The Choice

by Gillian McAllister

  I can no longer ignore it. No longer deny it. I killed the wrong man.

  “He was found, facedown, in a shallow puddle in the early hours of Saturday morning. It has now been confirmed that he died from a lack of oxygen reaching his brain during this time and catastrophic head injuries sustained from a fall. He had been out jogging.”

  It feels as though my body’s not mine anymore. My hand holding the mascara wand. My feet nestled in the carpet. They do not belong to me.

  It could have been prevented. That’s the worst thing. I keep thinking that something is the worst, and then finding something else, like a layered onion with a rotting core.

  They cut to a video of a woman standing nervously outside a white building. I can’t make out where it is.

  “Now we’re speaking to Imran’s sister, Ayesha,” the news presenter says.

  “We’re so sorry about Imran,” another presenter says.

  There they are. The people I have tried to avoid.

  “I am—was—his sister,” the woman says carefully. She’s beautiful, with huge eyes, a turned-down, full mouth. She has a mole, right in the middle of her cheek. A beauty mark. “Our parents are back in Pakistan. It was—it was just us.”

  I can’t stop looking. At this woman whose life I have ruined. If only . . . if only I could reach out into the television and touch her. Tell her how it was. My cataclysmic mistake.

  Imagine if I had handed myself in. Dragged him out of the puddle. Explained myself. They might’ve let me go. Surely they would have, once they’d seen that I was good. But I am not good and he is dead and I have no choices left: I have run out of them.

  I finish applying the mascara, mechanically, like a robot.

  Outside, sleet flurries swirl around an illuminated halo of a streetlamp. It’s still dark. Edith has put fairy lights up. She does it every year. Reuben says it’s tacky, but I like it. She puts them around the Hammersmith and Fulham Council parking meters and along the steps leading to the front doors. I can hardly believe the world is continuing.

  I wonder how many other near misses I have had. How many times have we laughingly crossed the street and not seen a car speed past moments later?

  Reuben comes into the bedroom, his keys in his hand. “Be back late,” he says. “Got a thing.”

  He is always mysterious about his work, will hardly ever tell me exactly what he’s doing.

  “Okay,” I say woodenly, but my voice catches.

  He stops, his hand on the door, and looks at me. “You all right?” he says softly. “You seem kind of . . . down.”

  “Yes,” I say, thinking, Don’t come near me. Don’t reach out to me. I’ll tell you if you do. I nod quickly, looking off to the left, not meeting his eyes.

  “Hey,” he says, dropping his keys on the bed and coming close to me. In a single movement, one we have practiced again and again, he wraps me up in his arms. My head slots neatly into the place between his shoulder and his neck. His hands come around my shoulders. “Jojo,” he says.

  It wasn’t Sadiq. That is all I can think about while the man I love holds me close to him.

  I have killed without reason. It was bad enough before, but it is worse now. Somebody innocent has died at my hands.

  “What’s up?” Reuben says.

  Perhaps I could . . . perhaps he would help me. Stand by me. Make it better. My confession looms tantalizingly in front of me.

  I lean back and look into his eyes for what feels like the first time since Before. “Nothing,” I say glumly.

  “Tell me your worries,” he says, a sentence he’s uttered many times before.

  I keep staring at him, and he raises his eyebrows, just a fraction, like somebody encouraging a frightened, unsure toddler to take its first steps. He raises them further, then gives me a tiny smile, a smile just for me, and it is as though my chest is expanding and letting in all the good feelings again: hope and optimism and forgiveness and love.

  “Something happened on Friday,” I say slowly, wondering what I’m going to say, unable to stop thinking about the intoxicating relief of telling him.

  He steps back but runs his hands down my arms, as if warming me up, then takes my hands in his. “What?” he says. “With the man?”

  I nod. I’ll start at the beginning. I’ll tell him—properly—about the bar. And then . . . and then I’ll see.

  “Yes. Sort of,” I say, taking a deep breath. It wouldn’t be just mine anymore. It would be our secret. Shared. He would help me. “I did something bad.”

  There. It is out there. My confession. My half confession.

  “What?” Reuben says gently. “It’s okay.”

  “He had . . . he’d grabbed me. In the bar. I felt his . . .” I’m surprised when the tears come. This isn’t about that. And yet—isn’t it, all the same? “He grabbed my bum,” I say. “It was really full on. Worse than I made it out to be. I was very scared.”

  “Shit,” Reuben says. “I’m so sorry, Jo. You should’ve said.”

  “I know, but—but after that—”

  “Yes?” he says. And then, because he works with youths, and always knows the right things to say, he looks me directly in the eyes and says, “It wasn’t your fault. You did nothing wrong. It’s never okay to do what he did. To grab you and to follow you.”

  I nod again, but now the moment is over. I can’t tell him.

  It was my fault.

  It was all my fault.

  We break apart soon after that.

  10

  REVEAL

  Interview tape is running,” Detective Inspector Lawson says. “Video on.” He cautions me again.

  I can see myself reflected in the lens of the video camera.

  “Can you please state your name for the record?” Lawson says.

  I lean forward. “No comment,” I say.

  It’s what Sarah told me to do; it’s what we decided I would do. To buy us time to build a defense. So that I wouldn’t incriminate myself. It was for the best, she said, until we knew what we were up against.

  “And please can you state your date of birth for the record?” the other detective, Detective Sergeant Davies, asks.

  “No comment.”

  “And can you give us your address, please—otherwise we won’t be able to process this interview at all.”

  I dart a look at Sarah. She’s looking intently at me, and then the police officers, and then me again. She nods her head, just once.

  “No comment.”

  “What happened that night, Joanna?”

  “No comment.”

  “If you explain, we might be able to end things here. We’ll release you. You can get some sleep. If you cooperate, Joanna, things will be much easier for you.”

  “I . . .”

  The CID both sit back, together—they are like one unit, with the same body language and expressions, one a paler, taller version of the other.

  “No comment,” I say, feeling like a clown in the middle of a serious meeting.

  “Let’s just cooperate, Joanna. I take it your silence means you’re thinking about it? Pleading guilty?”

  “No,” I say.

  “The victim’s name is Imran Quarashi.”

  “Imran,” I say. Who is he? What does he like? Where is he now? Will he get better? I can’t ask these questions, of course.

  Sarah shoots me a look. Do not say anything except no comment, she counseled me. I’ve failed already. I smile apologetically at her, but she ignores me.

  “How did you injure Imran, Joanna?”

  “No comment.”

  “You pushed him pretty hard, didn’t you?”

  “No comment.”

  “And he was in the water, wasn’t he? Do you know he’s on a ventilator?”

  That’s the question that does it. I can’t h
andle it. I can’t let this go on. These useless no comments. These accusations. It’s the truthful accusation that hurts the most.

  And so I tell the lie. The same lie again.

  “I got him out of the puddle straight away,” I say. It doesn’t really feel like a lie as the words come out. They rasp from the back to the front of my mouth, feeling urgent and correct and true.

  Sarah’s eyebrows shoot up, and she reaches out a hand, as though I’m a volatile dog about to bolt. “A moment,” she says, rising.

  We go into a side room on our own.

  “Not a word,” she says.

  “But—”

  “I know,” she says, and her eyes are flashing. The whites are clean and pure-looking, and I wonder if she self-medicates with eye-brightening drops, late at night, at her desk—like they might do in Suits or Law and Order—and she looks so angry that I can’t bring myself to tell her. To tell her that I have lied.

  It’s okay, I am thinking. Nobody will ever know. Nobody knows. Perhaps I can mold time—the sequences of events, the pauses, as the man lay there—like they are Play-Doh.

  We have to go back into the interview room. Sarah leads.

  “My client was not made aware of the extent of the victim’s injuries,” she says.

  I sit back down in the hard plastic chair, which is warm with my own anxiety, and close my eyes. I have no idea what any of it means. I try to block out the two doors, opening one after the other, even though they’re only a centimeter apart, and the panic strip and the soundproofing and the tape recorder and the video and the threadbare carpet and the policemen, and I hope—just hope—that if I think hard enough I will be able—just this once, oh, please, just this once—to go back.

  * * *

  —

  I’ve been back in my cell for an hour when Sergeant Morris comes to collect me. “Out,” she says to me through the hatch.

  Sarah and the two CID officers are waiting in a new room. Her hair still looks immaculate. If things were different, I’d ask her what she uses and how she applies it. Perhaps she uses a heat-protecting spray.

  It simply says PRIVATE ROOM on the front of the door, just off the custody suite. Three polystyrene cups are littered around, tea bags clumped stickily in the bottoms of them.

  Sarah looks up at me, and I think I see a hint of an apology in her eyes.

  “Joanna Oliva,” the blond CID officer says.

  “No comment,” I say, and I see a ghost of a smile on Sarah’s face.

  “You do not have to say anything,” the blond man says, “but it may harm your defense if you do not mention, when questioned, something you later rely on in court. Anything you do say will be given in evidence.”

  I turn to look at Sarah again, confused.

  “You are charged that on fourth December you did cause wounding or did inflict grievous bodily harm with intent on Imran Quarashi, contrary to section eighteen of the Offenses Against the Person Act 1861.”

  In my mind’s eye, I see Reuben’s eyes widening in shock. I don’t know why I always imagine his reaction, and not my own.

  I drag myself back to now.

  Charged. I’m charged. There’s to be a trial.

  I will be cross-examined by barristers in wigs, intending to catch me out. I’ll stand in the dock of the Crown Court while a jury sits and judges me. Will this be on my record forever? I think of the Open University course in social work I considered doing. I see us turned away from a flight to America. I see Reuben, standing by me, because it’s the correct thing to do, but being aghast at what I’ve done, at the change I’ve inflicted on our lives. The image is so vivid, it is almost real.

  It goes on: Reuben telling a nameless, faceless colleague that he’s off to visit his estranged wife in prison. The colleague will offer him a drink. One for the road, she’ll say. He’ll accept it, unwillingly at first, and then one drink will turn into two, and he will miss visiting hours and spend the night telling a blond woman how much he used to love me.

  That thought takes root, right in my stomach, able to germinate in the hollow left by the crime I committed.

  The Offenses Against the Person Act. Eighteen sixty-one. I turn the words over in my mind like somebody milling soil, uncovering the plants underneath it. Eighteen sixty-one. I’ve done something that a government in Victorian times thought was wrong. Something that’s been wrong since almost the beginning of time. A rung below murder, attempted murder, manslaughter. It sends a shiver through me.

  “Do you have any comments?” the police officer says.

  “No,” I say. “None.”

  * * *

  —

  I am released on police bail. I’m to return to court on Monday for my bail hearing, proper.

  Sarah says, “See you then,” in a businesslike way, as though we’re merely meeting for a coffee, and leaves.

  I am given my charge sheet, and there, as I walk into the reception, is Reuben.

  He’s leaning against a wall. His legs are crossed at the ankles, and he’s raking a hand back through his hair. He’s wearing dark blue jeans, white trainers, and a navy-blue coat with fur around the hood. He looks serious, his green eyes raised to the ceiling. He is a tableau of somebody waiting for bad news. It feels like years since I have seen him.

  “Hi,” I say, which comes out more like a croak.

  “Jo,” he says, and the tone he uses is gentle. Kind. He extends a hand toward me, and it envelops mine. It’s cold. “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” he says.

  I close my eyes, drinking in his tall, assured form. When I open them again, he’s looking derisively around the reception. It won’t be snobbery; it’ll be something else.

  Sure enough, he turns to me and says, “So this is where they process everyone.”

  I nod once.

  His tone is the same as the last time he came with me to see my parents and they were going on and on about a Sancerre wine, pouring it and wafting it and tasting it. “You don’t know about wine, do you, Jo?” Mum observed, and Reuben said, “Why would you? Pretentious wankers,” into my ear, which made me laugh.

  I’m given a plastic bag containing my things. My bracelet. My purse. There’s nothing else in there.

  “Where are my clothes . . .” I say. “My phone?”

  “They’re staying with forensics,” a police officer says.

  I can feel a heat spreading across my cheeks. Forensics. Bail hearings. The future isn’t stretching out in front of me anymore. The road’s turned, headed off at a right angle. It’s become overgrown, wild with trees and weeds, so thick we can’t see our way. There is no normal path. No house in the suburbs. No children on our horizon, though it pains me to think it.

  “Oh,” Reuben says, reaching over and sliding open the Ziploc of my things. “This can’t wait.” He gets out the bracelet, my wedding bracelet, and maneuvers it onto my arm. It sits loosely, its screws removed, but I don’t mind. His gaze holds mine the whole time, the same look on his face—a kind of serious happiness—as on our wedding day. I understand the message immediately.

  We walk out of the police station, and the cold winter wind feels glorious against my face. I close my eyes into it, like a dog on his first walk of the day, my face held up to the sky, just smelling and feeling the clear air and the space and the freedom. Reuben stands next to me, silently, holding the Ziploc bag, not saying anything. I breathe in the smell of the London car park. The pine trees. The minty-cold winter breeze. The exhaust fumes. It’s overwhelming after twenty hours of the same cell.

  When I open my eyes and look at Reuben, I expect to see sympathy—my heart lightens in anticipation of it—but instead there’s a strange expression on his face. And then it occurs to me: He can always see both sides of things. He will always defend the party being slagged off at a dinner. It’s his way. It annoys my friends, my family, but I li
ke it.

  So what if he sees it from the victim’s side?

  I can’t think of that. Not now that I’m out, free. Who knows how long this freedom will last? I must try to enjoy it.

  And, like a woman whose husband has left her, or who’s just been sacked unceremoniously from her job, I don’t think about where that road’s going. I will just concentrate on going home, tonight, with Reuben. To my own bed.

  Tonight, I will dream of the hatch in my cell. I know I will.

  * * *

  —

  Reuben pours a cup of tea, milk in first, amber steaming liquid second, and passes it to me. Edith is outside, coming home from her dog walking with her daughter. Edith’s in the wheelchair she sometimes uses. The dogs look older, their beards whiter, their legs rangy.

  I turn away from them, cradling my tea, and Reuben looks at me, his eyes watchful, and waits. He doesn’t need to say anything further. I hardly ever owe him anything, and he hardly ever asks anything of me. But he wants this, tonight: an explanation.

  And so, without waiting any longer, I tell him.

  He listens, not saying a word. He’s always been a great listener. He barely breaks eye contact, even when he sips his black coffee—he never drinks tea.

  At the end of it, he sits back. “Jo,” he says.

  I wait for the tough love. This is how he does things. He listens silently, then sums it up in one sentence, usually a sentence nobody else would be able to get away with saying to me. You need to stop seeing your fucking rude parents, for example. Or, Stand up for yourself, then.

  “It will . . .” he says, “it will be okay.” He taps my leg, ever so gently, and that’s that.

  “And then after that,” I say.

  “After it all . . . babies,” he says with a nod, confirming that we are on the same page, even in a crisis.

  “Ginger babies,” I say.

  “Steady on,” he murmurs.

  The relief is overwhelming. Both at his acceptance of our situation, and at the reassurance he would never usually give. It’s so overwhelming it becomes intoxicating. I creep closer to him on the sofa. Maybe it will all be okay, I am thinking. Maybe this will be behind us in a few months’ time. Not laughed off, not minimized in the way that I’d hoped, but behind us nevertheless. Reuben is always right, and so I believe him.