I Know What I Saw

34 Wednesday

‘The police,’ I say. ‘The police have been up there. They must have taken it.’

Seb stops to consider this. ‘No. They were here but they didn’t take the cash. Whatever they took they put into clear bags and made me sign for.’

We make our way down the ladder. I turn over the possibilities.

‘Unless the police came back,’ he says, pushing the loft hatch shut, ‘and took it.’

I unpack this as he clicks the latch into place. ‘Wouldn’t they have to leave something to say they’d been? A notice or something?’

‘Yes, I suppose.’ He makes his way to the kitchen.

‘Who else had access to it?’ I follow him into the kitchen and catch my reflection in the black of the windows.

Seb puts the kettle on to boil but then stalls. ‘Nina. Could be her. Can’t be anyone else in fact. Nobody else has been up there.’

‘You think Nina stole it?’ I say, shocked. I think of the fine dust layer on the top.

‘I know. It doesn’t really sound like her. You know how she was even back then – she always had money. I can’t see her stealing it. But there aren’t any other candidates. Unless – no, I don’t think I’ve even had a plumber up there for longer than ten minutes,’ he says. ‘I don’t know who else it could be.’

‘Seb, I need to get it back, or at least find out what happened to it.’

‘Well, you better let me speak to her first and try to iron this out. She might have a reasonable explanation.’

‘Seb. If I don’t have the money, they’ll charge me with murder.’

‘Okay. I’ll call her in the morning,’ he says.

I think about this but tomorrow is too late. ‘I’ve got to meet the solicitor tomorrow. She wants an answer about the money. I really need to know where it is. You don’t understand. I can’t go through a criminal trial. I can’t.’

He is in the middle of pouring out coffee but stops. ‘Fine.’ He takes his phone out and takes a breath. ‘Okay,’ he says and presses a number on the screen.

I hear the number ring. It rings and rings until I’m sure it’s going to ring out. And then at last it’s answered.

‘Nina. It’s Seb. Hi,’ he says, and pauses. ‘Yes. Sorry. I know it’s late. Look, I need to see you. It’s important.’ Her voice is tinny through the handset. ‘No. I mean now. I can come to you or— No,’ he says, looking across at me. ‘It can’t wait.’ He pauses for Nina to say what she has to. ‘It’s better if we do this in person, trust me, I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.’ He waits as she speaks and then shrugs at me. ‘Well, it kind of is life or death, Nina. Okay,’ he says and puts the phone on the table.

‘She’s coming now.’

My stomach lurches. Now? I haven’t seen her for over thirty years. I remember seeing her briefly a few months before Grace and I split up. Grace went to stay with her to think things through but when I went to pick her up, I got the feeling that she thought that Grace would be better off if we simply ended it there and then.

Nina had always been overprotective of Grace. I didn’t know whether that was because Grace gave off something that signalled a need for protection or whether Nina just didn’t like me.

Once I told Grace that Nina made me feel as if she’d found me under her shoe. She hates me, I said to her.

‘That’s not true! She just prefers women to men.’

‘Or some women to some men,’ I said. ‘She seems to like Seb well enough.’

‘I don’t know about that. Not sure she likes him much at the moment either.’ I think we were in the kitchen. I have a half-memory of her picking up a tea towel and drying some dishes. ‘She’s got a thing about controlling men,’ she said then, almost casually.

‘What?’

A beat passed before she answered. ‘She thinks you try to control me with your jealousy.’ Then, seeing my expression, added, ‘That’s her – not me.’

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. ‘What? She thinks I’m controlling?’

‘I know,’ she said, agreeing, wide-eyed.

‘Well, she got the idea from somewhere,’ I muttered under my breath and then left the room.

Later I’d apologised. ‘It’s okay. I know what Nina’s like.’ I’d seen Nina just a couple of times since then. Once was on the day I’d brought the dollars. She had been out so Seb and I had taken the cash from the bin-bags and bundled them tightly into carrier bags, the better to fit the coffee table-trunk in the loft. I was passing the last bundle of notes to him when I heard the front door open. It was Nina. We froze. We heard her going through the house and then suddenly Seb dropped the bag that was in his hand and there were dollars everywhere. I still remember how we scrabbled about on hands and knees, picking up cash by the fistful before she came up. Then when she did we feigned innocence.

‘What?’ we said on the landing as she came up.

She said nothing but knew something was up. And when she stalked out, we both laughed.

The bell rings and Seb gets up to answer it. He pauses by the kitchen door. ‘Let me do the talking.’

I wait.

The front door opens in a clatter of locks and chains, then the sound of heels on wood and later the scent of rose. It’s a smell I remember. Another madeleine bringing a rush of memory. That rose. Turkish delight.

When Nina comes into the kitchen, she is mid-sentence with Seb and then stalls. She sees me and we lock eyes. Mine see a woman with the same cut-glass cheekbones and bright blue-green eyes that I remember. The effect is as arresting as ever in her pale face. Her fringe is still dark. Only a few fine lines around the eyes give away the time that has passed.

‘Xander,’ she says. There is no warmth in it at all. She turns her back to me and faces Seb, arms crossed. ‘What’s he doing here?’

‘He’s the reason I called you. Have a seat. Coffee?’

She sits but does it by perching at the edge. She makes no move to remove her blood-red coat. It remains draped across her sharp shoulders. I pull my chair back to make room for her but she’s not looking at me at all.

‘Well?’ she says, taking her coffee from Seb.

‘Well,’ he says, drawing breath. ‘It’s to do with Xander really.’ They both look at me. ‘How to begin?’ he says. ‘Some years back, Xander left some cash here for safe-keeping. After he and Grace—’ He coughs when he sees her face. ‘Anyway. It’s missing.’

She absorbs the information but says nothing. She takes a slow sip and puts her cup down softly. Then she raises her eyebrows, waiting.

‘Nina?’ I say irritably.

‘What?’ she says without looking up.

‘Did you take the money?’ I say.

‘What money?’ She moves in her seat.

Whatever coldness or indifference she once felt for me has deepened over the years.

‘There were two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. In the house. It’s gone. All of it.’ Seb is getting irate.

Nina blinks at him and pulls out a packet of thin cigarettes from her bag and lights one. The scent of her hangs in the air.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t even seen him,’ she says, pointing her cigarette at me, ‘for thirty years. And I think I’d remember a quarter of a million pounds in cash.’

‘Dollars,’ I say but she looks away, saying nothing.

‘Nina?’ Seb says, bristling.

‘What?’

‘The money. Where is it? It’s important.’

A sense of dread grows in me. I worry that if she doesn’t have it, then there’ll be no way of finding it again. And that could be the end for me.

‘You knew I had the money. I know Grace spoke to you about it,’ Seb says. ‘We had an argument about it. You wanted to give it straight to Grace.’

She wriggles in her seat and then suddenly stands, pushing her chair back with a screech. ‘What’s this all about, Sebastian? You can’t have called me all the way here for this.’

Seb stands and then sits back down again. He looks at me for permission but I haven’t caught up with him. ‘We need it, Nina. Xand needs it. Now,’ he says, pulling his sleeves back.

‘Well, I’m sorry you’ve wasted your time. I don’t know anything about the money. I never even laid eyes on it. And then I left you – and this house. And you know exactly what I took with me,’ she says and draws her coat together as if to leave.

Before she can get to her feet, Seb puts a hand out. ‘Nina,’ he says, and then I see that he is holding up an earring. It swings in his fingers.

‘What’s that?’ she says, and we both look at Seb.

‘It was by the trunk that had the money in it.’ Seb calmly places it into her hand. I stare at her and then him. I didn’t see it by the trunk.

‘So, I lost an earring.’

‘It was by the trunk, Nina.’

‘What trunk?’

‘The one that used to be our coffee table. The one with all the money in it,’ he says, raising his voice.

‘I’ve never even been in your goddamned loft,’ Nina says, her voice piercing the air. And as soon as she says it, she stops, and then sighs.

‘I didn’t say it was in the loft,’ Seb says.

‘Oh, where else was it going to be?’ she says and sits back down. ‘Get me a proper drink.’

‘You stole it?’ I ask.

‘Don’t be so sanctimonious, Xander. You stole it in the first place. It was Grace’s money. You dropped her and then emptied her account.’

‘Dropped her?’ I say, incredulous at the accusation. And even as I say it, I realise that of all the things Nina is saying to me, this is the thing that hurts most. ‘She left me. You know that, Nina. You do know that?’ My voice now is the one inflected with anger. The earth is shifting beneath me. I don’t know who I am if I am not the person who was left broken by Grace. I can’t be misremembering this.

‘I know what I know,’ she says, her tone flat.

‘Is that what she told you?’ I say. ‘That I left her?’

‘No. She didn’t tell me that, Xander. She wouldn’t tell me that – she didn’t have to. She was destroyed when you left.’

My head reels and I can’t seem to grasp a still moment. I need something to anchor me, a thought, a reliable thought that is beyond shifting. I find nothing. And so, on I spin. In the background, I hear Seb questioning Nina urgently about the money and her responding in slow, liquid tones. I catch splinters of conversation as I spin on and on.

Where is it now? Xander needs it. The police. Police? POLICE? Murder investigation. It could be evidence. We need the money back, Nina. It’s gone.

Xander.

‘Xander,’ she says.

‘Nina! Don’t.’

And then I am here, my face stinging from her hand. The room has become still. Nina and Seb flushed as if they have stepped off a fairground ride. They have been talking but to me they’ve done it all as if behind glass. All I can think of is this – that Grace said that I’d left her, destroyed her when I did. I can’t make any sense of this. Through the fog I see Seb gesticulating at Nina, as if calming her. She is close. Too close to me. And now she is pushing against me as Seb restrains her. Everything is imbued with a muffled, dreamlike quality.

‘You murdered her?’ she shrieks, piercing the spongy atmosphere, before chasing her voice with another slap.

‘Stop it! He didn’t murder Grace,’ Seb says, pulling her arm back.

‘The police don’t investigate people for murder without evidence.’

‘They do exactly that, Nina. He didn’t kill her.’ I hear the words but I am still consumed by this information. Why would Grace have been destroyed by me if she had left me, if she didn’t love me any longer?

‘She didn’t love me any more. That’s why she left,’ I say quietly to myself.

Nina swings her fringe out of her eyes. ‘Even you can’t believe that.’

‘I do believe that. That’s what she told me,’ I say, and as I do I feel my eyes stinging.

‘You want to know what she told me? She told me that you didn’t love her. That all you ever loved was a version of her that you had created. You didn’t love anything about the real her,’ Nina says.

‘How can you say that?’ I cry.

‘Because it’s true, Xander. You always thought you were better than her. Cleverer.’

‘I did not.’

‘You sneered at the things she loved. The yoga, the Buddhism, all of it. You even sneered at her taste in music.’

‘Her music?’

‘Yes, you hated her music. You made her feel worthless, Xander, at every turn.’

The words ring in my ears and now there is no room in my head for everything else I have been told in the last twenty-four hours.

I am aware of getting up and of following myself along the hall. Seb calls me back and then I am outside in the night. Wading through the air.

I walk hoping for a sliver of calm but for the longest time it doesn’t come. And then, at last, it begins. Every step rinses a drop of something from inside my head. Each stride cleanses, but only by fractions. I can’t walk quickly enough to stop the thoughts from multiplying, just for a second, so that I can get a proper handle on them. For some minutes I walk in a direction that I’ve walked before, and then I am at the Horniman grounds again. Something brings me back here time and again. It is as if the ghost of Grace is stronger here.

Once over the low wall I sit with my back against the other side of it. It is hallowed, the space here; I don’t need to go further. The wind collects in pockets and then blusters into my clothes, carrying off with it every bubble of warm air. I shiver. A shard of that memory pricks me whenever I am here.

A bench.

My hands in the soil.

There is something in what Nina has said, but I can’t for the moment grasp it firmly. The Buddhism – she was right about that – and the yoga. But was I supposed to indulge her in it as she indulged herself? We both knew that it wasn’t real, this spiritual odyssey of hers. She wore it obviously and mischievously.

But the music was real. At first, I didn’t get it. Pop, maybe – she was young. We all were. But eighties music? The worst of the musical decades, proved by posterity. But later I did get it, when it was too late. She wasn’t interested in the artistry or the symmetry or the poetry of the music. She didn’t care about the lyrics either. It was the mood she loved, how the music made her feel. It reminded her of things that she’d never experienced and of places she’d never seen. It had the power to alter her emotionally.

I have a memory of leaving her a gift. But her reaction to it escapes me. Maybe I wasn’t there when she received it or opened it. But I remember the things before it. I remember Tower Records in Piccadilly. I remember picking out the record and wrapping it and then carrying it to her house in the cold weather. Did I leave it at the door? It was too big surely to go through the letter box. In any case when I bought it, it was so I could tell her that, at last, I understood. It was an LP with her favourite song in it, ‘Fils de la Terre’ by Jack T. She’d originally played it on a cassette over and over again until one day the tape ran thin and just snapped. She was devastated. Resolved never to replace it. It’s not the same if I get another one, she’d said, it could never be the same.

When I bought the record, I wanted her to know that it didn’t have to be the same. It could be better instead. Vinyl not tape. Music to listen to in one place, not on the move. A song to be played at home, in confined space so that it could liberate you.

The cold is biting my back against this wall and my instinct knows I must move and keep the blood flowing. I see the boarded café ahead of me and though it is shut, I make for it at a run. By the time I reach it, I know that I will be warmer. The ground beneath my feet is hard and shocks my bones into life. I start slowly and build the pace gradually, then before I know what is happening, I am running full tilt into the night. Running like a schoolboy, freely, urgently and without any thoughts of conserving energy. I pass the café and keep running.

I run until I can run no more. My lungs are burning hot and screaming for air. Then in my mind Grace appears and she is opening the gift. She unwraps the badly taped and papered package and pulls out the sleeve. She is smiling as she takes the record out of the cover and out of the paper slip, handling it by the edges, and drifts over to the record player. The stylus is up with a gentle microphoned thud and then down once more.

Silence.

A hiss.

Then a rhythmic beat until finally the vocal kicks in.

And there is her face once again. Her eyes are shut and she is swaying to the music, lost in the mood.