I took out the little piece of metal, now warm from my pocket. It had no identifying marks, but I was sure it was mine. There were no signs of it having been flung angrily across a room two years ago. In those two years its owner had failed to find someone more trustworthy than the boyfriend who’d ended their acrimonious, dysfunctional relationship by walking out and cutting off all contact.
“A couple of days”. How long ago had Mark written that? How long before brisk efficiency – a nurse? – had added the address and taken it to a post box. A couple of days wasn’t long, and yet so much longer than I might have expected. Mark had been forever missing appointments, playing fast and loose with his antiretrovirals and always getting ill. I’d been meticulous, and was still fit and well. It had caused some of our more horrible arguments.
I wished I’d brought the note with me, even though I could probably repeat it word for word. The train stopped, and I walked up to ground level. My legs followed the route without my needing to think: fifteen minutes through the familiar streets, up the ugly, creaking metal staircase. My hands fitted the key, automatically lifting it a little to the left to compensate for the sticking lock. The door swung open on the dark passageway, crushing a pile of post against the wall.
I clicked the light switch, feeling only a wry amusement when the passage stayed dark. In the light from my phone, I noticed how many of the envelopes had red fronts.
I ignored the unmade bed and picked my way carefully into the main room, walking over the discarded T-shirts on the floor. The wooden wardrobe stood open, its rails and shelves almost bare. I reached into the base, pulling out the wooden chest.
“Everything I really care about, everything that’s irreplaceable, all in one place,” Mark used to say. “I’ll know what to grab in a fire.”
There would be nothing of value in it. Mark was always supremely careless of possessions. The box contained photos, diaries, letters from old lovers. I dreaded opening it.
Mark’s parents would see the contents as unutterably sordid, they hated their son’s life. But I wasn’t taking the chest away to spare them the pain; finding it would have served them right. It was Mark I wanted to protect, taking his secrets away so that no fastidious fingers could poke and pry into his life and loves. I guess I no longer hated him as much as I’d thought.