Nobody notices when I slip upstairs during the wake and go into his room. I tag onto the group again when they arrive back from the funeral and mill amongst the people who knew him. I wonder about the connections in this group. Who loved him? Who has come out of guilt? Who is tagging along like me? What would these people say if they knew his murderer is here?
I check all the rooms on the second floor and decide which one is his. The first one obviously belongs to a woman, judging by the lacy bras. The second has a letter in it addressed to Richard Mansen. The third is a guest room or a storage room, where old furniture that will probably never be used again is waiting, hopefully. The other room is a bathroom so it only leaves the last door, which doesn’t look any different from the others, but the wood is pulsing when I press my hand against it. There is a secret message written along the wood that only I can read.
His room is plain. The walls are white, the carpet a dull brown. There are several sets of drawers, all light MDF wood. One of the drawers is slightly open but not enough to see inside. A large antique looking wardrobe sits behind the door. His bedspread is white with only one black line near the top, showing where the head should be. The spread is creased and one corner is folded back like an eyelid permanently open.
I sit on the bed, clutching the scarf in my fist and try to imagine him sitting beside me. I imagine the speed and heaviness of his breath in the silence, the size and presence of his body, the depth the bed would sink under his weight. Would he say something to me? Would he whisper or speak in a loud deep voice? Would he pronounce the Ts in his words?
The only thing I am certain about him is that he made me kill him.
I had believed it started with me but the chain began some-where before that, and I have to find out where and when. This is why I am here in this room, listening to the clattering of the train and the murmuring mass of people below. I am a trespasser, the murderer transforming into an investigator. I’m going back to the start of the flow chart to discover the direction and force behind each move.
The open drawer seems the nearest place to begin. It is one of six drawers, all about 5cm by 5cm, in a set beside his bed. I edge towards it, feeling like it’s a landmine waiting for me to add stress and unknowingly kill myself. Yet I still stick my hand in, with my eyes closed.
Nothing. I feel nothing. I think my hand must have gone numb. I peer inside. The drawer is empty. I tug open all the other drawers in the set and find the same. They are all empty. I jump to my feet and begin flinging open all the drawers in the room, the wardrobe, checking under the bed, opening the cupboards above the wardrobe, even pulling back the bedspread in the hope of finding something.
Yet I find everything is empty. There is nothing in this room. He was never here. The only discovery I make in the room is a small red pen mark on his bed sheets and the only object in the room is the angry bedside radio, which is screaming red numbers at me and they happen to be, 15:32…
I wilt onto the floor. The carpet smells new. And I notice, belatedly, the faint smell of paint. He has completely erased himself from this house. He has pressed backspace on the keyboard and removed his life. And this all seems to add to his words as he fell.
He planned it. He chose me. He moulded me.
Mum, how did this happen?
15:32 hadn’t been instinctual. It had been as set as the train tracks onto which I pushed him.