I Know Who You Are

by Alice Feeney

  I am paralyzed with a unique form of fear when strangers recognize me. I just smile, try to say something friendly, then retreat as fast as I can. Thankfully it doesn’t happen too often. I’m not A-list. Not yet. Somewhere between B and C I suppose, a bit like my bra size. The version of myself I wear in public is far more attractive than the real me. It’s been carefully tailored, a cut above my standard self; she’s someone nobody should see.

  I wonder when his love for me ran out.

  I take a shortcut through the cemetery, and the sight of a child’s grave fills me with grief, redirecting my mind from thoughts of who we were, to who we might have been, had life unfolded differently. I try to hold on to the happy memories, pretend that there were more than there were. We are all programmed to rewrite our past to protect ourselves in the present.

  What am I doing?

  My husband is missing. I should be at home, crying, calling hospitals, doing something.

  The memory interrupts my thoughts but not my footsteps, and I carry on. I only stop when I reach the coffee shop, exhausted by my own bad habits: insomnia and running away from my problems.

  It’s already busy, filled with overworked and underpaid Londoners needing their morning fix, sleep and discontentment still in their eyes. When I reach the front of the queue, I ask for my normal latte and make my way to the till. I use contactless to pay and have disappeared inside myself again, until the unsmiling cashier speaks in my direction. Her blond hair hangs in uneven plaits on either side of her long face, and she wears a frown like a tattoo.

  “Your card has been declined.”

  I don’t respond.

  She looks at me as though I might be dangerously stupid. “Do you have another card?” Her words are deliberately slow and delivered with increased volume, as though the situation has already exhausted her of all patience and kindness. I feel other sets of eyes in the shop joining hers, all converging on me.

  “It’s two pounds forty. It must be your machine, please try it again.” I’m appalled by the pathetic sound impersonating my voice coming from my mouth.

  She sighs, as though she is doing me an enormous favor, and making a huge personal sacrifice, before stabbing the till with her nail-bitten finger.

  I hold out my bank card, fully aware that my hand is trembling and that everyone can see.

  She tuts, shakes her head. “Card declined. Have you got any other way of paying or not?”

  Not.

  I take a step back from my untouched coffee, then turn and walk out of the shop without another word, feeling their eyes follow me, their judgment not far behind.

  Ignorance isn’t bliss; it’s fear postponed to a later date.

  I stop outside the bank and allow the cash machine to swallow my card, before entering my PIN and requesting a small amount of money. I read the unfamiliar and unexpected words on the screen twice:

  SORRY.

  INSUFFICIENT FUNDS AVAILABLE.

  The machine spits my card back out in electronic disgust.

  Sometimes we pretend not to understand things that we do.

  I do what I do best instead: I run. All the way back to the house that was never a home.

  As soon as I’m inside, I pull out my phone and dial the number on the back of my bank card, as though this conversation could only be had behind closed doors. Fear, not fatigue, withholds my breath, so that it escapes my mouth in a series of spontaneous bursts, disfiguring my voice. Getting through the security questions is painful, but eventually the woman in a distant call center asks the question I’ve been waiting to hear.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Sinclair. You have now cleared security. How can I help you?”

  Finally.

  I listen while a stranger calmly tells me that my bank account was emptied, then closed yesterday. Over ten thousand pounds had been sitting in it; the account I reluctantly agreed to make in joint names, when Ben accused me of not trusting him. Turns out I might have been right not to. Luckily, I’ve squirreled most of my earnings away in accounts he can’t access.

  I stare down at Ben’s belongings still sitting on the coffee table, then cradle my phone between my ear and shoulder to free up my hands. It feels a little intrusive to go through his wallet—I’m not that kind of wife—but I pick it up anyway. I peer inside, as though the missing ten thousand pounds might be hidden between the leather folds. It isn’t. All I find is a crumpled-looking fiver, a couple of credit cards I didn’t know he had, and two neatly folded receipts. The first is from the restaurant we ate at the last time I saw him, the second is from the petrol station. Nothing unusual about that. I walk to the window and peel back the edge of the curtain, just enough to see Ben’s car parked in its usual spot. I let the curtain fall and put the wallet back on the table, exactly how I found it. A marriage starved of affection leaves an emaciated love behind; one that is frail, easy to bend and break. But if he was going to leave me and steal my money, then why didn’t he take his things with him too? Everything he owns is still here.

  It doesn’t make any sense.

  “Mrs. Sinclair, is there anything else I can help you with today?” The voice on the phone interrupts my confused thoughts.

  “No. Actually, yes. I just wondered if you could tell me what time my husband closed our joint account?”

  “The final withdrawal was made in branch at seventeen twenty-three.” I try to remember yesterday, it seems so long ago. I’m fairly sure I was home from filming by five at the latest, so I would have been here when he did it. “That’s strange…” she says.

  “What is?”

  She hesitates before answering. “Your husband didn’t withdraw the money or close the account.”

  She has my full attention now. “Then who did?”

  There is another long pause.

  “Well, according to our records, Mrs. Sinclair, it was you.”

  Three

  “Mrs. Sinclair?” The bank’s call center sounds very far away now, even farther than before, and I can’t answer. I’ve come undone. Time seems like something I can no longer tell, and it feels as if I’m tumbling down a hill too fast with nothing to break my fall.

  I think I’d remember if I went to the bank and closed our account.

  I hang up as soon as I hear the knock at the door and run to answer it, practically tripping over my feet. I’m certain that Ben and a logical explanation will be waiting behind it.

  I’m wrong.

  A middle-aged man and a young girl, wearing cheap suits, are standing on my doorstep. He looks like a guy with friends in low places, and she looks like lamb dressed as mutton.

  “Mrs. Sinclair?” she says, coating my name in her Scottish accent.

  “Yes?” I wonder if they might be selling something door-to-door, like double glazing or God, or, even worse, whether they might be journalists.

  “I’m Detective Inspector Alex Croft and this is Detective Sergeant Wakely. You called about your husband,” she says.

  Detective? She looks like she should still be in school.

  “Yes, I did, please come in,” I reply, already forgetting their names and ranks. It’s very loud inside my head right now, and my mind is unable to process the additional information.

  “Thank you. Is there somewhere we could all sit down?” she asks, and I lead them into the lounge.

  Her petite body is folded into a nondescript black trouser suit, with a white shirt tucked underneath. The ensemble is not unlike a school uniform. Her face is plain but pretty, and without a smudge of makeup. Her shoulder-length mousy hair is so straight it looks as though she might have ironed it at the same time as her shirt. Everything about her is neat and uncommonly tidy. I think she must be new at this, perhaps he is training her. I wasn’t expecting detectives to appear on my doorstep; a uniformed officer perhaps, but not this. I wonder why I’m receiving special treatment and shrink away from the potential answers lining up inside my head.

  “So, your husband is missing,” she prompts as I sit
down opposite them both.

  “Yes.”

  She stares, as though waiting for me to say more. I look at him, then back at her, but he doesn’t seem to be much of a talker, and her expression remains unchanged.

  “Sorry, I’m not really sure how this works.” I already feel flustered.

  “How about you start by telling us when you last saw your husband?”

  “Well…” I pause to think for a moment.

  I remember the screaming argument, his hands around my throat. I remember what he said and what he did. I see them share a look and some unspoken opinions, then remember I need to answer the question.

  “Sorry. I’ve not slept. I saw him the night before last. And there’s something else I should tell you…”

  She leans forward in her chair.

  “Someone has emptied our joint account.”

  “Your husband?” she asks.

  “No, someone … else.”

  She frowns, overworked folds appearing on her previously smooth forehead. “Was it a lot of money?”

  “About ten thousand pounds.”

  She raises a neatly plucked eyebrow. “I’d say that was a lot.”

  “I also think you should know that I had a stalker a couple of years ago. It’s why we moved to this house. You’ll have a record of it, we reported it to the police at the time.”

  “Seems unlikely that this and that are related, but we’ll certainly look into it.” It seems odd to me that she is being so dismissive of something that might be important. She leans back in her chair again, frown still firmly in place, fast becoming a permanent feature. “When you called last night, you told the officer you spoke to that all your husband’s personal belongings are still here, is that right? His phone, keys, and wallet, even his shoes?” I nod. “Mind if we take a look around?”

  “Of course, whatever you need.”

  I follow them through the house, not sure whether I’m supposed to or not. They don’t talk, at least not with words, but I pick up on the silent dialogue they exchange between glances, as they search every room. Each one is filled with memories of Ben, some of which I would rather forget.

  When I try to pinpoint the exact moment we started to unfold, I realize it was long before I got my first film role and went to L.A. I’d been away filming in Liverpool for a few days, a small part in a BBC drama, nothing special. I was so tired when I got back, but Ben insisted on going out for dinner, pulled his warning face when I said I’d rather not. I dropped my earring getting ready, and the back of it disappeared beneath our bed. That tiny sliver of silver was the butterfly effect that changed the course of our marriage. I never found it. I found something else instead: a red lipstick that did not belong to me and the knowledge that my husband didn’t either. I suppose I wasn’t completely surprised; Ben is a good-looking man, and I’ve seen how other women look at him.

  I never mentioned what I found that day. I didn’t say a word. I didn’t dare.

  The female detective spends a long time looking around our bedroom, and I feel as though my privacy is being unpicked as well as invaded. I was taught as a child not to trust the police and I still don’t.

  “So, remind me again of the exact time you last saw your husband,” she says.

  When he lost his temper and turned into someone I no longer recognized.

  “We were having a meal at the Indian restaurant on the high street.… I left a bit earlier than him.… I wasn’t feeling well.”

  “You didn’t see him when he got home?”

  Yes.

  “No, I had an early start the next day. I’d gone to bed by the time he got back.” I know she knows I’m lying. I’m not even sure why I am, a mixture of shame and regret perhaps, but lies don’t come with gift receipts; you can’t take them back.

  “You don’t share a bedroom?” she asks.

  I’m not sure how or why this is relevant. “Not always, we both have quite hectic work schedules, he’s a journalist and I’m—”

  “But you did hear him come home that night.”

  Heard him. Smelt him. Felt him.

  “Yes.”

  She notices something behind the door and takes a pair of blue latex gloves from her pocket. “And this is the bedroom you sleep in?”

  “It’s where we both sleep most of the time, just not that night.”

  “Do you ever sleep in the spare room, Wakely?” she asks her silent companion.

  “Used to, if we’d had a fight, when we still had enough time and energy to argue. But none of our bedrooms are spare anymore, they’re all full of hormonal teenagers.”

  It speaks.

  “Any reason why you have a bolt on the inside of your bedroom door, Mrs. Sinclair?” she asks.

  At first, I don’t know what to say.

  “I told you, I had a stalker. It made me take home security pretty seriously.”

  “Any reason why the bolt is busted?” She swings the door back to reveal the broken metal shape and splintered wood on the frame.

  Yes.

  I feel my cheeks turn red. “It got jammed a little while ago, my husband had to force it open.”

  She looks back at the door and nods slowly, as though it is an effort. “Got an attic?”

  “Yes.”

  “Basement?”

  “No. Do you want to see the attic?”

  “Not this time.”

  This time? How many times are there going to be?

  I follow them back downstairs, and the tour of the house concludes in the kitchen.

  “Nice flowers.” She looks at the expensive bouquet on the table and reads the card. “What was he sorry for?”

  “I’m not sure, I never got to ask him.”

  If she thinks something, her face doesn’t show it. “Great garden.” She stares out through the glass folding doors. The looked-after lawn is still wearing its stripes from the last time Ben mowed it, and the hardwood decking practically sparkles in the early-morning sun.

  “Thank you.”

  “It’s a nice place, like a show home or something you’d see in a magazine. What’s the word I’m looking for…? Minimalist. That’s it. No family photos, books, clutter…”

  “We haven’t unpacked everything yet.”

  “Just moved in?”

  “About a year ago.” They both look up then. “I’m away a lot for work. I’m an actress.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, Mrs. Sinclair. I know who you are. I saw you in that TV show last year, the one where you played a female police officer. I … enjoyed it.”

  Her lopsided smile fades, making me think that she didn’t. I stare back, feeling even more uncomfortable than before, and completely clueless about how to reply.

  “Do you have a recent photograph of your husband that we can take with us?” she asks.

  “Yes, of course.” I walk through to the mantelpiece in the lounge, but there is nothing there. I look around the room at the bare walls, and sparse shelves, and realize that there is not a single photo of him, or me, or us. There used to be a framed picture of our wedding day in here, I don’t know where it has gone. Our big day was rather small; just the two of us. It led to even smaller days, until we struggled to find each other in them. “I might have something on my phone. Could I email it to you or do you need a hard copy?”

  “Email is fine.” That unnatural smile spreads across her face again, like a rash.

  I pick up my mobile and start to scroll through the photos. There are plenty of the cast and crew working on the film, lots of Jack, my co-star, a few of me, but none of Ben. I notice my hands are trembling, and when I look up, I see that she has noticed too.

  “Does your husband have a passport?”

  Of course he has a passport. Everyone has a passport.

  I hurry to the sideboard where we keep them, but it isn’t there. Neither is mine. I start to pull things out of the drawer, but she interrupts my search.

  “Don’t worry, I doubt your husband has left the country. Based o
n what we know so far, I don’t expect he is too far away.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  She doesn’t respond.

  “Detective Croft has solved every case she’s been assigned since joining the force,” says the male detective, like a proud father. “You’re in safe hands.”

  I don’t feel safe, I feel scared.

  “Mind if we take these?” She slips Ben’s phone and wallet inside a clear plastic bag without waiting for an answer. “Don’t worry about the photo for now, we can collect it next time.” She removes her blue plastic gloves and heads out into the hall.

  “Next time?”

  She ignores me again and they let themselves out. “We’ll be in touch,” he says, before walking away.

  I sink down onto the floor once I’ve closed the door behind them. I felt as if they were silently accusing me of something the whole time they were here, but I don’t know what. Do they think I murdered my husband and buried him beneath the floorboards? I have an urge to open the door, call them back, and defend myself, tell them that I haven’t killed anyone.

  But I don’t do that.

  Because it isn’t true.

  I have.

  Four

  Galway, 1987

  I was lost before I was even born.

  My mummy died that day and he never forgave me.

  It was my fault; I was late and then I turned the wrong way. I’m still not very good at looking where I am going.

  When I was stuck inside her belly, not wanting to come out for some reason that I do not remember, the doctor told my daddy he’d have to choose between us, said he couldn’t save us both. Daddy chose her, but he didn’t get what he wanted. He got me instead, and that made him sad and angry for a very long time.

  My brother told me the story of what happened. Over and over.

  He’s much older than me, so he knows things that I don’t.

  He says I killed her.