not to worry, that there’s no bloodied carpet tiles to be sorted, no traumatic scene to be cleared up.
‘Don’t worry. You mustn’t worry. We’ll sort something when it gets to that point,’ I say in a panic.
Clive reaches his hand over, his skin thin and papery, showing off mottled purple veins. He takes a hold of my hand and turns my wrist as he pulls me closer, exposing my tattoo. The ink heart that has never been touched by anyone other than myself and the tattoo artist that created it.
‘Will you help me? Will you make sure you help me?’
I’m not a fan of physical contact. I’m not one for hugs or pecks on the cheek in greeting. Even shaking hands can be a bit much. I imagine all the things that the human eye can’t see. I imagine the germs that are leaping from one person to the other. Normally the thought makes me shudder and draw away, but not today. It’s his plea for help that is stopping my usual reaction, along with his crystal-blue gaze holding mine. It’s as if he can see me in a way that I’ve never been seen before. In a way that I’m not even sure I want to be seen.
‘I’ll help. I’ll do whatever I can to help.’ I’m not sure why it’s so easy to say. Perhaps because it’s the right thing.
Clive extends his other hand towards my wrist and only breaks the spell of his gaze to glance at the heart-shaped tattoo. When he reaches out a crooked finger, I know he’s going to trace it. I should be screaming. I should be telling him to get the hell off. Instead I am mesmerised. How is it I’ve become visible when I always try my best to remain hidden?
His finger meets my pulse point and, once again, I stay put. There’s a vibration that runs through him to me and it’s not something I can explain. I’m not keen on things I can’t explain and yet still I don’t move.
He uses his digit to trace along what’s caught his attention. Not in a heart-shaped loop like I hope. Instead he allows his finger to dance along the faded silvery scar.
The scar my tattoo hides.
The cut in my skin.
The one I survived.
The story I’ve never told.
12
Clive
There were fresh tears on Clive’s pillow tonight. He was losing Nancy all over again and he was so muddled. What did they mean they hadn’t found her? Why had what seemed so clear this morning now danced away like a distant memory? How was it that something that had been concrete in his mind was being questioned by the police?
As he lay there, unable to sleep, time gave him nothing but doubts.
He traced his life back to the allotment. That was his territory, where he spent many an hour working the ground, planting and harvesting as the seasons went by. He had notebooks and he liked to jot down what he’d sown each year.
In one part of his mind he knew that whenever he took produce home, it was Nancy who sat and podded the peas. And yet it was also his hands he was watching in his memory along with the knowledge, buried there, that he’d always been alone.
It was all too impossible to fathom. The reality of knowing he’d come across the body of his wife. While all the memories of their life together were flittering away as if they never existed. It wasn’t right, what the police had said. He was sure of it.
In the middle of the night, as he wept, it was impossible to know what to believe.
The only concrete thing he knew was that he had a house and he had an allotment and the knowledge of them both was another reason for the tears to flow, as he couldn’t face returning to either of them. But something was niggling away at him. Somehow he knew the allotment would hold the answers the police couldn’t find.
13
Keisha
For the next three days, I take my pulse thirty-eight times a day. I’m not sure how to get a hold of this newly emerged anxiety.
It’s the promise of helping that’s done it. Now I’ve given my word, I know I have to stay true to it. But how do I go about doing that when Clive can’t remember his own history?
My angst is amplified by the fact that Lucy, who usually balances me out, has been off sick ever since she went