I Know What I Saw

‘But they loved him anyway,’ she replied. She looked into the sky as it began to spit. I looked at her and saw that she was like them. Her face was blanched with grief but her dress was new and looked fashionable. Her golden hair, frivolous against the funeral blacks.

‘Thanks for coming,’ I said to her. ‘Even though we’re not—’

She held my arm in both hands. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I loved him. And you too.’ She gazed into the sky as if searching for a speck of light in the steel clouds.

‘Just not enough,’ I said and she released my arm.

‘Xander. Not here. Please.’ Her face pleaded with me.

‘I’m sorry about your loss.’ I looked up to see a young woman with a short black bob, her fringe brushing her eyes. ‘I’m Taz. I worked with Rory.’

Nodding away her condolences, I waited for her to leave. But she lingered.

‘I – um. How did it happen? He seemed such a calm person,’ she said then, pulling her scarf closer to her body against the weather.

I looked at her hard. ‘I killed him,’ I said. My mouth filled with something metallic from the air. I’d had a lifetime to absorb, reconstitute, reinvent whatever had happened to me. The pain had turned my cells inside out, but I’d adapted over time. Rory, though, was too old when he found out, too brittle, for the onslaught of pain. And above all, I’d known it.

If I could have stopped him, or spoken to him in the moments before he jumped, I might have told him that. I might have told him how proud he’d be of himself if he could see himself as I’d done.

‘He’s – he doesn’t know what he’s saying,’ Grace said quickly, turning me around and leading me back towards her car. She clicked along on her heels, pulling me, glancing occasionally into the sky. The threatening rain would ruin her hair.

It is only when Amit taps me on the shoulder that I realise that I have been crying. I look up and wipe my face with the back of a hand. His breath comes out misty in the cold air.

‘Amit?’ I say.

He sits next to me for a moment but his legs dance so much that he has to stand up. ‘Listen,’ he says, then thinks better of it whatever it might have been. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘Really.’

‘Okay,’ he says, weighing up whether to say what is on his mind. ‘That woman.’

‘Yes?’ I say, wondering whether he might have carried on searching after I left.

‘You know that Farm Street is just around the corner. I saw it on Maps.’

‘Yes. I know it is.’

‘Well, if she lives there, can’t you just knock on the door?’

I consider what he has said and try to assemble into some order what I can say to him in reply. I don’t want to alarm him unnecessarily.

‘She doesn’t live there exactly. That’s where she went missing from.’

‘I don’t get it. So, did she live there and now she’s gone?’ he says confused.

‘Kind of.’

‘Does anyone live there now?’

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘Can’t you speak to them? Or have you already?’

‘I can’t.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I think he’s the reason she’s missing,’ I say, and then realise what I have said too late.

‘Shit. Do you think he killed her?’

I say nothing but have an urge to confide in him, this boy, who won’t find it hard to believe me.

‘Yes,’ I say at last.

He looks at me wide-eyed. ‘Shit. That’s dark.’

‘Yes,’ I say, and then I tell him what happened, in desperation, glad to have someone to share it.

He stares at me the whole time as if he cannot believe his luck at being included in my confidence. I have to keep reminding myself that he is still a child but I can’t help seeing him as I see Rory at that age. Fully grown. Almost.

As soon as I have finished telling him, the remorse sets in.

‘Amit,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘I’m sorry. I should not be telling you this. Look, I am obviously just a crazy homeless guy. You know that, right? Just forget it all.’

‘So, she could still be there? It’s not even a week ago,’ he says, bouncing a little on his heels.

‘This was a mistake.’ I get up and begin to walk down the road.

‘No, wait. We should go round there.’

‘Really, should we?’ I say. ‘Does that sound like something we should do?’ The tone in my voice isn’t one I recognise. I’ve never liked sarcasm.

‘Yes. We should. If she’s dead we could definitely find out whether she’s still there.’

‘How?’ I say, stopping.

‘The smell,’ he says. ‘Six days rotting – we did this in biology. That place will be stinking.’ He scrunches his nose.

‘She’s not in there. I think some men came by and took the body.’

‘Then at least let’s see if we can find her name out,’ he says.

‘How?’ I say. ‘I can’t go anywhere near the place.’

‘Trust me,’ he says. ‘I’ll do it. You wouldn’t even have to be there.’

‘No. It’s too dangerous,’ I say, and hold him by the shoulders to underline the point.

He turns on his heel and faces the other way. ‘I’m going anyway,’ he says. ‘42B, isn’t it?’

Before I can answer, he has jogged away.

When I catch up with him he is already on Farm Street, scanning the doors for numbers. I reach him just as he is about to walk through the gate to the main house.