I took a photo of you off the wall, then another and another. Simon tried to stop me, but I carried on until there were no photos of you on his wall, until he couldn’t look at you again. Then I left his flat, taking the photographs, with Simon furiously protesting that he needed them for his end-of-year assessment, that I was a thief and something else that I didn’t hear because I’d slammed the door shut behind me.
As I drove home with the photos on my lap, I wondered how many times Simon had followed you to take photos of you. Did he follow you after you left him in the park that day? I stopped the car and studied the photos. They were all of your back view, with the scenery changing from summer to autumn to winter, and your clothes from T-shirt to jacket to thick coat. He must have been following you for months. But I couldn’t find a photo of you in a snowy park.
I remembered that for Bequia islanders a photo can be made part of a voodoo doll and cursed, that a photo is considered as potent as having the victim’s hair or blood.
When I arrived home, I saw a new kettle in its box in the kitchen and heard Todd in the bedroom. I went in to see him trying to break one of your “psychotic” paintings, but the canvas was sturdy and not giving way.
“What on earth are you doing?”
“They won’t fit in a bin liner and I could hardly leave them at the dump as they are.” He turned to face me. “There’s no point keeping them, not when they upset you so much.”
“But I have to keep them.”
“Why?”
“Because …” I trailed off.
“Because, what?”
They were proof she was being mentally tortured, I thought, but didn’t say. Because I knew it would lead to an argument about how you died; because that argument would inevitably end in our separation. And because I didn’t want to be more alone than I already was.
“
“No. They were already skeptical—more than skeptical—about Tess’s being murdered and I didn’t think the photos would persuade them otherwise.”
I could hardly mention Bequia islanders and voodoo dolls.
“I knew that Simon would argue that they were for his art degree,” I continue. “He had an excuse for stalking her.”
Mr. Wright checks his watch. “I need to get to a meeting in ten minutes, so let’s end it there.”
He doesn’t tell me who the meeting is with, but it must be important if it’s on a Saturday afternoon. Or maybe he’s noticed me looking tired. I feel exhausted most of the time, actually, but in comparison to what you went through, I know I have no right to complain.
“Would you mind continuing your statement tomorrow?” he asks. “If you’re feeling up to it.”
“Of course,” I say. But surely it’s not normal to work on a Sunday.
He must guess my thoughts. “Your statement is vitally important to secure a conviction. And I want to get as much down as possible while it’s fresh in your mind.”
As if my memory is a fridge with pieces of useful information in danger of rotting in the crisper drawer. But that’s not fair. The truth is that Mr. Wright has discovered that I am more unwell than he originally thought. And he’s astute enough to worry that if I am physically declining, then my mind, particularly my memory, might deteriorate too. He’s right to want us to continue apace.
13
He told me that he wants to “go through the Kasia Lewski part of the statement this morning,” which will be strange because I saw Kasia an hour ago in your flat, wearing your old dressing gown.
I go straight into Mr. Wright’s office and again he has coffee and water waiting for me. He asks me if I’m okay, and I reassure him that I’m fine.
“I’ll start by recapping what you’ve told me so far about Kasia Lewski,” he says, looking down at typed notes, which must be a transcript of an earlier part of my statement. He reads out, “ ‘Kasia Lewski came to Tess’s flat on the twenty-seventh of January at about four in the afternoon asking to see her.’ ”
