been like since January,’ I say. ‘Round and round: believing, not believing, questioning my sanity, getting nowhere. Not much fun.’
‘For you or for Kit,’ says Sam. Does that mean he believes Kit’s telling the truth?
‘He even tried to say once that maybe someone in the shop he bought it from had programmed in the address.’ I thought I’d finished, but I can’t leave it alone. ‘He wanted us to go down there together, ask all the staff.’
‘Why didn’t you?’ Sam asks.
‘Because it was bullshit,’ I say angrily. ‘I wasn’t prepared to let him play games with me. I nearly agreed, but then I had a flash of clarity. I have those, sometimes, where it dawns on me that I don’t need to torment myself speculating, wondering. I know the truth: it wasn’t anyone in the shop, or me, or a member of my family. It was Kit. I know he did it.’ As soon as I’m out of here, I’m going to ring London Allied Capital and ask to speak to Stephen Gilligan’s secretary. Maybe he had a meeting with Kit at 3 p.m. on 13 May; maybe he didn’t. I need to know.
‘For six months, Kit’s been telling you that he didn’t programme in that address,’ says Sam. ‘What makes you so sure he did?’
Sure? I wonder who he’s talking about. Will I ever again be sure of anything?
‘Three things,’ I say. Exhaustion sweeps over me; it’s hard to summon the energy to speak. ‘One: it’s his SatNav. He had no reason to think I’d be using it, no reason to think I’d find out.’ I shrug. ‘The simplest explanation is usually the right one. Two: when I first asked him about it, before he had a chance to arrange his face into a puzzled expression, I saw something in his eyes, something . . . I don’t know how to describe it. It was only there for a split second: guilt, shame, embarrassment, fear. He looked like someone who’d been caught. If you’re about to ask me could I have imagined it, sometimes I think yes, I must have. Other times I’m certain I didn’t.’ I want to tell Sam how frightening it is to have the narrative of your life shift and lurch and change its contours every time you look closely at it, but I’m not sure any words can accurately describe it. Could Sam even begin to understand what it’s like to inhabit such an unstable reality? He strikes me as a man firmly embedded in a consistent world, one that retains its shape and meaning from one day to the next.
I feel as if I have two lives: one created by hope and one by fear. And if both are creations, why should I believe in either? I have no idea what the facts of my life would look like if I stripped away the emotions.
Better not to say any of this to Sam. I’ve caused him enough bother already without drawing him into a debate on the nature of reality.
You think too much, Con. Fran’s been telling me that since we were teenagers.
‘What’s the third thing?’ Sam asks.
‘Pardon?’
‘The third reason you’re sure Kit programmed in the address.’
I’m going to have to tell him – peel away another layer, go back even further. I have to, if I want him to understand. It’s all linked. What happened in the early hours of Saturday morning can’t be separated from what happened in January; what happened in January is connected to what happened in 2003. If I want Sam to help me, I have to be willing to tell him all of it, just as I told Simon Waterhouse.
‘Cambridge,’ I say. ‘I’m sure because 11 Bentley Grove is in Cambridge.’
Chapter 8
17/07/2010
Olivia Zailer flicked through her diary, sighing loudly at the sight of each new page. She’d made too many appointments for the next few weeks, most of which she knew she would at some point cancel. Lunch with Etta from MUST magazine to discuss a column about famous books and which meals they would be, in the unlikely event of their being turned into food – Wuthering Heights equals Yorkshire Pudding was the example Etta had given; aerobic walking on Hampstead Heath with Sabina, Olivia’s personal trainer; tea at the British Library with Kurt Vogel, who wanted her to judge an Anglo-German journalism prize in which all the entrants would be between the ages of eleven and thirteen.