I Know What I Saw

33 Wednesday

I am lying on the floor of the bedroom. The bed has been upturned and all the covers have been removed in the police search. But I would have slept on the floor anyway. My mind feels as dirty and stained as my body.

I knew. When he said that, I looked into his eyes and searched for the slightest flicker or hesitation, but there was none. I knew. I must have known. If he says it to me I have to trust him. I can’t trust my battered recollection over his, over anybody’s, recollection any longer. I’m not sure what to do with my anger. It’s ricocheting around my mind searching for a home, a target. I breathe to try and ground the rage.

To be without memory is to be cut away from yourself. I feel adrift, and the realisation that in those wiped-out days and months, I did things – could have done things – terrifies me. I can’t move under the weight of the possibility.

My throat tightens, and I gasp for air. Slowly, as if through straws, it comes. It whistles into my lungs and after a few minutes of thin, meagre air, I can stand. I make my way along the landing and find a door and push. The darkness is oppressive so I switch on the light.

‘Oh—’

‘I’m sorry, Seb. I can’t sleep,’ I say.

‘It’s okay,’ he says, and pulls himself up against the pillows. He looks at me and waits for me to speak. There is the scent of wood and cologne in the air here, soothing.

‘Tell me about it again.’

He sighs sadly. ‘Grace?’

I nod. ‘What happened to her.’

He collects himself first. ‘It was awful,’ he says, rubbing his eyes. ‘Nina raised the alarm when she didn’t hear from her after Christmas. I mean, we all thought she’d decided to stay in the Philippines for a couple of extra weeks.’

‘What made you think that?’ I say.

‘I don’t know, Xander. The new boyfriend maybe. And you know how she could be when it came to all that spiritualism stuff she was always into. So we thought she was still there.’ He stops and pauses for breath. ‘Anyway, it was a shock when they discovered her, in that state.’

I sink to my knees. I know what state that was. I was there. I must have been there. It was Grace I was looking at, the wine creeping up her blouse.

‘We tried to find you, Xand, but you’d gone. Nobody knew where you were. After Rory went, you just, I don’t know, you weren’t right. We could see it. But nobody knew that you’d fall so quickly. It felt like you had vaporised. We didn’t see you for a year. And then one day you just turned up. Here. Looking for your stuff. You needed money.’

Dollars? Did I take the dollars, I think, my heart sinking. I can’t remember turning up. ‘And?’ I say.

‘I gave you some money and you left. You really don’t remember?’ he says, cocking his head.

I shake my head. Some of this feels like a memory I had once but whatever strands there were have long since gone.

‘Did you really tell me about Grace? I can’t believe I would have forgotten that.’

‘Yes, well, we tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t hear it. No matter what I said, it didn’t seem to sink in. You just nodded and left. You took a bag of books with you and went.’

His words are beginning to rekindle memories. I remember the books – I think I remember. Two carrier bags filled with books I had left here. I remember the red creases that the handles ripped into my palms. I remember walking the streets with those bags until one morning I woke to find they had gone. The memory is a haze in that the feeling around it is stronger than the seeing of it. I remember a sadness with it, like a stone flung into a pool.

‘Didn’t the police want to talk to me?’

‘The police? No. Why would they?’ He pauses, assembling what I told him last night. ‘No. They didn’t suspect foul play at the time. They investigated, said it was an accident. She’d banged her head on a table and had a drunken fall. Just bad luck, they said.’

‘So, they weren’t treating it as a murder? Not ever?’

‘No. Not as far as I knew.’

‘And then?’

‘Well. There was the service. We expected you, of course, but weren’t shocked when you didn’t show. And then, slowly, we just got on with life. Well, we tried. Nina took it badly.’

I let the news seep through my skin and into my bones. Funeral.

‘There was a funeral,’ I said. More statement than question.

‘Yes. Well, cremation. Nina scattered the ashes.’

I remember now Conway saying this about a cremation. I drop my face into my hands. There is so much of my life that has scattered through my fingers. I am disgusted by my hands suddenly in this clean space and I get to my feet.

‘I need a bath,’ I say, and then hover for a second because I know saying it like that must seem like a non sequitur to Seb but he just nods.

My body is red with heat and soap. Clean. The water has somehow woken it so that to look at it, it seems bound with energy. But my head remains muddy. Back in my room Seb has righted the upturned bed and laid out some fresh clothes. I pull on the chinos and checked shirt and get into bed. The cool sheets and warm duvet surprise me with their touch. At this moment it is all I can do to stop heaving as the tears roll down my face.

I see Mum in my dreams and even though I know it isn’t and it can’t be, it feels like an omen. She is young, as she was when I was ten or eleven. She’s perhaps thirty, her skin is wrinkle-free and her eyes shine. She is standing at the foot of my bed and smiling. Her hand is out as if she is begging for alms or food. Or absolution. There’s a shawl that she has never worn over her head. I’m hungry, she says and as I reach out to take her hand, she vanishes. In a blaze of sunlight.

My eyes are open. The angle of the sun says that I have missed most of the morning. I go downstairs feeling groggy. There is coffee on the table. Seb is there, wearing a navy wool suit and a cornflower tie. He smells clean. His hair has been combed smartly into place. A pink square of silk peeps out from his top pocket. I sit and pour out some coffee and take a deep draught. The caffeine stings my blood.

‘Okay?’ he says.

The sorrow that had infected his voice and manner has gone. I nod and watch as he drinks a mouthful of coffee and then lights a cigarette and hands it to me. I put it to my mouth. It soothes and invigorates me at the same time. I stare at my cup through wisps of smoke and see it beginning to blur. I try to speak but I find my voice has dried out and whatever words I had become lost in a cough. He stands and comes to place a hand on my shoulder.

‘I’m really scared, Seb,’ I say through tears. ‘I think it was me. That I killed her. What if I killed her?’

The weight of his hand speaks for him and it remains until the tears finally end. I think about what I said. It is true. I can’t tell where the edges of my sanity lie any more.

At last he goes back to his chair.

‘If there’s one thing I know about you with certainty,’ he says, ‘it’s that you are not capable of that. You loved her. You did not kill her.’

‘How can you be certain?’ I say. ‘When I can’t?’

‘You said it yourself. There was someone else there. You saw him do it. You just have to convince the police of it. I’ll speak to them. I can tell them how much she meant to you, Xander.’

‘Thanks, Seb,’ I say. ‘But I think we’re way past that now.’

We spend the rest of the day in quiet distraction. Seb makes some calls and cancels appointments he had lined up for the day. He changes out of his suit and into jeans and a bottle-green cashmere sweater. Then, as the day begins to darken, Seb finally says what I know he’s been holding back.

‘Can I ask you a question?’

‘Of course.’

‘What do the police have on you? I mean they had it down as accidental death. What’s changed?’

Even though I know it’s been coming, I don’t know what the answer is. ‘I was there. I told them that I had witnessed a murder. Her murder.’

He thinks about this. ‘But I’m sure people admit murders all the time that they haven’t done. I’ve seen those crazy people on TV who—’ He stops. ‘There must be something more?’

‘My solicitor thought the same thing. Until—’

‘Until?’

‘The dollars. They found the dollar account. They know I emptied it, not long before Grace—’ I say. I can’t bear to finish the sentence.

‘What?’ he says, stopping to push the sleeves of his sweater back. His face is locked in consternation.

‘I remembered, Seb. I remembered I brought them here.’

‘Oh.’ He frowns. ‘The Bens.’

I look at him, confused by that word again.

‘Bens. We called them the Bens. Benjamin Franklin. It’s his face on the hundred-dollar bills.’

Now it comes back to me and how whenever we made reference to it, we did it as if we were 1930s mobsters. I reach out with my eyes to join Seb in a shared look but he turns away. For a second or two, I hold on to the look I’m giving him until the moment putters out. A thought rolls in my head before I dismiss it. It’s uncharitable that I’m wondering if he is deliberately avoiding my eye.

‘Seb, I need the money,’ I say finally.

He nods. ‘Of course. But, why does it matter so much? It’s not evidence of murder, surely?’ he says, shifting in his seat.

‘They think I killed her for the money. That’s why I need it,’ I say.

‘Your money, Xand. You can’t have killed her for your own money.’

‘Half was mine Seb. Half.’ I look around the room so that I don’t have to look him in the eye. I am embarrassed to have to ask. ‘What happened to the money, Seb?’

He moves in his seat, blinking rapidly. ‘Nothing. It’s all upstairs in the loft still.’

A rush runs through me. ‘The dollars are still here?’

‘Yes.’

‘You didn’t bank them or, I don’t know, give them to Grace or her family?’

He looks at me. ‘As far as I was aware, the money was yours. I was holding it for you. As it happens she didn’t ever ask me for it and even if she had, I’m not sure I would have given it to her.’

I take a breath and try and process what I am being told. The money is still here. Improbably, after all these years. A flood of warmth towards Seb for his friendship, for his reliability, fills me.

‘Where is it? Can I see it?’

‘It’s in the loft. See it whenever you like.’

‘Can we go now?’

‘Now? Really?’ he says and waits. He reads my expression. ‘Okay. Come on then.’

We walk along the corridor and up the stairs. At the top flight he pauses, looking for something. I do not know what until he emerges from a room with it in his hand: a fishing pole for pulling down the hatch. He looks up to spear the catch, and then a ladder slides smoothly down.

‘I’ll go first and stick the lights on,’ he says, and climbs up. I follow him. The loft is boarded with plywood and is neat and tidy, as lofts go. There is dust, but there are patches where it has been unsettled recently. I watch as he ducks his way across and under the beams. When he stops he looks around and beckons me over.

‘Here,’ he says.

As I trace his path on my way to him, I see something that catches at a memory. There is a small cardboard box, like a gift box. The memory of it pierces me. I hold it up to Seb.

‘This yours?’ I ask.

He squints at the box and says, ‘No, that’s one of yours, isn’t it? One of the bits you left. Police took a couple in the search until I got them out. I’m sorry. I couldn’t stop them. Shit, look at the mess they’ve left.’ He looks around at the upturned boxes and sticks of broken furniture.

I look at the box in my hand and see trinkets in there from a past life. A miniature doll with the head of a cat. A polished green stone that Grace gave me. A ticket for a concert. Some plastic gold coins. And beneath it all, a small volume of Proust. I pick it out and stare at this thing of mine from a third of a century ago.

‘Xand?’ Seb calls then. He is waiting for me.

I stop and put the book into my pocket and pick my way towards Seb until I’m next to him, staring down where he is. There is the trunk. I had forgotten it until now. There’d been an old pine trunk outside the house when I’d come by with the cash. It was Seb and Nina’s coffee table. One of the sides had developed a crack which was enough for Nina to throw it out. When we took the money into the loft, I remembered it.

‘Sure,’ Seb had said when I suggested using it to put the money in. I’d dragged it up the ladder and we’d put the bags into it. Seb had locked it with a padlock he had found and given me the key.

Now looking at it I see there’s a layer of dust over the top, thinner than I expected. I bend to open it just before reminding myself again that it is locked and I don’t have the key. Did I keep the key? Have it once? There’s a memory there, but it’s too muddy to reach.

Immediately my brain begins to filter what I know about picking locks once again. This lock is a simple one. The principles are similar, I think, and I rummage around in my head for what I need. Something thin and metal like a pen clip. I hold the lock to examine the mechanism and see something that confuses me. It’s in the open position. Unlocked.

I look for Seb to show him the lock but he’s busy picking up things that have been knocked over in the search. ‘Seb,’ I say, showing him the lock.

He stops scrabbling around on the boards and sees the lock. He frowns momentarily before turning a little pale.

‘What the—’ he says.

I lift the lid slowly and stand up.

Seb and I stare at each other. The trunk is empty.