SUNDAY, AUGUST 18, 2013
EARLY MORNING
One piece of the memory led to the next. It’s as though I’d been blundering about in the dark for days, weeks, months, then finally caught hold of something. Like running my hand along a wall to find my way from one room to the next. Shifting shadows started at last to coalesce, and after a while my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, and I could see.
Not at first. At first, although it felt like a memory, I thought it must be a dream. I sat there, on the sofa, almost paralysed with shock, telling myself that it wouldn’t be the first time I’d misremembered something, wouldn’t be the first time that I’d thought things went a certain way when in fact they had played out differently.
Like that time we went to a party thrown by a colleague of Tom’s, and I was very drunk, but we’d had a good night. I remember kissing Clara good-bye. Clara was the colleague’s wife, a lovely woman, warm and kind. I remember her saying that we should get together again; I remember her holding my hand in hers.
I remembered that so clearly, but it wasn’t true. I knew it wasn’t true the next morning when Tom turned his back on me when I tried to speak to him. I know it isn’t true because he told me how disappointed and embarrassed he was that I’d accused Clara of flirting with him, that I’d been hysterical and abusive.
When I closed my eyes I could feel her hand, warm against my skin, but that didn’t actually happen. What really happened is that Tom had to half carry me out of the house, me crying and shouting all the way, while poor Clara cowered in the kitchen.
So when I closed my eyes, when I drifted into a half dream and found myself in that underpass, I may have been able to feel the cold and smell the rank, stale air, I may have been able to see a figure walking towards me, spitting rage, fist raised, but it wasn’t true. The terror I felt wasn’t real. And when the shadow struck, leaving me there on the ground, crying and bleeding, that wasn’t real, either.
Only it was, and I saw it. It’s so shocking that I can scarcely believe it, but as I watch the sun rise it feels like mist lifting. What he told me was a lie. I didn’t imagine him hitting me. I remember it. Just like I remember saying good-bye to Clara after that party and her hand holding mine. Just like I remember the fear when I found myself on the floor next to that golf club—and I know now, I know for sure that I wasn’t the one swinging it.
I don’t know what to do. I run upstairs, pull on a pair of jeans and some trainers, run back downstairs. I dial their number, the landline, and let it ring a couple of times, then I hang up. I don’t know what to do. I make coffee, let it go cold, dial Detective Riley’s number, then hang up straightaway. She won’t believe me. I know she won’t.
I head out to the station. It’s a Sunday service, the first train isn’t for half an hour, so there’s nothing to do but sit there on a bench, going round and round, from disbelief to desperation and back again.
Everything is a lie. I didn’t imagine him hitting me. I didn’t imagine him walking away from me quickly, his fists clenched. I saw him turn, shout. I saw him walking down the road with a woman, I saw him getting into the car with her. I didn’t imagine it. And I realize then that it’s all very simple, so very simple. I do remember, it’s just that I had confused two memories. I’d inserted the image of Anna, walking away from me in her blue dress, into another scenario: Tom and a woman getting into a car. Because of course that woman wasn’t wearing a blue dress, she was wearing jeans and a red T-shirt. She was Megan.
