I Know What I Saw

Seeing it sends a shiver down my spine. It’s a pendant in the shape of a tiny gold shell.

‘Chelle,’ I say under my breath. ‘Michelle.’

The plastic bag lies fat on the table, stained in mud. After a while it begins to shimmer in my peripheral vision. But it isn’t alone. It is here with everything I had forgotten. It’s here with things that I didn’t even know I knew, let alone forgot. I stand up suddenly and push back my chair.

‘What are you going to do?’ he asks.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. I don’t know what I can do. ‘I’m going to lie down,’ I say at last and then make my way upstairs. I can’t go now. He’ll stop me. I have to wait till he is asleep.

My head throbs, but it’s not clouding my thoughts. Rather, it’s making them clearer. The threads of my life are being pulled together and there is only one thing left to be done. I see now that this has been stalking me for almost thirty years. Maybe deep inside I thought I could outrun it, but that was never possible.

47 Saturday

When I am sure that he is in his room, asleep, I go back down. In the kitchen, the time on the oven blinks 01:22. I reach for the bag.

I step into the night with the bag tucked under my arm. The walk to the police station feels like a death march and I feel a kind of undeserved nobility about it. The air swims around my face, reminding me of itself and of freedom, now lost. I can’t keep running.

Before any suspicion of light, I reach the door of the police station and look up at the building. There’s a world behind those doors that I don’t want to open. And yet I must.

In the darkened sky, the street lamps flicker orange. I see a boy in the distance under a lamp that reminds me of Amit. His face glows in the sulphur.

I turn round and push at the door to a desk sergeant I haven’t seen before. This one looks more awake and less irritable than the others have been.

‘Is DI Blake here?’

He looks at his screen, takes my name and picks up a phone. ‘Yes, Rachel. Someone here to see you.’

I put the bag on my lap and look at it. It has kept my life’s secret. When I think of Grace and Rory, they are all in the centre of my life, whether I orbited around them or they me. But – and this hasn’t penetrated me until now – they are gone. They are dead and the damage that I did to them still clings to me. I have been running, but I haven’t been able to free myself from their guilt or their blame because I have kept them with me. How could I run away from them when they are inside me?

But now, I can escape. Knowing this, I look up.

‘Xander,’ she says. ‘Twice in twenty-four hours?’

I stare at Blake and at the bag on my lap. This moment feels suspended between two outcomes.

‘I have this,’ I say, and show her the muddy bag. She looks at me, confused. ‘It’s the other bit. Of the record. I had it,’ I say.

She is walking towards me but stops abruptly mid-stride and draws in a breath. ‘Xander. I. Oh, shit. I need to caution you,’ she says, putting a hand on her head and then sitting softly next to me. I can smell a faint scent of coffee and jasmine.

‘I’m seizing this as evidence in the case,’ she says at last. ‘Wait here. I’m going to get an evidence bag and some gloves.’ She rushes off through the double doors and is gone no longer than a minute or so. When she returns she has a large polythene bag in her hand and is pulling on surgical gloves. She takes my bag and seals it in the larger one. When she has written on the label, she turns to me.

‘I can’t ask you any questions about this without cautioning you and then interviewing you with your solicitor,’ she says, levelling her eyes at me. She is signalling.

I nod and then get up to leave.

‘Xander. You know we’re going to test it, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I say, and walk to the front door, pausing to raise a hand at her in goodbye.

‘I can’t not follow the evidence, Xander,’ she calls to my back as I walk out.

There are things I have to do and I don’t know how much time I have. The sky is darkened ink and there is no moon. Its absence feels personal, as if the moon has been plucked out of the sky to shame me.

I head quickly back, but even marching at double time and taking a bus part of the way, it still takes over an hour. By the time I reach Seb’s door, dawn has begun to appear. After slipping off my shoes at the door, I tiptoe quietly up the stairs to bed.

I drop into a dark and dreamless sleep.

Morning light washes through the curtains but I shut my eyes against it. There is too much now going on in my head to be distracted by light. I need more sleep. My body and my pounding head crave it. When I wake again much later, shards of so many colliding dreams are still sticking to me that I feel groggy and disorientated. I head for the bathroom and run a bath, using bubble bath to dampen the sound of water against enamel as it fills.

I climb in and as soon as the water swaddles me, it is as if everything in my mind that isn’t ordered or clear is jettisoned into the tub. As my body becomes cleaner, my head clears, too.