I Know What I Saw

‘Thirty years, Seb. All this time I have been – been searching for her in some way. How could you have known and not said?’

‘Because,’ he says and then sighs and relaxes back into his chair again. ‘Because you already knew.’

33 Wednesday

I am lying on the floor of the bedroom. The bed has been upturned and all the covers have been removed in the police search. But I would have slept on the floor anyway. My mind feels as dirty and stained as my body.

I knew. When he said that, I looked into his eyes and searched for the slightest flicker or hesitation, but there was none. I knew. I must have known. If he says it to me I have to trust him. I can’t trust my battered recollection over his, over anybody’s, recollection any longer. I’m not sure what to do with my anger. It’s ricocheting around my mind searching for a home, a target. I breathe to try and ground the rage.

To be without memory is to be cut away from yourself. I feel adrift, and the realisation that in those wiped-out days and months, I did things – could have done things – terrifies me. I can’t move under the weight of the possibility.

My throat tightens, and I gasp for air. Slowly, as if through straws, it comes. It whistles into my lungs and after a few minutes of thin, meagre air, I can stand. I make my way along the landing and find a door and push. The darkness is oppressive so I switch on the light.

‘Oh—’

‘I’m sorry, Seb. I can’t sleep,’ I say.

‘It’s okay,’ he says, and pulls himself up against the pillows. He looks at me and waits for me to speak. There is the scent of wood and cologne in the air here, soothing.

‘Tell me about it again.’

He sighs sadly. ‘Grace?’

I nod. ‘What happened to her.’

He collects himself first. ‘It was awful,’ he says, rubbing his eyes. ‘Nina raised the alarm when she didn’t hear from her after Christmas. I mean, we all thought she’d decided to stay in the Philippines for a couple of extra weeks.’

‘What made you think that?’ I say.

‘I don’t know, Xander. The new boyfriend maybe. And you know how she could be when it came to all that spiritualism stuff she was always into. So we thought she was still there.’ He stops and pauses for breath. ‘Anyway, it was a shock when they discovered her, in that state.’

I sink to my knees. I know what state that was. I was there. I must have been there. It was Grace I was looking at, the wine creeping up her blouse.

‘We tried to find you, Xand, but you’d gone. Nobody knew where you were. After Rory went, you just, I don’t know, you weren’t right. We could see it. But nobody knew that you’d fall so quickly. It felt like you had vaporised. We didn’t see you for a year. And then one day you just turned up. Here. Looking for your stuff. You needed money.’

Dollars? Did I take the dollars, I think, my heart sinking. I can’t remember turning up. ‘And?’ I say.

‘I gave you some money and you left. You really don’t remember?’ he says, cocking his head.

I shake my head. Some of this feels like a memory I had once but whatever strands there were have long since gone.

‘Did you really tell me about Grace? I can’t believe I would have forgotten that.’

‘Yes, well, we tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t hear it. No matter what I said, it didn’t seem to sink in. You just nodded and left. You took a bag of books with you and went.’

His words are beginning to rekindle memories. I remember the books – I think I remember. Two carrier bags filled with books I had left here. I remember the red creases that the handles ripped into my palms. I remember walking the streets with those bags until one morning I woke to find they had gone. The memory is a haze in that the feeling around it is stronger than the seeing of it. I remember a sadness with it, like a stone flung into a pool.

‘Didn’t the police want to talk to me?’

‘The police? No. Why would they?’ He pauses, assembling what I told him last night. ‘No. They didn’t suspect foul play at the time. They investigated, said it was an accident. She’d banged her head on a table and had a drunken fall. Just bad luck, they said.’

‘So, they weren’t treating it as a murder? Not ever?’

‘No. Not as far as I knew.’

‘And then?’

‘Well. There was the service. We expected you, of course, but weren’t shocked when you didn’t show. And then, slowly, we just got on with life. Well, we tried. Nina took it badly.’

I let the news seep through my skin and into my bones. Funeral.

‘There was a funeral,’ I said. More statement than question.

‘Yes. Well, cremation. Nina scattered the ashes.’

I remember now Conway saying this about a cremation. I drop my face into my hands. There is so much of my life that has scattered through my fingers. I am disgusted by my hands suddenly in this clean space and I get to my feet.

‘I need a bath,’ I say, and then hover for a second because I know saying it like that must seem like a non sequitur to Seb but he just nods.