I Know What I Saw

When I step in the smell from the room hits me in a wave so I am reminded of Proust and his madeleines. It’s the wax, the scent of it transports me, capturing memories and then scattering them. Is it Mum waxing banisters that I remember now, or is this just the smell of art galleries? I can’t remember precisely but Mum is definitely there, hovering, remote, aloof. I think she’s warning me.

It takes a minute to adjust to the gloom but slowly the room crystallises. There’s a large square bay window and then I see leather chesterfields along two walls. I look to the right and start at the sight of a tall, square-shouldered man in the corner. But it coalesces, into a grandfather clock. At the far end of the double room, there is a dining table and chairs, neatly tucked in. I stand still, listening, with the thumping, rhythmic beat of my heart playing in my ears.

Books and records are stacked on shelves either side of the fireplace, in neat rows safely behind glass. I crouch down, spreading my hands on the floor. This carpet is unfamiliar. It is silk. Otherworldly under my skin.

My head drops against it as I lie down, and I breathe. After a few breaths I double over as tears spill from my eyes. Soon, though, I sleep.

When my eyes snap open, I don’t know how long I’ve slept. Something I cannot now process, something in the past, has jolted me awake. I sit up. There must have been a sound. As soon as I scramble to my feet, I clamp a hand over my mouth to give my ears space to hear.

Voices in the hall.

I freeze.

The front door slams and I hear the click of heels against the tile. Two voices blow in, a man and a woman, and suddenly it’s clear that I have to move. I don’t know what’s upstairs, or even how to get there. Maybe the way up is there to the right of the dining table and chairs. Could there be a nook there where perhaps stairs are nestling? I can’t be sure, I know only these connected living rooms down here. I should have gathered myself earlier and explored my surroundings. That’s what I do when I find somewhere new. I look around to make sure that the place hasn’t already been cuckooed. I make certain of my exits and of all the weak spots so that if I have to I can make a run for it. Why didn’t I do that? How badly did he hurt me?

The voices are near now. In a second that door will open and they’ll burst in. After that, the lights will blaze on. A nano-second later, I will be trapped in that light, frozen in view. Caught with no way out.

Across the darkness I leap on to the sofa before I see my boots, bundled in my coat, there in the middle of the floor. Somehow, I spin around and scoop them up, just as the door opens. I leap and in a blink I am behind the sofa. The voices – louder, still jolly – trail in. My eyes, adjusting to the darkness, are helped then by the light falling in from the opened door, but there’s nothing to see here, trapped behind leather.

‘Ha,’ I hear the woman say. ‘Like you would!’

The light clicks on. And everything is bright.

4 Tuesday

I left my life to be alone. When I think of it, phrased in that way, I feel like an idiot. To be alone. The idea that I once thought I could find solitude on the streets! When the drunks don’t piss on you and the police don’t move you on and the people don’t look through you in that way, there’s still the sky. For you the sky is freedom. It’s your endless, unconfined self. But for me the sky is a shroud. It wraps me. It binds my eyes and mouth so that I can’t breathe.

I can’t breathe. My eyes are wide now as I force myself to connect my body to my surroundings. From behind the chesterfield I can see nothing but parts of myself. The dirt under my fingernails, the grime burned into the skin of my hands, the sleeves of my jumper, baggy and bobbled with pilling. I’ve made the mistake of holding on to my breath for fear of being noticed. And now that I am safe and hidden and I can breathe again, I have held on for too long. I lower my head so the coat-shoe bundle is tight to my face and breathe out into it.

‘There’s a bottle under that cupboard,’ the woman says. ‘You open that up and I’ll put on a record.’

I track the sound of their bodies as they separate and bustle in different ends of the room. My heart is still beating too quickly and I worry that I am going to hyperventilate.

‘This Gamay?’ he asks, his words muffled but he stretches out the vowels just as my father used to.

From the sound of his voice, he is at the far end of the room by the dining table. There must be a cupboard there. His voice is low, on its knees. I concentrate on the words so that I can control my breathing and stave off the claustrophobia that threatens.

‘Or shall I get the champagne?’ he asks, his tone oily.

‘Champagne?’ she calls out. ‘What are we celebrating?’

‘Nothing,’ he says, to the sound of glass kissing from being handled. ‘Just, you know, there is the money.’

She laughs but there’s uncertainty in her voice.