I Know What I Saw

When the tears finally peter out, I find myself sitting on the grass and leaning against the seat. I press my hands into the ground to lever myself upright, but the sensation of the damp soil between my fingers triggers something. In the memory I have, I am digging. Clawing into the earth with my fingers. There, just behind the bench. I know it is here. Whatever it is.

And so now I move behind the seat and crouch. There are walkers nearby but they look away, afraid, as if I am about to do something unthinkable. I plunge my hand into the ground and dig. I scrape away a handful of wet, hard soil. Then, before I know what is happening I am digging desperately. One after another clumps of soil are hooked out of the ground. I dig as though beneath this foot of grass, there is a treasure or a life or some precious thing that needs air. I claw again and again but I don’t quite understand why.

Through the damp soil my hands touch plastic and I stop. The corner of something smooth and plastic is poking through the ground but it’s too far below ground to see. I tug at it and it slides out before catching in the mud. Another pull dislodges more earth and finally it comes free, cascading damp earth as it does.

I lay it on the ground and stare at it, as if a dream has suddenly taken on form. I remember this thing. A clear plastic sack. Thick. Inside there is something that has been carefully wrapped in newspaper. Something that I have carefully wrapped in newspaper. At the very outer threshold of my mind I remember this. It comes now in an avalanche. I remember wrapping these things. I recall the nervousness I’d felt as I did it. This has to do with Grace.

The mouth of the bag falls open and I put my hand in. I take a corner of the newspaper wrapping and tear it off. I read the date across the top:

30 December 1989

46 Friday

There is no doubt. Looking at this thing in my hand, there is no doubt. It was me. It was me after all.

I pick up the bag and tuck it inside my jacket and run out of the grounds. I have to get out of here.

I break out again into a run, my hands and sleeves covered in soil. My knees damp and dirty. I remember burying this but I can’t remember what happened before. My head pounds as I run. The boundary wall draws near and I jump it. I don’t want the exit now. These gates are meant for people. Thoughts riot in my head.

Did I know this? Did I know that I killed her? Am I perpetrating huge diversions against myself? Am I just playing chess against myself, pretending that I haven’t seen the plan behind the move? I am drawing myself in tighter and tighter coils into a box.

I must have known it all along. This – what is in this bag – proves it.

After ten minutes of running, I am at Seb’s. I push my way past him when he answers the door and barge into the kitchen.

‘Xander?’ he says, following me, puzzled.

I look at him and the ease drops out of his face like a bag of cement.

‘Shit, Xander,’ he says, taking in my muddied form. ‘What happened at court?’

I walk straight to the table and begin to peel back the wet plastic in my hand.

‘Xander? What’s going on?’

I ignore him and carry on unwrapping. The newspaper-packaged bundle is dry.

‘Xander.’

I peel back the paper carefully and expose what has been lying underneath it for nearly thirty years.

‘The missing piece,’ I say.

How can it be? And yet it is. The fragmented recollections aren’t needed any longer and can’t save me now. The proof is there in front of me.

‘Missing piece of what?’ says Seb, as I sit on the chair nearest to me.

‘The record,’ I say, looking up at him. He’s my only friend, and now the sole witness to my unravelling. ‘I killed her, Seb,’ I gasp. ‘It was me.’

It takes some time for him to cajole me out of my daze. In broken sentences I tell him about the evidence. The record piece, the prints, everything.

‘This will prove it,’ I say, lifting the piece to him with a scrap of the newspaper.

He looks startled, concerned – on the cusp of panic. ‘You have to give it to them. It might help you.’

As he says this he starts to rewrap the thing in its paper.

‘Help me? It incriminates me.’

He stops, mid-wrap.

‘Why did I bury it, Seb? Why would I do that unless—’

‘Don’t,’ he interrupts. ‘No. There must be another explanation.’

He stops and runs his hands through his hair. He is astounded and casts about for what to do or say next, because there is only one explanation.

‘Shit,’ he says finally. ‘Do you remember doing it?’

I shake my head and as I do I feel the tears. I try and blink them back. I don’t deserve to cry at this. I killed Grace.

‘I don’t fully,’ I say. ‘Sometimes when I learn something new, it changes what I remember. I remember this now,’ I say, pointing to the record. ‘I remember burying it.’

‘Shit,’ he repeats. He pushes the record back into the bag. ‘Wait,’ he says then, spotting something at the bottom of it and reaching in.

‘What is it?’

‘I’ve seen this before,’ he says and holds it up.