“Because, what?”
They were proof she was being mentally tortured, I thought, but didn’t say. Because I knew it would lead to an argument about how you died; because that argument would inevitably end in our separation. And because I didn’t want to be more alone than I already was.
“Did you tell the police about Simon’s photos?” Mr. Wright asks.
“No. They were already skeptical—more than skeptical—about Tess’s being murdered and I didn’t think the photos would persuade them otherwise.”
I could hardly mention Bequia islanders and voodoo dolls.
“I knew that Simon would argue that they were for his art degree,” I continue. “He had an excuse for stalking her.”
Mr. Wright checks his watch. “I need to get to a meeting in ten minutes, so let’s end it there.”
He doesn’t tell me who the meeting is with, but it must be important if it’s on a Saturday afternoon. Or maybe he’s noticed me looking tired. I feel exhausted most of the time, actually, but in comparison to what you went through, I know I have no right to complain.
“Would you mind continuing your statement tomorrow?” he asks. “If you’re feeling up to it.”
“Of course,” I say. But surely it’s not normal to work on a Sunday.
He must guess my thoughts. “Your statement is vitally important to secure a conviction. And I want to get as much down as possible while it’s fresh in your mind.”
As if my memory is a fridge with pieces of useful information in danger of rotting in the crisper drawer. But that’s not fair. The truth is that Mr. Wright has discovered that I am more unwell than he originally thought. And he’s astute enough to worry that if I am physically declining, then my mind, particularly my memory, might deteriorate too. He’s right to want us to continue apace.
I’m now on a crowded bus, squashed up against the window. There’s a transparent patch in the misted glass and through it I glimpse London’s buildings lining our route. I never told you that I wished I’d studied architecture instead of English, did I? Three weeks into the course, I knew I’d made a mistake. My mathematical brain and insecure nature needed something more solid than the structure of similes in metaphysical poetry, but I daren’t ask if I could swap in case they threw me off the English course and no place was found for me on the architecture one. It was too great a risk. But each time I see a beautiful building, I regret I didn’t have the courage to take it.
13
Sunday
This morning there isn’t even one receptionist on the front desk and the large foyer area is deserted. I take the empty lift up to the third floor. It must just be Mr. Wright and me here today.
He told me that he wants to “go through the Kasia Lewski part of the statement this morning,” which will be strange because I saw Kasia an hour ago in your flat, wearing your old dressing gown.
I go straight into Mr. Wright’s office and again he has coffee and water waiting for me. He asks me if I’m okay, and I reassure him that I’m fine.
“I’ll start by recapping what you’ve told me so far about Kasia Lewski,” he says, looking down at typed notes, which must be a transcript of an earlier part of my statement. He reads out, “‘Kasia Lewski came to Tess’s flat on the twenty-seventh of January at about four in the afternoon asking to see her.’”
I remember the sound of the doorbell and running to get it; having “Tess” in my mouth, almost out, as I opened the door and the taste of your name. I remember my resentment when I saw Kasia standing on your doorstep with her high-heeled cheap shoes and the raised veins of pregnancy over goose-bumped white legs. I shudder at my remembered snobbishness but am glad my memory is still acute.
“She told you that she was in the same clinic as Tess?” asks Mr. Wright.
“Yes.”
“Did she say at which clinic?”
I shake my head and don’t tell him that I was too keen to get rid of her to take any interest, let alone ask any questions. He looks down at his notes again.
“She said she’d been single too but now her boyfriend had returned?”
“Yes.”
“Did you meet Mitch Flanagan?”
“No, he stayed in the car. He blared the horn and I remember she seemed nervous about him.”
“And the next time you saw her was just after you’d been to Simon Greenly’s flat?” he asks.
“Yes. I took some baby clothes round.”
But that’s a little disingenuous. I was using my visit to Kasia as an excuse to avoid Todd and the argument I knew would end our relationship.
Despite the snow and slippery pavements, it took me only ten minutes to walk to Kasia’s flat. She’s since told me that she always came to yours, and I guess that was to avoid Mitch. Her flat is in Trafalgar Crescent, an ugly concrete impostor among the crisp symmetrical garden squares and properly shaped crescents of the rest of W11. Alongside and above her street, as if you could reach it as easily as reaching a book on a tall bookshelf, is the Westway, the roar of traffic thundering down the street. In the stairwells, graffiti artists (maybe they’re called painters now) have left their tags, like dogs peeing, marking out their patch. Kasia opened the door, keeping it on the chain. “Yes?”
“I’m Tess Hemming’s sister.”
She unhooked the chain and I heard a bolt being pulled back. Even on her own (let alone the fact that it was snowing outside and she was pregnant), she was wearing a tight cropped top and high-heeled black patent boots with Diamanté studs up the sides. For a moment I worried that she was a prostitute and was expecting a client. I can hear you laughing. Stop.
“Beatrice.” I was taken aback that she remembered my name. “Come. Please.”
It had been just over two weeks since I’d last seen her—when she came round to the flat asking for you—and her bump had got noticeably bigger. I guessed she must be around seven months pregnant now.
I went into the flat, which smelled of cheap perfume and air freshener that didn’t mask the natural smells of mold and damp evident on the walls and carpet. An Indian throw like the one on your sofa (had you given her one of yours?) had been nailed up at the window. I’d thought that I wouldn’t try to put down Kasia’s exact words or try to get across her accent, but in this meeting her lack of fluency made what she said more striking.
“I’m sorry. You must be… How can I say?” She struggled for the word, then, giving up, shrugged apologetically. “Sad, but ‘sad’ not big enough.”
For some reason her imperfect English sounded more sincere than a perfectly phrased letter of condolence.
“You love her very much, Beatrice.” Love in the present tense because Kasia had yet to learn the past tense, or because she was more sensitive than anyone else to my bereavement?
“Yes, I do.”
She looked at me, her face warm and compassionate, and she baffled me. Straight off, she had hopped out of the box I’d so neatly stuck her into. She was being kind to me and it was meant to be the other way around. I gave her the small suitcase I’d brought with me. “I’ve brought some baby things.” She didn’t look nearly as pleased as I’d expected. I thought it must be because the clothes were intended for Xavier, that they were stained with sadness.
“Tess… funeral?” she asked.
“Oh yes, of course. It’s in Little Hadston, near Cambridge, on Thursday, the fifteenth of February at eleven o’clock.”
“Can you write…?”
I wrote down the details for her, and then I virtually pushed the suitcase of baby clothes into her hands.