I Know What I Saw

My body is red with heat and soap. Clean. The water has somehow woken it so that to look at it, it seems bound with energy. But my head remains muddy. Back in my room Seb has righted the upturned bed and laid out some fresh clothes. I pull on the chinos and checked shirt and get into bed. The cool sheets and warm duvet surprise me with their touch. At this moment it is all I can do to stop heaving as the tears roll down my face.

I see Mum in my dreams and even though I know it isn’t and it can’t be, it feels like an omen. She is young, as she was when I was ten or eleven. She’s perhaps thirty, her skin is wrinkle-free and her eyes shine. She is standing at the foot of my bed and smiling. Her hand is out as if she is begging for alms or food. Or absolution. There’s a shawl that she has never worn over her head. I’m hungry, she says and as I reach out to take her hand, she vanishes. In a blaze of sunlight.

My eyes are open. The angle of the sun says that I have missed most of the morning. I go downstairs feeling groggy. There is coffee on the table. Seb is there, wearing a navy wool suit and a cornflower tie. He smells clean. His hair has been combed smartly into place. A pink square of silk peeps out from his top pocket. I sit and pour out some coffee and take a deep draught. The caffeine stings my blood.

‘Okay?’ he says.

The sorrow that had infected his voice and manner has gone. I nod and watch as he drinks a mouthful of coffee and then lights a cigarette and hands it to me. I put it to my mouth. It soothes and invigorates me at the same time. I stare at my cup through wisps of smoke and see it beginning to blur. I try to speak but I find my voice has dried out and whatever words I had become lost in a cough. He stands and comes to place a hand on my shoulder.

‘I’m really scared, Seb,’ I say through tears. ‘I think it was me. That I killed her. What if I killed her?’

The weight of his hand speaks for him and it remains until the tears finally end. I think about what I said. It is true. I can’t tell where the edges of my sanity lie any more.

At last he goes back to his chair.

‘If there’s one thing I know about you with certainty,’ he says, ‘it’s that you are not capable of that. You loved her. You did not kill her.’

‘How can you be certain?’ I say. ‘When I can’t?’

‘You said it yourself. There was someone else there. You saw him do it. You just have to convince the police of it. I’ll speak to them. I can tell them how much she meant to you, Xander.’

‘Thanks, Seb,’ I say. ‘But I think we’re way past that now.’

We spend the rest of the day in quiet distraction. Seb makes some calls and cancels appointments he had lined up for the day. He changes out of his suit and into jeans and a bottle-green cashmere sweater. Then, as the day begins to darken, Seb finally says what I know he’s been holding back.

‘Can I ask you a question?’

‘Of course.’

‘What do the police have on you? I mean they had it down as accidental death. What’s changed?’

Even though I know it’s been coming, I don’t know what the answer is. ‘I was there. I told them that I had witnessed a murder. Her murder.’

He thinks about this. ‘But I’m sure people admit murders all the time that they haven’t done. I’ve seen those crazy people on TV who—’ He stops. ‘There must be something more?’

‘My solicitor thought the same thing. Until—’

‘Until?’

‘The dollars. They found the dollar account. They know I emptied it, not long before Grace—’ I say. I can’t bear to finish the sentence.

‘What?’ he says, stopping to push the sleeves of his sweater back. His face is locked in consternation.

‘I remembered, Seb. I remembered I brought them here.’

‘Oh.’ He frowns. ‘The Bens.’

I look at him, confused by that word again.

‘Bens. We called them the Bens. Benjamin Franklin. It’s his face on the hundred-dollar bills.’

Now it comes back to me and how whenever we made reference to it, we did it as if we were 1930s mobsters. I reach out with my eyes to join Seb in a shared look but he turns away. For a second or two, I hold on to the look I’m giving him until the moment putters out. A thought rolls in my head before I dismiss it. It’s uncharitable that I’m wondering if he is deliberately avoiding my eye.

‘Seb, I need the money,’ I say finally.

He nods. ‘Of course. But, why does it matter so much? It’s not evidence of murder, surely?’ he says, shifting in his seat.

‘They think I killed her for the money. That’s why I need it,’ I say.

‘Your money, Xand. You can’t have killed her for your own money.’

‘Half was mine Seb. Half.’ I look around the room so that I don’t have to look him in the eye. I am embarrassed to have to ask. ‘What happened to the money, Seb?’

He moves in his seat, blinking rapidly. ‘Nothing. It’s all upstairs in the loft still.’

A rush runs through me. ‘The dollars are still here?’

‘Yes.’

‘You didn’t bank them or, I don’t know, give them to Grace or her family?’