The Memory of Water

¹³ MIND MAP

I spend the next day creating a mind map of the murder. I have time sequences built around Eve’s routines, drawings of her house plan, inside and out, a key taped to the address. I have pictures of her, too. There is a map of the river. I include the pink pills in their packet in my collage; it adds another dimension, like one of her mixed media artworks. I wonder what she would think of it.

The murder weapon is a work of beauty, if I do say so myself. It was a gift from my mother a few years ago, which, I guess, has a peculiar kind of irony. The good thing about it is there will be no record of purchase and I have never seen anything like it in this country. It practically doesn’t exist. Gifts from mom are always a surprise on two fronts. Firstly, because she tends to forget birthdays and Christmas and just sends things on an ad hoc basis. Secondly, the things she sends are puzzling. When I turned thirteen I unwrapped a second-hand bicycle pump. It sounds interesting and eccentric but there was never so much as a note included to help me understand the obscure presents. So I’ve always felt like I just didn’t get them.

The knife is porcelain, Japanese, with an intricate carved handle. Sharper even than those they demonstrate on the shopping channel, where they inexplicably slice open tins and garden hoses. So sharp that I almost lost a finger trying to make gazpacho one day and thus relegated it to a drawer in the kitchen I hardly ever open.

Francina had to drive me to the hospital that day. Me, trying to stem the flow of blood so as to not a) die and b) stain the champagne suede interior of my Jag, with Francina trying to work out the difference between the accelerator and the brake. We arrived and parked at the hospital in starts and jerks of the V8. Francina, flaunting the key ring to other bruised, beaten and bleeding patients, wouldn’t stop beaming for the hour we spent in the emergency waiting room (it was only then she confided she couldn’t drive). Eight stitches and a reattached index phalange later, I let her drive us home again.

I haven’t seen Francina since the party a week ago. She’s usually very good at calling me if she can’t make it to work, but I haven’t heard anything and Thursday was her second no-show. So I’m a little worried but I’m sure there’s a good reason. Like a fashion emergency. The house is still a war zone of sharp objects and party stains.

I’m quite glad to have the privacy anyway. My mind map takes up the entire kitchen table and the last thing I need is Francina in a tutu, mid-vacuum, popping bubble gum, trying to figure it out.

I have some small mementoes of Eve I don’t stick to the map. A picnic serviette marked with her pale lip-gloss, a tortoiseshell hairclip, a Polaroid of us at a fancy dress party. Despite my general good spirits there are fleeting moments of sadness that I don’t have Eve anymore. We were, at stages, incredibly close. At times I have felt that I would do anything for her. The thing that drew us together, I think, is that we’re both pretty much loners. Both had a nasty childhood, both find our salvation in our art.