Alice Feeney - I Know Who You Are

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 disappear inside myself again until the unsmiling cashier speaks in my direction. Her blonde 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 favour, 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 centre 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 squirrelled 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.’

‘Mrs Sinclair?’ The bank’s call centre 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 make-up. 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.