The Choice

by Gillian McAllister

  “Don’t know.” He throws me a strange look. I must look guilty. “You just kept saying ‘I’m sorry.’ Over and over.”

  I should laugh it off, but I can’t. All I can think of is what I am sorry for.

  Murder. I am sorry for murdering a man.

  I meet Reuben’s eyes again. He is looking at me slightly quizzically. The slightest of frowns crosses his features.

  “Oh, right,” I say faintly. “How strange.”

  “Unlike you,” he says.

  No.

  Nobody must know. Not even Reuben. Especially not Reuben.

  6

  REVEAL

  I have been on my own for what feels like fifteen minutes. I’ve been given a cup of tea that tastes like cigarettes.

  I wonder what the other people do in these cells. And then I see their sleeping forms in my mind, on those little screens in the custody suite. I look up, above the door, at the grimy ceiling—how did it become splattered with brown liquid so high up?—and I see it: the CCTV camera, white, like a robot, pointed down at me. I, too, will be on those screens. Being watched.

  The hatch opens, and I jump.

  “You’ve eaten, I presume?” a man says, and I shake my head.

  “We were going to eat after,” I say.

  Kebabs ;) Laura had WhatsApped me, when we were planning our night out.

  “And you’ve been drinking.”

  I can’t answer him because he huffs as he slams the hatch, like I am an animal in a pen.

  He appears again after a few moments. My body has begun to shiver and jerk. It was an accident, I want to tell him. I hear the hatch slide open, and he peeks in.

  “All-day breakfast,” he says.

  He pushes a tray through to me. If I wasn’t there to catch it, it would’ve dropped on the floor. The white plastic tray is steaming. It hurts my hands, and I carry it by its rim over to the mattress. There’s no table.

  He leaves again, and I remember a few weekends ago when I tried to make sweet-corn fritters. They came out like chicken feet, Reuben said.

  Even through the heavy door, I can hear somebody say, “We’ve got a probable section eighteen in there. Worse if . . .”

  A section eighteen? Did they say that that night? It’s familiar to me, but it’s all a blur. I wonder what it is. Maybe it’s police-speak for somebody who is incorrectly detained, who will be released just as soon as her solicitor arrives.

  Hypothesizing makes me uncomfortable, and I automatically reach for a mobile phone I no longer have, am no longer allowed to look at freely. It has been years since I have sat with nothing to do. I can’t even imagine eating my dinner without some device playing in front of me.

  There’s no clock, and no sun, and so I eat, and I look at the items in the room—the cell—with me. The circular fluorescent light. The inside of it is lined with dead flies. The black arrow. It’s painted so neatly; somebody must have used a stencil.

  The food is awful. It’s as if somebody has blended an all-day breakfast into a liquid, then cooked the whole lot. Marbled through the eggs and bread are occasional chunks of bacon. It’s cold in the very middle. The eggs feel like jelly in my mouth.

  As I finish, lacking anything to do and having run out of thoughts, I reach my hand out in front of me and trace a finger down the blue wall. It’s cool. The cheap paint bobbles underneath my fingertip.

  The eggs catch in my throat as I start to cry. I’m crying for lots of things. At my unluckiness, I suppose. At where I find myself, age thirty. But mostly for Reuben. Because I miss him. Because I know he’ll be missing me. But also because of that judgment. That beat of judgment I heard the second after I told him. I didn’t imagine it. I know I didn’t.

  * * *

  —

  When Reuben and I first met, he was standing at the edge of an end-of-university party, observing coolly, not speaking to anybody. At first, it was his height that caught my attention, but by the time I was uncapping a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, it was other things, too. The way he wasn’t talking to anybody. The way he was simply standing at the bookcase in the bay window, running his finger along it.

  “I’m Jo,” I said boldly.

  After a few minutes’ chat, he inclined his head, led me to the stairs perfunctorily. They were quiet—he preferred them, he said. I liked that he wanted to sit on the stairs and talk about books with a girl he’d only just met. I liked that he didn’t give a shit what anybody else thought of him, that he’d been obviously bored beforehand. A man called Rupert walked past us, talking about where he was going to be summering, and Reuben and I, as naturally as our hearts were beating, exchanged a glance.

  “I hate Oxford,” I said, and his green eyes lit up.

  We slagged off Oxford on the stairs. I made him talk, he kept saying in surprise. He hated talking, but he liked talking to me. Only me.

  I saw him the next day. We’d been texting all morning, and when I rounded the corner to him, he nodded, a half smile on his face, like he was remembering something enjoyable, but he said nothing.

  “Duty solicitor,” a male police officer says now.

  He jerks me from my memories. It can’t have been more than an hour since I requested one. I hope he’s good. Diligent.

  I’m taken to the same phone I called Reuben from, the handset dangling like a noose. I thought it would be nice to be out in reception, but it’s not.

  My knees shake as I pick up the phone.

  “Joanna?” my solicitor says.

  I’m momentarily surprised it’s a woman. How awful of me. “Yes. Hi.” My voice is hoarse.

  “Hi. I’m Sarah Abberley. Don’t say anything, please,” she says crisply, her voice clipped. “The police are very likely listening.”

  “I just need to explain myself,” I say desperately, my voice hushed, into the phone. The receiver is sticky against my chin. “Clear it all up.”

  “Don’t say another word to the police. No doubt you’ve said some things. They’ll be standing there drinking their tea, but listening . . .”

  I look over at them. They’re just sitting at the desk, mindlessly watching the CCTV monitors. “Um, okay,” I say, skeptical.

  “I’m afraid I am serious, Joanna.”

  “When will you be here?”

  “Soon—they have to . . .” I hear a tapping sound.

  I picture her in a slim-line suit, cigarette trousers. Geek glasses. Dip-dyed hair. Tapping a pen against a minimalist kitchen counter. A man behind her—tall, a wiry-looking academic, maybe—making avocado smash. They eat late, most nights.

  “They have to just get the CID sorted,” she is saying.

  “CID?” I say absentmindedly.

  “Criminal Investigation Department. And you can’t be interviewed until you’re sober.”

  “I am very sober,” I say.

  “Best wait until the morning. Be there as soon as I can,” she says.

  I like her brevity. Reuben would like her.

  “You have twenty-four hours—anything more than that and they need the superintendent to sign it off. Do you have everything you need—are they feeding you?” she says.

  “Okay. Yes,” I say, my voice small, imagining all night in that horrible blue room.

  “You won’t know it,” she says, “but I am doing all I can for you. Here. Promise.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  She rings off. The receiver feels heavy in my hand without her on the other end of it. I put down the phone, then stand aimlessly for a second, hanging on to the mild freedom. The different smells out here.

  Sergeant Morris arrives again, and I consider what the solicitor has said: They were listening. I shiver in the foyer, glancing at her. Not my ally. An enemy.

  I am led back to cell 13. Soon, the police will go home to their families and I’ll be here alone. Others
will take over. Sergeant Morris will go home to her husband, who’ll complain about her hours while he stirs baked beans, cooking on the hob. Her pajama-clad children will already be in bed.

  I tilt my head back and look at the Mecca arrow. Anything could have happened outside—a world event, a death—and I would not know.

  I sit still for a while and engage in one of my favorite games: imagining my future babies. Perhaps they might inherit Wilf’s long nose. I play with one baby, in my mind’s eye. She has Reuben’s ginger hair but my imagination. We’re playing with a glockenspiel together. Oh, why have we waited this long? I am ready now, Reuben, I think.

  * * *

  —

  I am checked every half an hour. I can tell by counting. It’s useful to know how much time is passing.

  They shout at me through the hatch, their hands closing it before they’ve finished properly looking. It’s perfunctory. They call my name, and then, when I look up, they leave.

  I wish they would just open the door and I could glimpse the outside, look at a new light or furnishing, or even the flight of stairs I ascended a few hours previously, unknowingly walking to my confinement.

  At what must be two thirty in the morning, I ask why they keep checking. An embarrassing hangover is beginning to set in. A sensitivity to the light as the hatch is drawn back. A tightness across my head. A dry mouth. Shaking hands. “Why won’t you let me sleep?” I say, sounding pathetic.

  “You were inebriated, so you’re a category-two check,” the woman says. She’s new to me, but no less brusque than Sergeant Morris.

  “Category two?” I say.

  “One: keep an eye on, routine only. Two: check every half an hour. Three: constant watch. You’re in the drunk cell. Mattress on the floor instead of a raised bed.”

  “Wow,” I say, craving a chat, some reassurance, a kind word, but she closes the hatch. I call out, involuntarily. “Has my husband been?” I say, and the hatch is drawn back, just an inch. I see an eye, the side of her mouth. It’s not smiling. She clicks the hatch shut, and that’s that.

  Something must have happened, once, for them to check people like this. I reach out my hand and touch the wall again, next to my head. Perhaps it was in this cell. The person they didn’t check.

  I tidy up my three belongings. I straighten the pillow. Make sure the mattress is right up against the wall. Put the empty meal box in the corner of the room, next to the toilet.

  I will look back on this and smile, I think to myself. It will be added to the list of feckless things I have done, which my family and occasionally Reuben roll their eyes at. Remember the night you left the bath running and flooded the flat? Reuben will say, tipping his head back and laughing. And I will say, I think I topped that by going to jail for the night.

  I lie on my side, waiting for the three o’clock check. I imagine him next to me, his long arms drawn right across my body and around my shoulders in an X-shape. I look at the wall and wonder if he’s doing the same at home.

  * * *

  —

  When a new police officer brings me some more water, through the hatch, I ask him about visitors.

  “When can I see anybody?” I say. “Do you have visiting hours?”

  “This isn’t a hospital,” he says.

  He’s older, with white hair and a pink complexion. I can’t see anything else: his mannerisms, his height. It’s a strange, contextless interaction.

  “I thought it was like a prison,” I say, swallowing hard. I can feel myself sitting forward, eager, like a dog waiting for its owner to return. Please don’t close the hatch. Please don’t leave me here.

  “Get real.”

  7

  CONCEAL

  I stand idly on the scales. Then get off, and then step onto them again. 128 pounds. I was always, always 133.

  I pull on my pajamas, and I see that they are loose. I must start eating.

  We have just climbed into bed when my phone goes off.

  “You haven’t read in months,” Reuben says, pointedly looking at my phone.

  I sleep better and read more books when I charge it in another room, but for every time I learn this lesson, I forget it again, sneaking it back into the bedroom, scrolling and scrolling for hours until my eyelids are slowly closing. I can’t deal with any of that tonight. Personal improvement goes out the window when you’re dealing with something like this.

  Reuben shifts in bed next to me, sliding a foot to cover mine. His feet are always icy cold. I call them dead man’s feet. The thought now makes me wince. I wonder if Sadiq is . . . no. I stop myself there. I can’t think about him, though images flash through my mind. His feet. Trainerless, now, in a morgue. Bloodless and cold.

  The message on my phone is from Laura. I am holding it with both hands—my left hand is working better, but it still aches. Laura’s WhatsApp avatar is a close-up selfie. Her hair styled upward, in an almost-Mohawk. She’s grinning at me through the phone’s screen, her eyes squinting attractively into the sun.

  Heh—a non-uniformed police officer (not sexy; really weird) just came to my door asking me about Friday. WTF?

  She’s sent a string of emojis, ending with a man in police uniform, and I blink at the phone, my heart beating in my ears.

  She sends a photograph after that. It’s a new painting she’s done. She often sends them over to me for my opinion before they’re finished. It’s a photographic-quality portrait of a woman with armpit hair. For the first time, I ignore her art.

  What do you mean? What about Friday? I send back.

  One gray tick. Sending.

  Two gray ticks. Delivered.

  Two blue ticks. Read.

  I fight the urge to delete myself from WhatsApp, Facebook, everything. To disappear.

  Reuben shifts next to me. Our mattress is cheap, the bed an IKEA double. It feels small, and I bob like I’m at sea as he moves. He’s reading something highbrow. One of the classics. There are too many great books in the world to read shit, he will say, and I will feel guilty when I sneak a rom-com into the bath.

  Instinctively, I hold my phone away from him. A sharp pain radiates up from my wrist.

  The police are coming. No doubt. Surely, I have to tell him. To pave the way for the lies I will soon tell.

  “Look at this,” I say, surprised by how shocked my voice sounds.

  I would never have said I was an actor, but perhaps I am. I was always changing. Reuben’s the only person I’ve ever been myself with. I’m a free spirit with Laura. A naughty younger sister with Wilf. My opinions become those of the people I’m with, as if the fabric those people are made of rubs off onto me. And, underneath it all, who am I? Who is Joanna? I am opinionless, formless, smoke.

  But here I am, forced into a starring role I never asked for.

  “Not up for chatting,” Reuben says.

  And, despite myself, I smile. And there it is: that steely core. There is nothing people-pleasing about Reuben. It is one of the very first things that attracted me to him. His autonomy. That he can say to me: No, thanks, and not mean it offensively. It makes it all the better when he asks to join me in the bath, or sits up all night chatting with me, like we did just a few weeks previously, playing old indie songs we loved. Because I know he truly wants to.

  “No, look.” I hand him my phone.

  And then, after a second—he is an exceptionally fast reader—he drops it on the duvet, facedown, still lit up, so it tinges the edges of the quilt a bright, lit-up white.

  “What about Friday?” he says.

  “No idea.”

  He rolls over, away from me, withdrawing his cold foot. “That bloke,” he says sleepily.

  “Oh yes. Must be that,” I say. “The follower.”

  “No. The one from the news. You should tell them. That something suspicious happened to you.”

  I c
lose my eyes. How wrong he is. But how could he know?

  “Maybe,” I manage to say, feeling the blood moving around my head. It thunders past my forehead. I have to tell the police. I have to approach them. But how could I?

  I need to let Reuben think I have.

  He rolls over fully now, right onto his side. And he doesn’t ask. He doesn’t ask me whether I saw anything. Whether I know anything. He believes me, implicitly.

  I lie awake, fizzing, watching the top of the WhatsApp screen that reads: typing.

  Laura replies.

  So he arrives and says there’s a man found by the edge of the canal, believed that he hit his head and died that night (on the news? IDK). He says he saw from the CCTV that I walked nearby—did I see anything? How bizarre?

  CCTV. CCTV. CCTV.

  I bet it’s everywhere. CCTV. I have never thought about it. Perhaps they cover the entirety of London. Maybe it is a matter of time, for me. Perhaps they’re producing a composite photo as we speak. Perhaps, as I was dithering, I turned and looked right at a camera. Staring into its eye, unknowingly. They will be here at any moment.

  Was it accusatory? I type.

  And then I delete that. I am unconsciously preparing my own evidence.

  How strange, I type instead. I’ll let you know if they come calling here . . . shame he’s weird and not hot.

  The banter comes easily to me. The lies.

  I put my phone on the bedside table and make a list of evidence in my mind, the light off. I am ostensibly sleeping, and Reuben’s breathing becomes even.

  I try to reason with myself. CCTV might not have found me. And I can’t do anything about it. What could I do—sneak into buildings and wipe it? I almost laugh. I wouldn’t even know how. And I don’t want to. I don’t want to get away with it. I want it to never have happened.

  What else? I try to think. A hair at the scene. My hair is forever falling out, clogging drains and brushes. But—would they know it’s mine? My mind isn’t clear. No. Not unless they suspect me, and test me. They wouldn’t know. I don’t think.