Lasting Damage

Chapter 11

Monday 19 July 2010



I walk out into the heat, stop as the dizziness takes hold. I close my eyes and lean against the police station wall, propping myself up to make sure I don’t end up on the ground. A car horn beeps. I can’t tell how far away it is. It’s probably my taxi. I ought to look, but I know better than to risk it when my mind is breaking up into clumps of woolly grey. I won’t open my eyes until I’m certain the world will look normal again. The worst thing about these attacks is the visual distortion. If I keep my eyes open, it’s terrifying – like falling further and further back inside my head, being dragged by an internal current away from my eyes, which stay fixed where they are as I recede into the depths.

‘Connie!’ The car horn again. I recognise the voice, but can’t identify it. I’m still resting against the wall with my eyes closed when I feel a hand on my arm. ‘Connie, are you okay?’

My sister. Fran.

‘Just a bit light-headed,’ I manage to say. ‘I’ll be all right in a minute. What are you doing here? How did you know . . . ?’

‘I rang Kit when your phone went straight to voicemail. He told me you’d need a lift home.’

Because I made him angry, and he left me stranded.

‘I’m not taking you home yet, though. Get in the car.’

Not taking me home? Where, then? I open my eyes. Fran’s Range Rover is parked half in and half out of the disabled space closest to the building. The driver and passenger doors are hanging open. It makes me think of a film I saw when I was little about a magic car that could fly; its doors were its wings.

Fran’s wearing the faded jeans and orange and white striped rugby shirt that I think of as her non-work uniform. Sometimes, when I’m at her house and see them drying on the clothes rack, I think about stealing them and throwing them away, though there’s nothing particularly wrong with them.

‘I’ve ordered a cab,’ I say. ‘I ought to wait.’

‘Forget the cab. I’ve called Diane in on her day off to cover for me because I need to talk to you – now. Like it or not, you’re coming with me.’

‘Where?’

‘The tea rooms at Silsford Castle. We’re going to have a cup of tea and a chat.’ Fran sounds grimly determined. Nothing about her tone suggests that any of it will be fun.

I allow her to push me into her car. It smells of a mixture of crisps and Johnson’s aloe-scented baby-wipes, which she still uses all the time, even though Benji is five and there is currently no baby in her branch of the family. I’m aware that I have no right to find this irritating. Fran gets in on the driver’s side, dumps her bag in my lap and sets off without bothering to fasten her seatbelt.

‘Why Silsford Castle?’ I ask. ‘Why not somewhere that’s on our way home?’

‘Home? Where’s that, then?’ Fran turns to look at me, to check her words have shocked me as they were intended to.

‘What?’ I snap. A stab of fear makes my gut twist. ‘What do you mean?’

She shakes her head as if to say ‘forget it’. ‘Is your phone still switched off?’ she asks.

‘No. I turned it on when I—’

‘Turn it off. Don’t ask why, just do it. I don’t want any interruptions.’

I obey the order, aware that I probably ought to protest; that would be most people’s response. Does it say something bad about me that I find it soothing to be told what to do, so I don’t have to think for myself?

Why did Fran ask me where home was?

‘You need to go back to the doctor,’ she says as we leave Spilling town centre behind.

‘What’s the point? He can’t find anything wrong with me.’

‘He can’t be looking very hard,’ she mutters.

We drive the rest of the way in silence. As Fran pulls into one of five disabled parking spaces on the cobbles outside Silsford Castle, I can’t stop myself from saying, ‘You’re not allowed to park here.’

‘I don’t care about allowed. And I’m okay with it ethically because I’ve got you with me,’ she says. ‘If walking out of the police station and nearly collapsing for no reason doesn’t count as a disability, I don’t know what does.’

I hate her for saying it, for making me panic about what will happen when I get out of the Range Rover. Will the dizziness strike again? What if I don’t have enough time to get to something I can lean against?

Fran hasn’t asked me how it went with the police. She must know why I was there.

I’m fine when I step out of the car into the sunny afternoon. Therefore it can’t be going from inside to outside that sets me off, and it can’t be standing up when I’ve been sitting for a while. All I’ve managed to establish, after months of monitoring myself, is that I can have a dizzy attack at any time, in any circumstances – there’s no way of predicting it. Or avoiding it.

The tea rooms at Silsford Castle smell of cinnamon, ginger biscuits and roses, as they have since I was a child. The waitresses’ aprons haven’t changed either – they’re still pale blue, frilly-edged, spotted with tiny pink roses. Without asking me what I’d like, Fran orders two cups of Lavender Earl Grey, then heads for the round table in the corner by the window, the same table Mum always made a beeline for when she brought us here as kids for what she called our ‘weekend treat’, after our Saturday morning trips to the library.

Right, then, girls – shall we get out our library books and read one while we have our chocolate fudge cake?

‘Why am I here?’ I ask Fran.

She narrows her eyes, peering at me. ‘Is it Benji?’ she says. ‘It must be.’

‘Is what Benji?’

‘The reason you’re pissed off with me.’

‘I’m not.’

‘If you don’t want to babysit every Tuesday night, you don’t have to – just say the word. Tell you the truth, Anton and I don’t like it any more than you do. It’s like you’ve got a timeshare in our son. Often we want to do things as a family on a Tuesday and we can’t – it’s carved in stone that you have to have Benji, or that’s how it feels sometimes.’ Fran sighs. ‘Loads of times I’ve nearly rung you and asked if it’d be okay for us to keep him just this once, and I’ve chickened out, in case you’d be offended. Which is ridiculous. Why am I scared to be honest with you? I never used to be.’ I’m not sure if it’s herself she’s angry with, or me.

A timeshare in our son. She didn’t think up that phrase today. She and Anton have been bitching about me and Kit – probably as much as we’ve been bitching about them.

Mum was the one who said, after the first time I babysat for Benji, ‘Maybe it could be a regular thing. You and Kit could have him every Tuesday, overnight – give Fran and Anton a break, and give you a chance to get to know him properly, not to mention a bit of practice for when you have your own.’ It didn’t matter what Fran or I thought; Mum wanted it to happen, so it happened.

This can’t be why Fran has brought me here, to talk about babysitting. ‘I don’t care,’ I tell her. ‘I’m happy to have Benji every Tuesday, some Tuesdays, no Tuesdays – whatever you want. You and Anton decide.’

Fran shakes her head, as if there was a right thing to say and what I’ve just said wasn’t it. Sometimes I feel as if, more and more, I’m speaking a different language from the rest of my family; translation in either direction adds a dollop of provocation, a patina of offence, that wasn’t present in the original.

‘That house in Cambridge, 11 Bentley Grove – you’re not buying it, are you?’

Why does she sound triumphant, as if she’s caught me out? I open my mouth to remind her that I can’t afford a 1.2-million-pound house, but she talks over me: ‘You’re selling it.’

‘What?’

‘Come on, Connie, don’t bullshit me. It’s your house. You own it, you and Kit. You’re the ones who’ve put it up for sale.’

This has to be one of the more absurd things that’s been said to me in my life so far. It almost cheers me up. I start to laugh, then stop when I see the waitress heading our way with a serving-trolley. As she lays out saucers, cups, spoons, tea strainer, milk jug and sugar, I can feel Fran’s impatience radiating across the table; she wants an answer.

‘Well?’ she says, as soon as the waitress has retreated.

‘That’s the maddest thing I’ve ever heard. Where did you get that idea from?’

‘Don’t lie to me, Con. I don’t know how the dead woman face down in a pool of blood fits into the story – I’m not convinced you didn’t make her up, though I can’t think why you’d—’

‘Will you shut up and listen?’ I snap. ‘I didn’t make anything up – I saw what I told you I saw. Do you think it’s my idea of fun, spending the whole morning at the police station for no reason? I don’t care if you believe me or not – it’s the truth. I don’t own 11 Bentley Grove. A doctor called Selina Gane does. Ask the police if you don’t believe me.’

‘Then why were you looking at it on Roundthehouses in the middle of the night, if you don’t own it already and you can’t afford to buy it?’ Fran asks. ‘Don’t pretend you were just browsing. There’s a link between that house and you and Kit.’

‘How can you know that?’ Damn. Have I just admitted she’s right? She seems to think so, if the gleam of triumph in her eye is anything to go by. Why aren’t I a better liar? ‘All of a sudden, you’re interested in 11 Bentley Grove,’ I say bitterly. It’s easier to be angry with Fran than with myself. ‘On Saturday you didn’t give a shit. I asked you if you thought I’d imagined what I saw – do you remember what you said? “I don’t know. Not necessarily. Maybe.” That was it – the sum total of your response, before you turned your attention back to Benji’s supper.’

Fran pours cups of tea for us both. I wait for her to defend herself but all she does is shrug. ‘What should I have said? I didn’t know what I thought – how am I supposed to know whether you saw a dead woman on Roundthehouses or not? Mum and Dad were both kicking off in their different ways – I figured you had enough to deal with from them, so I took a back seat.’ She puts down the teapot and looks at me. ‘Soon as I’d put Benji to bed that night, I logged onto Roundthehouses myself. While you were stewing about my lack of interest, and slagging me off to Kit for sure, I was looking at photos of 11 Bentley Grove. I did nothing else all evening, even though the pictures didn’t change. That’s how uninterested I was.’

Something made her connect the house with me and Kit. It’s an effort to swallow the tea that’s in my mouth. ‘What did you see?’ I ask, my voice cracking. ‘Tell me.’ Why didn’t I see it, whatever it was? I spent hours looking.

‘You’re pathetic, Connie,’ Fran says matter-of-factly, ignoring my question. ‘You sit there thinking the worst of everyone, harbouring your secret grudges and resentments, blowing stupid things up into huge problems and dwelling on them endlessly, making sure never to say a word about what’s bothering you so that no one has the chance to explain that they’re not quite as bad as you’ve decided they are.’

‘What did you see, Fran?’

‘You flinch every time Mum opens her mouth, as if she’s the devil in oven gloves. Yes, she can be annoying, but you should do what I do: tell her to get a grip and then move on, forget it. Same with Dad. Tell all of us to piss off if you want to, but be upfront about it, for God’s sake.’

She’s clever, Fran. She makes everything sound so manageable and normal. Listening to her, I could almost believe that the Monk family was an entirely harmless organisation, that its members were allowed to leave Little Holling as and when they pleased, and would suffer no adverse effects if they chose to exercise that freedom.

‘Tell me what you saw,’ I say again.

‘You tell me first,’ Fran says, leaning towards me across the table. ‘Everything. 11 Bentley Grove – what’s the deal? For f*ck’s sake, Con, are we sisters or strangers? Let me know, because I can be either. It’s your choice.’

‘Yes. It is, isn’t it?’ She expects me to refuse. I’m going to surprise her. She asked to know everything, so everything is what I’ll give her: not only the bare facts, but all the tiny permutations of possibility, all the ways in which I’ve changed my mind and then changed it back, sometimes ten or twelve times a day. As I talk, I begin to enjoy myself. I know from my own experience of the last six miserable months that this story I’m telling offers no narrative satisfaction whatsoever, only a series of insoluble problems. Let Fran be as confused as I am; let her be drawn into the nightmare that never ends. I wonder if she can hear the sadistic relish in my voice as I make sure not to spare her one single detail.

When I finish, finally, she doesn’t look as confused as I hoped she would. She doesn’t look surprised, or shocked. ‘So did you ring him?’ she says.

‘Who?’

‘Stephen Gilligan – the SG that Kit was supposed to have had a meeting with on 13 May. Did you ring his secretary, Joanne Thingummy?’

‘Joanne Biss. No. I was going to, in the taxi on the way home, but then you turned up, and I . . .’

Fran isn’t listening. She has whipped out her mobile phone, and is already asking for a number for London Allied Capital’s Canary Wharf office. I close my eyes and wait, thinking about what Alice said: that I don’t really want to know the truth about Kit. Is she right? Would I have phoned Stephen Gilligan, if it had been left to me? Was that why I had a dizzy attack as soon as I left the police station, so that I could avoid making the call?

‘Joanne Biss, please,’ says Fran. ‘That’s fine. I’m happy to wait.’

‘I would have rung,’ I tell her. ‘When I got home.’ She flashes me a sceptical look. I can imagine exactly what she’s thinking. ‘Why should I waste money on a private detective when I can stake out Kit’s Limehouse flat myself, for free?’ I say defensively.

‘Have you?’ Fran asks.

‘I’ve driven there in the evening two or three times, sat outside in the dark. Kit never closes the lounge curtains, and the flat’s on the ground floor. I ring him from the car park outside, pretending I’m calling from home. I watch him through the window, drinking red wine while he talks to me – the same kind he drinks at home. There’s never been anyone else there with him.’ And when he smiles, it’s the same affectionate smile I see on his face when he knows I’m watching. I can’t bring myself to share this fact with my sister; it’s important to me, and I don’t trust her with it.

‘Two or three times doesn’t prove anything,’ she says dismissively.

‘I’ve spent hours waiting in my car on Bentley Grove for him to come out of number 11. He never does.’ Why am I trying to convince Fran that everything’s okay when I know it isn’t?

She raises a hand to silence me and presses her phone to her ear. I listen as she introduces herself to Joanne Biss as a new member of Nulli staff, and asks about the meeting between Kit and Stephen Gilligan on Thursday 13 May – did it go ahead as planned, or was it cancelled? She says nothing about why she wants to know, but her voice exudes the confidence and entitlement of a person who feels no need to explain herself. I would never have been able to pull off that particular tone; I’d have sounded nervous and fraudulent, and would have been quizzed about why I needed information about a meeting from two months ago. A few seconds later, Fran thanks Joanne Biss and says goodbye.

‘Kit was telling the truth,’ she says, laying her phone down on the table. She sounds disappointed. ‘He and Stephen Gilligan met on Thursday 13 May at three o’clock.’

It’s as if a dark mass of cloud has lifted.

‘Kit could have rung Joanne Biss and told her what to say,’ Fran points out. ‘He’s had ample time. Even if he didn’t, even if the SG in his diary is Stephen Gilligan, it doesn’t mean he isn’t having an affair with this Selina Gane woman.’

‘It means he might not be,’ I say, feeling more optimistic than I have for a long time. ‘There’s nothing to connect him with her – nothing at all – apart from her address in his SatNav as “home”. And maybe he wasn’t the one who put it there. Maybe someone else did it.’ Go on. Say it. ‘You might have done it. Or Anton.’ It’s hard to evict suspicion once it’s made a home inside you; much easier to change its focus than to banish it altogether.

‘I’m not going to bother responding to that,’ says Fran impatiently. ‘Me or Anton,’ she mutters. ‘Why would we?’

Because you’re jealous. Because we’ve got more money; because Kit’s successful and Anton isn’t.

‘Why are you so quick to think the worst of Kit?’ I press on with my attack, before it occurs to Fran to point out my hypocrisy. ‘Why don’t you tell me whatever it is you’ve got to tell me?’ Wouldn’t she have told me already, if it was something real? Is she clever enough and devious enough to dream up an elaborate plan to ruin my marriage and destroy my sanity, a plan so intricate and manipulative that I can’t even begin to guess what it might be?

For f*ck’s sake, Connie – she’s your sister. You’ve known her all your life. Get a grip.

Fran couldn’t have made a woman’s dead body appear on my computer screen. She can’t have any connection with 11 Bentley Grove. She’s never been to Cambridge; she never goes anywhere apart from Monk & Sons, Benji’s school, the supermarket and Mum and Dad’s.

‘You can’t have looked at the photos of 11 Bentley Grove more carefully than I did,’ I say shakily. ‘There’s no trace of Kit in those pictures, and nothing that links him to Selina Gane. Nothing. It’s not even his sort of house. Kit would never call a place like that “home” – a modern, characterless box surrounded by clones of itself, other modern characterless—’

‘Grow up, Connie, will you?’ Fran snaps. ‘If he’s got the hots for the woman in the house, he won’t give a toss about its lack of cornicing and ceiling roses. Have you forgotten what it’s like to fall in love?’ She smirks to herself. ‘I almost have, but not quite. I can tell you right now: if I fell head over heels for someone, I’d live anywhere with them. I’d live in an ex-council flat in Brixton, or somewhere equally grim – those hideous high-rises.’ She wrinkles her nose in distaste.

I nearly laugh. Most people from Brixton would consider themselves unfortunate if they had to spend even half an hour in Little Holling. In a quarter of that time they’d have sampled everything it had to offer, and would be wondering why its inhabitants weren’t fleeing its deathly green quiet and making for the nearest noisy city at a hundred miles an hour.

‘Anyone could have programmed that address into Kit’s SatNav,’ I tell Fran. ‘Someone in the shop, like he said.’ Do I believe what I’m saying, or have I abandoned everything apart from the desire to be the winner here? If Fran was sticking up for Kit, would I be insisting he was a cheat and a liar? ‘Unless you can prove he’s been lying to me—’

‘I can’t,’ Fran cuts in. ‘Look, I thought I saw something on the Roundthehouses website, that’s all. Maybe I’m wrong, I don’t know. I can’t help noticing that you’re in no hurry to find out what it is.’

‘This isn’t denial, Fran. This is me coming to my senses – trying to save my marriage, which I’ve spent the last six months tearing apart with accusations and doubt.’ I sniff back tears. ‘I’ve been torturing Kit – that’s no exaggeration, believe me. Interrogating him constantly, turning away from him in bed . . . He’s been so patient and understanding – anyone else would have left me by now. Know what I did the other day? I got home from the shop and he was in the bathroom with the door locked. He never locks the door. I made him open it. He refused at first, said he was in the bath, but I knew he wasn’t. I’d heard him walking around. I insisted. Said I’d leave him if he didn’t let me in immediately. I thought maybe he’d gone in there to phone her – Selina Gane, though I didn’t know her name then. When he unlocked the door and opened it, I expected to see him holding his mobile and looking guilty, or trying to flush it down the loo or something. I thought, this is it, finally – I’ll grab his phone and find her name and number, and then I’ll have my proof. I’ve looked at his phone before and found nothing, but I thought maybe this time . . .’ I stop. It’s difficult to describe a state of mind that now seems so alien. It’s as if I’m reporting on the behaviour of someone else, a lunatic.

‘My heart was beating so fast I thought it was going to explode. Then I saw the words ‘‘Happy Birthday’’ on a roll of wrapping paper next to Kit’s feet, and a Chongololo carrier bag. Scissors and sellotape . . .’ I cover my face with my hands. ‘Poor sod was trying to wrap my birthday present, not a mobile phone in sight. He was doing something nice for me, and I wrecked it. My suspicion f*cked it up, like it’s f*cking up everything. I’d have been furious if someone did that to me, but Kit wasn’t. He tried to make me feel better – insisted that I hadn’t ruined anything, that my present would still be a surprise. ‘‘All you know is that it’s from Chongololo,’’ he said, ‘‘and you don’t even know that. The bag might be a decoy. You don’t know there are clothes in it.” ’

‘For God’s sake, stop punishing yourself,’ Fran says. ‘Let me show you what I saw on Roundthehouses. Once you’ve seen it, if you want to trust Kit, that’s up to you. Come on.’ She stands up.

Automatically, I do the same. ‘Where are we going?’

‘Next door, to the library. We can get on the internet there.’

This is good, I tell myself as we head down the spiral stone staircase and out of the castle. This is a test, and I’m going to pass. Let Fran play her trump card, whatever it is. I know there’s nothing in those Roundthehouses pictures of 11 Bentley Grove that implicates Kit, so I’ve nothing to fear.

I can’t believe Fran’s so ready to think the worst of him. How dare she?

Back in our glass house with our big bag of stones, are we?

‘Talking of Chongololo, where’s your pink coat?’ she asks, as we walk across the cobbles to the library.

‘Coat? It’s warm, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

‘Where is it?’

‘I’ve no idea. In my wardrobe, probably.’

‘It’s bright pink, Con. If it was in your wardrobe, you’d see it every day – it’d leap out at you.’

‘Maybe it’s hanging up on the pegs near the back door. Why?’

‘I want to borrow it,’ Fran says.

‘In July?’

‘You haven’t worn it in ages,’ she persists, not looking at me. ‘Maybe you’ve thrown it away.’

‘No, I wouldn’t have . . . Oh, I know where it is – in Kit’s car, behind the back seats, tucked in behind the headrests. It’s been there for about two years. I’ll dig it out for you if you really want it. I thought you hated pink.’

There’s a stiff expression on Fran’s face as we walk into the library. I want to ask her more questions, but she’s busy trying to attract the attention of a librarian. To the right of the main doors, four grey rectangular tables have been pushed together to make a big square. Around it, twenty-odd middle-aged and elderly women and one young man with the tiniest beard I’ve ever seen are drinking bright orange tea out of Styrofoam cups and interrupting each other. It must be a reading group meeting; the table is covered with plastic-backed copies of a book called If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things.

I would love to join a reading group, but not one in Silsford. Brixton, maybe.

The children’s section is full of mothers begging their giggling, squealing toddlers to calm down. When Mum used to bring me and Fran here, we were silent from the moment we walked in until the moment we left. We communicated by pointing and nodding, terrified that the librarians would throw us out if we opened our mouths. Mum must have told us that they would. I remember hearing other children whispering enthusiastically about which Enid Blyton books they’d already read and which they hadn’t; I always wondered why they weren’t as intimidated as I was.

Fran beckons me over. Knowing I’m about to see 11 Bentley Grove again, I have to force myself to move towards the monitor. For one insane moment, I imagine that Selina Gane will appear from behind a bookshelf and catch me in the act of virtual spying: Why are you still looking at my house? Why can’t you leave me alone?

I stand behind Fran, steeling myself, waiting for her to click on the virtual tour button. Instead, she goes for the button next to it: Street View. She clicks again to enlarge the picture of the road when it appears, so that it fills the screen. It’s ever so slightly blurred, as if the photograph was taken from a moving vehicle. ‘That’s not number 11,’ I say. ‘That’s the other side, and further down – number 20 or something.’ There are white lines and arrow symbols superimposed on the picture, for moving up and down the street. They’re covering up the house number, but I’m pretty certain it’s 20. Conformist and cloned as they are, the houses on Bentley Grove would only look identical to someone who hadn’t spent nearly every Friday for the past six months in their company; I know the lining on every curtain, the beaded trim on every blind.

‘So let’s turn it round and find number 11,’ says Fran, manoeuvring the mouse. I watch as Bentley Grove begins to rotate.

A spinning road, a spinning lounge. A spinning dead woman in a pool of blood.

I grip the back of Fran’s chair and order myself not to feel dizzy, not now. To my surprise and relief, it works.

Now we’re facing the right way. ‘Along a bit to the left,’ I tell Fran, though she doesn’t need my directions; she must have rehearsed this at home. She clicks on a white arrow and we’re transported to number 9. The front door is open. There’s a blur of fuzzy white hair and red towelling dressing gown in the doorway: the tiny, bent-backed old man who lives there. He’s holding his walking stick. I don’t think he could manage more than a couple of steps without it. I’ve seen him often, in the flesh – or what’s left of it, given that he looks about a hundred and fifty. He is for ever hobbling from his house to his various recycling bins, which stand in a Stonehenge-like circle in the middle of his front garden. Without exception, all the other Bentley Grove residents keep their bins in their garages.

I wait for Fran to press the white arrow again, to move us further on, but she doesn’t. She turns and looks up at me. ‘That’s number 9,’ I say. ‘Not number 11.’

‘Forget the house. Look at the car pulling away from the kerb. The number plate’s been blurred out, annoyingly, but even so . . .’

A sour taste fills my mouth. I want to tell Fran she’s being ridiculous, but I can’t speak; I need all my energy to push away the panic and horror that’s rushing at me. No. She’s wrong.

‘Soon as I saw it, I thought, ‘‘They’ve been to view that house. I bet they’ve made an offer.’’ Then I remembered you solemnly promising Mum and Dad that you weren’t buying it, and I wondered if that was because you owned it already. You were selling it – that was why you were so interested in this particular house. I admit, I got carried away. I decided you and Kit had been secretly millionaires for years, hiding it from the rest of us.’ Fran’s tone is airy and flippant. Is she enjoying this? ‘Course, if it was your house, you’d have parked on the drive, not on the street. I don’t know why that didn’t occur to me. The houses on Bentley Grove have big driveways. Kit could have parked right outside number 11’s front door, but he wouldn’t, would he?’

Tell her. Tell her she’s talking rubbish, that you don’t want to hear any more.

‘Not if he wasn’t supposed to be there,’ Fran goes on, firing words at me too fast. ‘He wouldn’t want anyone to make the connection between him and Selina Gane. Whereas if he parks on the pavement, outside the house next door . . .’

‘There’s no connection,’ I manage to say before the mental blurring sets in, curling the corners of my thoughts inward. I close my eyes, welcome the descent into mindlessness. Make it go away, all of it. As the smudgy grey spreads over me and pulls me down, I realise it’s no good; it hasn’t worked. I’ve brought with me the thing I most wanted to leave behind: an image of Kit’s car on Bentley Grove, pulling away from the kerb, with my pink Chongololo coat clearly visible through the rear windscreen, tucked behind the headrests of the back seats.