I Know What I Saw

‘Come on,’ she said, and stood. ‘There’s a café over there. Let’s have some breakfast.’

Though I hesitated, the need to be with her was too strong.

‘Not that one,’ I said. ‘They won’t have me. There’s a place around the corner.’

I’d known the owner of the café before I took to the streets. He was Iraqi and had been a physicist before he had sought asylum in the UK. ‘Saddam’s bombs. I make them work not so well. So of course, he want to kill me now,’ he’d said. ‘And family.’

‘Mr Xander,’ he said as I walked in. ‘Same as usual for you?’ He stopped then and looked at Grace. Pristine.

‘Please,’ he said, taking a tea towel and wiping down a table in the window. ‘Please to sit.’

Grace smiled and we sat at a Formica table.

‘Very intelligent man. Very intelligent,’ he said pointedly to her about me before withdrawing.

Grace took a breath and then forced a smile. ‘Nina told me about, you know, this,’ she said, opening a hand in my direction. ‘I hadn’t realised it was this bad. Are you okay? I mean I know you’re not okay but—’

‘I am okay,’ I said.

‘You’re not,’ she said. ‘Nina and Seb have both said they’ll have you for as long as you need.’

‘As long as I need? For what?’

‘To get yourself together.’

‘I am together, Mabe. I am together.’

‘Then what’s all this about?’ She dropped her voice to a whisper as a pair of plastic menus were brought to us.

‘Thanks, Udhey,’ I said. He smiled sadly before shuffling away again.

‘Well?’ she said.

‘Well, what?’

‘You’re a highly qualified, intelligent man. You owe it to yourself to do more than this.’

‘I am doing something,’ I said, picking up the menu.

She forced it down with the palm of her hand and looked into my eyes.

‘I know that with Rory …’

I held up a hand to stop her.

‘Okay. I’m sorry, Xander. I know you’re mourning him still and I know it’s going to take time for you to find your way out. But this isn’t the way.’

I traced circles in the menu with my thumb before looking up. ‘But you know the way, I’m guessing.’

She sighed and straightened in her seat. ‘There are a thousand ways to the truth, Xander.’

‘Truth? You think his death had truth? Do you think it was just? That it had its own morality somewhere? Really?’

‘Well, whatever this is,’ she said, ‘it’s not moral.’

The words stung. They always stung when she said them.

‘What? What am I doing that’s immoral?’

‘This! The begging, Xander! You have everything going for you. Some people don’t. Some people are reduced to this because of circumstance. What’s your excuse?’

‘I don’t need an excuse, Grace. It’s called free will,’ I say. ‘You would have understood that a year ago. Before you changed.’

She humphed. The sound and smell of the cooking together squeezed my stomach a little.

‘You tell me what’s so good about your life. If you had twenty-four hours to live, would you spend ten of them working? No, you wouldn’t. You’d be here. You’d be out. Living.’

She sighed then and looked at me, resigned.

‘Let’s just order,’ she said.

When the bill came, I instinctively reached for my back pocket and then stopped in embarrassment. Grace pretended not to see and left a twenty-pound note, telling Udhey to keep the change.

‘You know there are still all those dollars,’ I said. ‘They’re at Seb’s so – just take them when you want.’

‘Yes, he told me. I still can’t believe you took it all out in cash!’

She got up to leave and then changed her mind and sat back down again and took the purse out again. I held my hand over it quickly.

‘No. I’m not taking your money.’

She looked at me in surprise. ‘I wasn’t going to give you money, Xander. Why are you in so much trouble? You’ve got a quarter of a million dollars. You don’t need my money. That is my whole point!’

‘Then what?’

She sighed. ‘I just wanted to tell you that we’re … I’m going away for a few weeks in December.’

I tried to master the muscles in my face as I took in the news. We.

‘Why are you telling me this?’ I said.

‘Just – here,’ she said, getting something out of her purse and sliding it across the table.

‘What’s that?’

‘The spare key. To my place. I just thought, if you needed somewhere, it’s going to be empty over Christmas and – well, you’d be doing me a favour, actually. Have someone watching the place.’

I slid the key back over to her. ‘I don’t need it. Thanks,’ I said, and stood up. She picked it up and moved it nearer to me.

‘Take it. If you don’t use it, don’t worry. You can post it back through the letter box when you get a chance. Just in case you’re – I don’t know. Desperate.’

Reluctantly I took the key and put it in my pocket. We stepped out into the street and stood not knowing what to say next. Eventually she just touched my arm and walked away.

That might have been the last time that I saw her.

A chill wind rips through my clothes and I am shaken back into the street. Amit is still in that house. It has been too long. I have to act soon, otherwise …