay? Hello?’

‘You okay? Hello?’

I look up and see a face pinched at me in concern. Where am I?

I look down at the pavement before looking up at the face again. The expressions on these faces are all the same – guilt in some form. A woman who has lost her son to the streets or a man who has too much money and too little good to show for it. Even just a girl who has read too many books.

‘Where am I?’ I say.

The woman is maybe forty years old and looks like a person who has seen a lot and is afraid of very little. She has the face of a market trader.

‘Holborn,’ she says in a leathery voice.

Green Zone. ‘Time is it?’ I say, rubbing my eyes against the street lights. The darkness of the blue in the sky makes it hard to tell.

‘Just after midnight,’ she says and then starts rummaging in her pockets. I am about to stop her giving me money when I realise that she’s just fishing for cigarettes.

The evening and a day slot into place with a series of clicks. A charge of wasting police time wasn’t serious enough for them to hold me overnight. I’d left the police station and walked and didn’t stop. The night was bone cold and this coat of Seb’s just wasn’t up to the job and I ended up here. I used to come here in the old days when I worked. It’s changed a little but the atmosphere is familiar: corporate, safe. Blue Zone. People leave you to yourself here. A doorway here can be yours for an entire night without anybody calling the police to have you moved on. Very few drunks or chancers.

I pull the coat tight around my body and stand. The woman looks up at me and smiles through a mouthful of smoke, showing me the silver in her mouth.

‘You’re a big lad, ain’t you?’ she says, cackling.

I give her a half-smile and look around deciding where to go next.

‘It’s going to drop tonight,’ she says, flicking her cigarette away. ‘You want to get yourself to a shelter tonight if you can.’

‘How did you know?’ I say, surprised that Seb’s clothes aren’t better camouflage.

‘Ha,’ she says. ‘It’s the eyes. And the hair.’

I nod my thanks and move off. The shelters aren’t for me. I can’t take the weight of all those people, circling.

To my left is Tottenham Court Road. To my right, Farringdon. I take the right.

The police went there and spoke to the man, Ebadi – is that what they called him – the same man I saw yesterday? He had an alibi. I don’t trust it, though. I don’t trust something as flimsy as what they called an e-ticket. Don’t those things just come off a printer? And those coppers – I don’t trust that they did the job properly. How can they have been and searched the place and not found a body? If they even did search the place. Maybe they spoke to him and were satisfied by his alibi and then didn’t bother with a search.

But I do trust Seb, and his friendship even after all these years have passed. I head towards his place and in an hour or so I am outside his door.

My finger hovers over the bell a moment before finally making contact. I grimace as I wait. I don’t want to wake him up. It’s already been too much of a liberty, using his home as my bail address and taking these clothes – the ones he gave and the ones I stole. And now here I am, waking him at past one.

The hall light blazes and a minute later the door opens to reveal Seb in a washed-out blue dressing gown, squinting against the light.

‘Xander, where have you been?’ he says.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I had nowhere else I could – and I really need—’

He holds up his hand to wave away the explanation. ‘No need. Come in. It’s going to freeze tonight.’

I expect him to go straight back upstairs but instead he wanders into the living room, turning to me as he walks in.

‘Whisky?’ he asks, clicking on a lamp to give the room a warm glow.

‘Sure,’ I say, and follow him in.

‘The police called for you earlier,’ he says with concern. ‘Look. I don’t want to pry, but what’s going on with you?’

I sit in one of the plush cream chairs. I owe him an explanation but I can’t muster the effort that the explanation will involve. ‘It’s nothing,’ I say.

He looks at me, disappointed, before turning to the whisky and pouring an inch into crystal glasses.

‘I’ve reported a crime but the police aren’t taking me seriously.’

‘Anything I can do?’ he says, handing me a glass.

I shake my head and as I take the glass, I’m drawn again to the picture on the mantel. I stare at it as Seb stretches himself on the sofa, bare heels in the soft carpet. Grace peers out shyly from the image. Something about her expression, soft and smiling, is heartbreaking.

‘Do you remember that?’ Seb says, watching me. ‘Nina had just got herself one of those SLR cameras. You know the ones with the fancy zoom lenses.’

I shake my head. There is the frayed edge of a memory there but not much more.

‘Yes, you do,’ he says, taking the frame into his hands. ‘She wanted each one of us to take a picture of the other three. That’s the one you took.’

I get up and sit next to him on the sofa to look more closely at it. ‘I remember bits,’ I say. ‘But I have trouble clinging on to much from those days. It’s being outside, the exposure. Messes with the wiring, I think.’

Seb nods as if he understands but I’m not sure whether he does exactly.

‘I still see Nina from time to time,’ he says then.

‘Oh. How is she?’ I say. And then I wonder about Grace. Has he seen much of her? I want to ask but that thread, wherever it leads, is too sharp. Painful.

‘The same. You know what she was like, too clever for her own good.’

I smile. There is Nina at eighteen, out-talking and out-arguing a professor during a tutorial. ‘Too smart for you at any rate,’ I say. And then I realise I don’t know how long they’ve been apart. Or together.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say when I see his face fall. ‘I didn’t mean to.’

‘Oh, don’t worry. We all knew I was never going to be able to hang on to her for very long,’ he says, smiling sadly and taking a sip of his drink.

‘How long exactly did you?’ I say.

‘Actually, I didn’t do badly, all told. We agreed to go our separate ways about a year ago.’

I take a sip and clench my jaw as the Scotch burns the back of my tongue. Nina in those days struck me as a thing of ether. I remember her high cheeks and fashionable oversized earrings and the smell of rose that trailed her wherever she went. But she wasn’t defined by that as much as she was by how little she revealed. She was impenetrable, to me at any rate.

Seb takes a large mouthful from his glass and clears his throat.

‘About Grace,’ he says.

My heart leaps at her name. For a moment I argue with myself about it. I want to know about her and how she is and where she got to, but at the same time, I know that my body can’t contain the pain of hearing about her. The extent to which she has flown out of my reach. I hold out my hand to cut him off. ‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘You don’t have to.’

He shifts on the sofa so that he can turn his body towards me. He sighs and nods.

‘Where did you end up, Xander? For all these years?’

I laugh, catching myself by surprise. The idea of trying to sweep up and assemble the shards of my life from thirty years ago seems suddenly absurd.

‘Here and there,’ I say at last with a smile.

He looks me in the eyes and attempts a smile in return, but it dies on his lips.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I should have done more.’

For a second I don’t register what he is saying.

‘Done more? What do you mean?’

‘After Rory. You know. I should have tried harder.’

I turn my body so I can face him more squarely. ‘I don’t understand.’

He shifts again in his seat. ‘I don’t know. We should have – I should have tried harder to help you.’

This stills me. ‘I didn’t need help, Seb,’ I say. ‘I wasn’t your problem.’

‘I was supposed to be your mate, Xand,’ he says, shaking his head sadly before standing up. He takes a breath and shrugs away the memories. He rubs his eyes and it’s clear that he’s tired. ‘I can lend you some pyjamas if you like. I’ll leave them on your bed.’

I consider telling him not to bother but then wonder whether he would prefer it if I didn’t sleep on his sheets without clothes on.

‘Thanks,’ I say, getting up too. ‘I’ll be out of your hair in the morning.’

Seb stops as I say this and looks at me from the doorway. ‘Look, I don’t need to know what this is all about if you don’t want to say. But you should stay, at least until you get yourself sorted out.’

I laugh again and hope it’s not unkindly. ‘I don’t think getting sorted out is really for me, Seb.’

He hesitates and then finally he says, ‘I know you need the Bens and I know it’s been a long time. But—’ He has run out of words. He exhales loudly, his hands on his hips, and then adds, ‘I do worry about you being on the streets where anything could happen to you.’

Bens. I have no idea what he’s talking about. Is it me? Has my mind dropped this too or is it Seb? Instead I nod at him and then add a half-smile as if I know what this means. But I have no idea.