The idea of finding Ariel clamours in my head. Where do I even begin to look? What could I possibly say if I were to find him? I can’t just accuse him outright of stealing the money with nothing more than an overheard slip of the tongue. I was there – I must have been – and even I can’t be sure that it was him. And if it was, then it must also have been him that strangled her. The idea of that, and the possibility that it could have been him begins to flood my head with noise. Somehow, the notion that he killed her, while I stood by, is more horrific than if it had been a stranger. That I stood – lay – frozen in fear of him.

I make my way to the library as the daylight has all but leaked away, to seek out Amit’s help. He’ll know how to trace the history of a person with a name. He will be able to dive into that fathomless digital world and come up with pearls in his mouth.

The building is etched in the early evening and I surprise myself with the remembrance that I haven’t read a book in months. Books have always been there as joists in my life. They’ve been shelter as much as, no, more than anything else. I always had a book in my pocket. Now the need to pick up a book and read something is returning.

The warmth of the library hits me as soon as I walk in. The glow of low light and bright lights in places adds optimism to the warmth. I cast around in search of Amit but now am quietly pleased that he is not here. I can breathe before it all starts. I go immediately to the French Lit section and flick my eyes across the M’s – Maupassant, Mauriac, Molière – until I find him. And then there he is, my Proust.

I take up a volume and flip it open to a random page and am faced with his madeleine moment. He tastes a crumb of cake and suddenly old memories that were lost to him come unbidden. But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest.

The smell and taste of things remain poised, but he failed to mention the sounds. At that moment, as I’m reading this passage, the memory comes rushing back: I’m sitting on a bench in a park with a low wall. No, not a park – the grounds of the Horniman Museum. The grounds my feet keep finding again and again.