The Other Side of the Door, Nicci French [new reading .TXT] 📗

that he couldn’t get at. ‘What about those two sculptures?’

‘I remember them,’ I said.

‘But they weren’t on your list. I’ve got that here. Look.’ He leaned down and pulled the sheet of paper out of the canvas bag he’d brought with him, waved it at me as if he was trying to attract my attention.

‘I remember them now,’ I said. ‘They went out of my mind when I was trying to think of things. I’m really amazed I got as much as I did. What is this?’

‘Describe them to me,’ said Neal.

I looked back at the list and made myself concentrate.

‘One of them was a sort of grey-metal abstract thing. It was like two figures with something over them, a cloud or an umbrella.’

‘What about the other?’

I looked again at Sonia’s mention of it. That was harder to remember but it was vaguely familiar.

‘It was a kind of rough-textured vase. Was it bronze? It had a sort of greenish tinge, like old metal statues. And I hate to say this, but I’ve got a feeling that it had breast-like protrusions. I suspect it was meant to echo the female body.’

‘That’s very precise,’ said Neal. ‘Why didn’t you put it on your list?’

‘I told you,’ I said. ‘It was like the other sculpture. I didn’t put it down because I didn’t remember it.’

Neal nodded his head slowly, many times. I gazed at him, wondering if he’d finally gone mad. There was a new glitter in his eyes, a sense of contained excitement.

‘It’s not like the other sculpture,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’ I said.

‘It’s not like the other sculpture,’ he said. ‘You didn’t remember the first sculpture because you forgot it.’

‘Well, exactly.’

‘But you didn’t remember the second sculpture because it wasn’t there.’

I looked down at Sonia’s list, written in her neat, bold hand. This made no sense to me.

‘What do you mean it wasn’t there? How do you know it wasn’t there? Of course it was there. Sonia remembered it. I remember it now—kind of. I’ve described it to you. Are you all right?

Neal leaned down again and opened the flap on the bag at his feet. He removed a bulky object and placed it on the table.

‘It wasn’t there,’ he said, ‘because it’s here.’

‘Here?’ I said stupidly.

‘Look.’

I looked. A vase in the shape of a female body. Ugly. Who’d want to put flowers in that?

‘I don’t understand,’ I said. My tongue felt thick in my mouth; I shaped the words with difficulty. ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying.’

‘I took it away.’

There was no doubt about it. That was the vase. The vase with tits.

‘Why? What’s it doing here now?’

‘It’s the wrong question—not why, when.’

‘When?’ I asked obediently, although I still didn’t understand why that was the right question.

‘On that evening, Bonnie—on August the twenty-first, the day Hayden was killed—I took it away because I thought it might have been the murder weapon. It was lying there on the carpet in the patch of blood. It’s got that funny handle thing on it. I imagined that someone—you, Bonnie, yes, you—during a row might have picked it up, lashed out, caught him on the head, killed him.’ He looked at me. ‘I know you remember the vase, because you saw it when you were there with Hayden, or maybe when you visited the flat before. And I know why you didn’t put it on your list. Maybe because you’ve got a bad memory or, even more probably, because it wasn’t there. Now do you understand?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘No. No.’ I wanted to cover my ears with my hands, or curl up in a small, tight ball. ‘I don’t.’

‘Don’t you see?’ His voice was calm and patient, as if he was trying to explain something to a particularly stupid child. ‘You didn’t remember it was there. But I remembered it was there. And Sonia remembered it was there, the first time.’

I could hear the words Neal was saying but they were only partially making sense.

‘What do you mean, the first time?’ I said.

‘The first time,’ said Neal. ‘Earlier in the evening. When she killed Hayden.’

Before

Days often seemed like nights with Hayden, when we would draw the curtains or pull down the blinds, tug the sheets over our heads and explore each other in our own twilight world, the sunlight pouring down unheeded outside and the birds singing in the plane tree by the window. And nights could merge with days, losing all boundaries, because Hayden didn’t keep to the same hours as other people and didn’t even have an approximation of a structure. He didn’t own a clock or a watch, and though he had the time on his mobile, he rarely if ever checked it. He ate when he felt like it, slept when he was tired, had difficulty keeping any appointments, including appointments with the band—the only reason he turned up for rehearsals as frequently as he did was that I was often with him.

For him days and nights, the passage of time itself, the fall and lift of darkness, were like a great river that was carrying him along: sometimes drifting into the shallows, sometimes flung into the fast-moving centre, sometimes wallowing luxuriously in the slow currents, but never striking out with purpose. He would sleep two hours, or seven, or fifteen; eat once or five times in what served as his day; drink wine at eleven in the morning and eat cereal at midnight; make no plans and then triple-book people.

That night, after his weeping fit, he ate my sea bass (burned) and rice (gluey with overcooking) as if he was saving himself from starvation, washing it down with cold tea and tepid wine. Then he said, ‘Let’s go for a walk.’

‘It’s nearly two in the morning. I’m dog tired.’

‘I need to expend some energy. And it’s still warm, warm as day. Look, the moon’s nearly full.’

‘Where?’

‘I dunno, wherever our feet take us. Come on.’

‘I need to change into something more sensible.’

‘No—just put your shoes on.’

‘I need to