I brought him to my lips, felt the odourless touch of the soft cellophane, heard the dull crackle.
I laid him to rest with the others, the unremembered that I remembered. At the kitchen table, I sat down, opened the file at the beginning and read my first-ever entry. My head fell into my hands. I was crying so much I couldn’t see, couldn’t get my breath. I laid my forehead on the kitchen table and cried for that boy, for his mother, for his father, for his family, his friends, for everyone who knew him, who loved or had loved him.
Sometime later, I must have stopped. Morning climbed over the back fence. Light washed the kitchen a pale vanilla yellow. My breath shuddered and stalled. The previous day rushed at me. Frame by frame, it rushed. I couldn’t stop it; all I could do was watch.
Saturday morning, twenty-four hours earlier, and I’m crying for Anne-Marie. I watched myself as if from above. Rachel. Rachel Edwards.
‘I enjoyed meeting you,’ I’m telling Anne-Marie as I print her off. ‘You were such a nice person.’ I carry her to the kitchen and lay her carefully to rest in my file. ‘I’m sorry we’ll never be friends now.’
I’m taking the dog round the block. I can see myself against the pink sky: tartan pyjama bottoms blown flat to my shins, flapping about beneath my big black Puffa coat. Mark’s red woolly hat pulled low, thick hiking socks and Mark’s Crocs, a few sizes too big. I’m still crying. I’m muttering to myself. The milkman’s truck fizzes by and I see him glance in my direction. I see myself through his eyes. I look insane, shuffling along in shoes too big. To myself, remembering, I look insane.
By the time I get back I’ve stopped crying but I can hear myself moaning inside my own head. I sound close but distant, muffled. In the bathroom I stay quiet. I mustn’t wake Mark. If he wakes up, I’ll have to face him. I have no idea what to say to him, can’t think I ever will. I want to wave the cigarette ends in his face. I want to ask which one of those whores he is shagging – my neighbour or my childhood friend. Or both. I want to pour boiling water over his head. I want to walk away with nothing but a suitcase and the shredded remnants of my dignity.
I know what’s happened to poor Anne-Marie and to Jo and to Henry Parker. The knowledge is inside me. But I can’t reach it.
I’m watching myself. There is something in my gut, something rotten. In the darkest, lowest corner of me a little voice is whispering, but I can’t hear the words. The whisper is getting louder with every passing minute. Louder and louder it gets, and then I hear it, I hear the words: You’re a murderer, Rachel Edwards, it says. You’re a murderer now.
I’m standing naked under the shower, turning the dial to hot. The water runs over my head. It feels warm, warm and thick as raw egg. I push my face into the heat of the water, try to drown out the voices, close my eyes to visions of a round white moon flashing on a silver blade. To Jo, her face set in shock, falling away from me. My hands are clenched and bloody. But is this memory inside a memory of me holding Mark’s knife in the kitchen, staring at it in shock and wonder, or is that from the dark, deserted car park at the leisure centre? The moon, was it out on Thursday night? And the knife, I didn’t take it with me. So where is it? And what now? What now? What now?
‘I don’t know,’ I sob into the water. ‘I don’t know I don’t know.’
In the bedroom, Mark is pretending to be asleep. He doesn’t want to look at me, not naked, not clothed, not at all. I don’t want to look at him.
The kitchen clock chimes eight o’clock. I watch myself put on my coat and I put on my coat. I watch myself open the front door and I open the front door. Weeks ago, Dave rostered me on the Saturday late shift but I told him I’d do the early one too. He asked if I was sure. Yes, I said. I am sure. I want to. Please let me.