‘They’re saying they know who she is,’ I say, collecting myself.
He leans forward, lacing his fingers together.
I take a deep breath. ‘They’re saying it’s Grace. That she’s dead.’
He takes a gulp from his glass. I am expecting a tirade, anger. Something. He opens his mouth as if to say something and then closes it. Finally, he decides what to say and speaks.
‘Grace? Our Grace. That’s who it was?’
‘Yes. They’re saying it was her. They’re saying that she’s dead.’
He runs a hand through his hair.
‘They think she was murdered? Not an accident?’ he says. ‘And they’re saying it was you?’
It takes a moment for the realisation to hit.
‘Seb. You don’t sound surprised that she’s dead.’
‘I know,’ he says simply.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I knew she was dead.’
Hearing this makes the room reverberate. ‘What do you mean, you knew she was dead?’
I am standing now and see that I have picked up my glass and I am holding it as if I am about to launch it at him. I am watching myself but don’t seem to be able to control what I’m doing.
Seb remains rooted. ‘We all knew she was dead, Xander.’
I hear the words but they are so disembodied that it takes time for them to register.
‘And you didn’t think to tell me about it?’ A rage rises from somewhere I cannot identify. As it rises it drags a red veil across my eyes.
‘Sit down, Xander,’ Seb says to me. His tone is even, as if he is used to this from me.
‘No! I will not sit down. Did you? Were you there, Seb?’
‘Sit down,’ he says again.
‘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.
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.