“The thing is,” I said, and cleared my throat. This was all, not harder than I had expected exactly but so much stranger; I was about to ask them why I was a murderer, and it seemed impossible that my life had landed me here. “The thing is, it sounds weird but I think you’re kind of right, that’s not why she dumped me. I think she could actually handle me having done it—I mean, I know that sounds crazy but like you said, Melissa is pretty special, she’s—I think she might maybe be able to deal with that, depending on why it was. Only she doesn’t know. That’s got to be really scary for her. It could have been because I’m a, a total psycho, and I just hide it really well most of the time. And the thing is, is that I can’t tell her. Because I don’t remember. Any of it. So I’m pretty much fucked.”
There was a silence. I took a big swig of my wine—I only realized when I lifted the glass that my hand was shaking. Susanna and Leon were having some complicated exchange of eye signals.
“If you remember anything,” I said, “anything that could, could make sense of why I might have— That’s all you owe me. To help me straighten this out. Melissa only ever got into this because you wanted me to come here. If I hadn’t—”
“OK,” Susanna said. “We’re going to tell you a story.”
“Su,” Leon said. “I still think this isn’t a good idea.”
“Relax. It’ll be fine.”
“Su. Seriously.”
Susanna regarded him across the coffee table. She had her jumper sleeves pulled down to her fingertips and her wineglass cupped in both hands, like it was a cup of tea. In the firelight the whole scene looked almost impossibly cozy and idyllic, the worn red damask of the armchairs glowing, warm flickers catching in the dinged copper kindling bucket and making the old etchings stir and ripple. She said, “It’s only fair.”
“No it’s not.”
“It’s as close as we’re going to get.” To me: “If you ever tell this to anyone—and that includes Melissa—we’ll say it’s complete bollocks, you must’ve hallucinated the whole conversation, we just came over tonight and had a nice sentimental chat about Hugo and went home. And they’ll believe us. Are you OK with that?”
“Do I have a choice?” And when Susanna shrugged: “OK. I get it.”
“I’m having a smoke,” Leon said, pulling himself up off the rug. “I don’t care. Where’s that ashtray?”
“He’s still kind of wired, isn’t he?” Susanna said, when he had gone out to the kitchen. “It’s because he’s trying to decide what to do about Carsten. I hope he sticks with him. They’re good together.”
“Su,” I said. My heart was going hard. I hadn’t expected it to be this easy. I couldn’t tell whether I should worry about the fact that she had come here already planning to tell me this story.
“I know.” She leaned over the arm of the sofa to dig in her bag for her cigarettes. “Want one of these?”
“No thanks.”
“Have you got a light?”
“Su.”
“OK, OK. I’m figuring out where to start.” She stretched out her legs on the sofa and rearranged the throw, getting comfortable. “So. Sixth year, I guess was the beginning. Sometime in March; the Easter holidays. Our parents had gone somewhere, we were staying here, we were studying for the Leaving Cert orals. Remember that?”
“Yeah.”
“Our mates used to call round and study with us? Including Dominic?”
“Yeah.”
“It was horrible,” Leon said, coming back in with the cracked bowl Susanna had dug out after the funeral. “Here, for God’s sake, where it was supposed to be safe, and all of a sudden there’s that arsehole, swaggering in and swiping all my books onto the floor and laughing like a hyena.”
“At first I wondered what he was doing here,” Susanna said. “It’s not like you two were that close. But then he started sliming up to me, all smiley, asking me for a hand with French. I wasn’t impressed—he’d always acted like I didn’t exist, and suddenly when he needs help he’s all over me? But I was big into giving people a hand, back then. Community responsibility and all that shite. Jesus, I was a self-righteous little snot, wasn’t I?”
“We loved you anyway,” Leon told her, moving more stuff off the coffee table to make room for the ashtray.
“Thanks a bunch. Anyway, I thought fine, whatever, I’ll try and get a few irregular verbs into Dominic’s