The Choice

by Gillian McAllister

  Nobody saw my bail hearing in the press, of course. They wouldn’t have believed it if they did, would think it was a coincidence. Somebody with the same name. That’s what I would think. It would be too far out for me to even consider it.

  “They’ll think I’m pregnant,” I say as I take my trench coat from the hallway.

  “Fuck ’em,” Reuben says as I walk back into the spare room.

  He closes the lid on the piano keys. As he does it, I think suddenly of Imran, on some life support somewhere. I think of him dying. I think of my charge changing to murder.

  * * *

  —

  Mum and Dad live in Kent. They call it London, but it isn’t. Not proper London. There are open, green spaces and its own town center, and houses, not flats. There are no London buses or Tube stations or constant sirens. There are no jaunty, confident urban foxes or pop-up yoga studios or night buses. It is not our London.

  Reuben’s father texts on the way. Reuben got me a new phone this afternoon. It’s a different type, and I’m not used to it. Transferring my number over was a pain. Reuben glances across as it beeps.

  “Does your dad know?” I say before I open the text.

  Reuben nods, his hair flashing, orange and then auburn, orange and then auburn, as we pass underneath streetlamps.

  He doesn’t defend telling him. I’m glad he doesn’t. But . . . there is something strange about it. I would have liked him to have asked me, maybe. But no. I won’t let the thing that I have done create a space between us. We are seeing my parents, and it is only right that Reuben’s should know, too.

  I look down at the text. Hope my boy is treating you well, it reads. I frown. He has never sent such a text, has never needed to. Reuben has no temper, no moodiness, no edge. Not with me, anyway.

  I tap out a response, not looking up at Reuben. Always, of course xx, I say.

  You know where I am. All sounds very unfair to me, Jo. Hope R is good to you. You know how he can be, he writes. I feel my mouth slacken, my eyebrows knit together. How he can be?

  I can’t ask what he means by that. You know how he can be. It would be awkward. And so I don’t; I avoid it, but I do think about it as I watch London spread out as we travel, like the universe is expanding as we drive. Perhaps he means because he can be blunt. Perhaps he means because Reuben is always completely honest about what he thinks of people and their actions, is moralistic. But he’s not, with me. No, not really.

  But none of these things really makes sense. There is no obvious thing that would necessitate a text like that.

  “He all right?” Reuben says while we are paused at a set of traffic lights.

  “Yeah,” I lie. “Just—chat.” I like to chat to Reuben’s father, and he respects that.

  * * *

  —

  Mum opens the front door when we arrive. She is tall, unlike me, and has her hair in a conservative updo. She looks just like Wilf: lithe, with bulbous eyes. They both have the same exaggerated mannerisms. They’re heavy-footed; when we stay over I can always hear her and Wilf stomping around upstairs. The occasional time she tells a story she thinks is actually funny, she juts her jaw out as she tells it, self-consciously, as though she shouldn’t be laughing.

  “What’s all this?” she says.

  The tone immediately annoys me. As though I am being a nuisance. Creating drama. That’s the assumption they always make about me. I try to catch Reuben’s eye, but he’s staring fixedly down at the welcome mat. I once told him off, in the car on the way home, for huffing throughout a Christmas dinner with them, and he behaves differently now, less antagonistic and more mournful.

  Wilf is sitting in the dining room, at the head of the table, and Dad is pouring wine from an actual carafe. Reuben nods to them, not saying anything, and sits at the other end. I sit next to him, and his hand lands on my knee, squeezing gently. Mum and Dad sit, too, opposite each other, and look at us expectantly, slightly impatiently. I find myself thinking I’m glad that I’m not pregnant, that I don’t have to tell them like this. I could just imagine their tight smiles, their tiny congratulations. They don’t know how to be joyful. They would say they gave us a happy childhood, my parents. That they took us to meadows where we ran among the wildflowers. But those tiny smiles, the condescension, their Oh, Joannas—they erased it all. Only, I am not brave enough to ever say. I might be wrong. Wilf seems happy enough. And so it’s not legitimate, my suffering. It doesn’t feel it, anyway.

  I look across at Reuben. I can’t do it. I can’t say it. But I know he can. They trust him. But I become different around them. No, not different: a worse version of myself.

  “On Friday night Jo was harassed by a man,” Reuben says.

  He omits the bar, and the night out. I’m glad of it. I’m glad of all of it. That he’s explaining, and not me. He legitimizes it somehow. It’s not right, but it’s the way it is.

  “Right,” Dad says, his eyebrows drawing together, not in concern but in confusion.

  “She thought he was following her, but it was another, similar-looking man,” Reuben says. He swallows, withdrawing his hand from my knee.

  Mum picks up a coaster and starts turning it around rhythmically, so that its square edges bang against the table, one side, then the next, then the next. It’s a sound I remember from a thousand awkward childhood dinners. We ate good food—organic food, balanced diets—but we had no conversation. Not real conversation, anyway.

  Wilf is sitting back in his seat, his body language languid, but his face serious, appraising mine. He’s grown a goatee. It looks ridiculous.

  “When he got too close she pushed him, and he’s injured and in hospital. The police are involved . . .”

  It’s the best he could do with a bad story. It’s factual, unemotional, exactly as I want it to be.

  “Involved how?” Mum says sharply.

  “They’ve charged me,” I say, breaking my silence.

  “With what?” Wilf says, speaking for the first time.

  He’s a City worker. Something in finance. I have no idea what. But he seems to know things about the world. True to form, when I say causing grievous bodily harm with intent, his eyebrows raise, and he says, “Section eighteen?”

  I cringe when I recall thinking a section eighteen meant I was going home without charge. How do these people know so much more than me?

  “Right. Well. When’s all . . . that?” Mum says, awkwardly swirling wine around her glass.

  “The summer,” says Reuben, before I can. “Early June.”

  “Well, there must be something more to it than that,” Dad says. “It’s preposterous for them to charge you for self-defense.”

  I suppose his indignation is on my behalf, that it has its roots in sympathy, somewhere, hidden deep.

  “It wasn’t self-defense. Because I was mistaken,” I say.

  “How badly injured is he?”

  “Quite,” I say. “He was . . . I didn’t realize it, but he was facedown in a puddle—”

  “For a few seconds,” Reuben interjects, and I swallow hard.

  “They must think you did something else,” Dad says.

  He was always this way, sure he was correct even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. About immigration and benefit claimants and London’s knife crime. Reuben used to try to tell him, in the early days, until every visit ended in a row and he stopped.

  “They must,” Dad says again.

  Mum nods ferociously next to him, and I see now: This is how it’s going to be. Everybody will have an opinion on me, on what I did, and on what the State did to me in response. Everybody is wearing lenses, and they see me through them now, filtered through their own views of what constitutes violence and self-defense and the law. Even Reuben does it. I see him looking at me sometimes, when he thinks I am engrossed in something else. His expression i
s puzzled. Incredulous, even.

  I am public property. Nothing is private anymore. My life has been blown up, projected on to a wall for everybody to watch. A decision I made late at night after too many drinks is being played out in front of us like a tragedy on the stage. I’m not sure even I would defend that reckless, quick decision I made, and yet I have to, to stay free.

  “That sounds really unfair,” Wilf says. “It’s an honest mistake. And you’re . . . you know.”

  “Well, quite,” Mum says. “Your imagination. You were always . . . imaginative. Your make-believe world.”

  Reuben’s head snaps up, and then he lets out a derisive snort. “That’s the best you can come up with?” he says. “That’s your sympathy?” I put a hand out to stop him, but he stands up. “I knew you’d be like this,” he says. “Can’t you see she needs . . .”

  He walks across the dining room, and I follow him, not out of anger for myself but out of loyalty to him.

  Wilf catches us in the hall. Reuben’s hand is on the door, wrenching it open.

  “I meant because you’re a woman,” Wilf says. “I know . . . I’ve seen those viral videos. The catcalling. Stuff like that. I know it’s different for you.”

  “I know,” I say, looking up at him. “Thank you.”

  I remember the fear I felt that night. Sadiq’s body pressed against mine in the bar. His hand shackled to mine against my will. I remember how it felt when I thought he was following me. Like feelings I’ve felt a thousand times before. But bigger, this time.

  That everyday sexism. The builders who yell at you—abuse or flirtations—and the men who sit too close on the Tube, spreading their legs suggestively. The bouncer who follows you down a side street, telling you what he’d like to do to you. The eager man at the party who thinks it’s romantic to repeatedly pursue you. Are women not always pleading self-defense? Are we not always provoked?

  “Thank you,” I say to Wilf again. Reuben is standing outside, pointedly waiting—not unusual for him—and I turn again to my brother. “I had better go . . .”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Shame.” He reaches out and punches my shoulder, something he’s never done before. “Was going to fill you in on my failed love life.”

  It’s a rare moment for Wilf. Usually, he’s all about keeping up appearances. Complaining about capital gains tax. Worrying about having to sack his cleaner. That sort of thing. Things dressed up as complaints, but ones I can see behind. I have no idea what his hopes and dreams must really be. It’s impossible to see, with all that rubbish obscuring them.

  “What happened?” I say, wanting distraction. Wanting, for just a moment, to judge someone else’s life, the way I used to. Before.

  “The latest binned me off. Said I must be posh to live in Wimbledon.”

  I almost roll my eyes. Of course. Not a true love life disaster. Something else.

  Wilf bought well in the London market, and it’s changed his life. His flat made him £150,000 in just over a year. He now owns four London properties. Buy to lets. He whinges about his tenants.

  “But more another time,” he says.

  I close the door softly behind me. Reuben walks straight past the car.

  “What . . . ?” I say.

  He doesn’t answer me, just keeps walking, reaching behind him for my hand. We walk together, to the end of my parents’ winding road, and he turns to face me and gestures toward me. I step into his embrace. His hands encircle my shoulders, and I can feel the length of his body against mine. It’s a proper hug. The kind we couldn’t have in the car.

  “I’m so sorry,” he murmurs. “I’m so sorry they’re such utter shits.”

  “Me, too,” I say.

  * * *

  —

  Later, on the way home, I turn to him. The heating’s on high, and he drives so carefully, so slowly, that I feel utterly safe. Almost asleep.

  “I was unlucky, wasn’t I?” I say. I can’t help myself.

  “No doubt,” he says immediately.

  “Would you prosecute me?” I say. “If you were the police?” I can’t avoid asking that, either. Usually, I would prefer to never ask, to choose never to know, but something’s changing.

  “How could I?” he says. “You’re my wife.”

  Even after two years, the word sends a frisson up and down my spine. His wife. The only one he chose. For life.

  “But if I wasn’t?” I say.

  We’re approaching a roundabout. Reuben hates this junction. He hates driving in London. He doesn’t hear me, is navigating around the traffic island, checking his mirrors methodically. He looks over his shoulder as he changes lanes, his gaze alighting on me. Just for an instant.

  * * *

  —

  I tell Laura, too. Before she hears it somewhere else. It might be on the news, Reuben says. Depending on what happens to Imran in hospital. I press call with shaking fingertips on my phone.

  “About Friday,” I say as she answers. My tone is brusque, trying to cover the embarrassment of not having told her sooner, of having an incident involving her lead to one that’s just about me. Laura wouldn’t have done what I did. It is better I tell her now, anyway, before Sarah requests a statement from her.

  “What about Friday?” she says.

  “I thought I was followed—after we left. By that bloke. Sadiq.” I try to do it how Reuben did, but I fail. The edges of my vision darken as though somebody has dimmed the lights in our living room.

  “Yeah?”

  “And—I mean, it wasn’t. But I thought it was . . .” I swallow. How am I going to be cross-examined on the witness stand if I can’t even cope with explaining it to my best friend?

  Laura, as ever, says nothing, waiting. I can imagine her hand raking through her cropped hair, her eyes squinting as she tries to understand what I’m saying.

  I tell her the rest. What I’ve told Reuben. What I told the police. Omitting my lie.

  “They can’t do that,” Laura says. “Surely it’s just—surely it’s just an innocent mistake.”

  “It’s the law.”

  “Well, the law’s wrong. What should you have done? Wait to be killed?”

  “Apparently.”

  “God. I can’t believe it,” she says.

  “It wasn’t the best night ever,” I say with a weak laugh.

  Laura doesn’t speak for a while. And then she says, “Well—I just went home and had a pizza.”

  We both laugh, and I love her for that.

  * * *

  —

  Reuben told my work, and they requested a meeting for the day I return. Today.

  I’m only half-aware of all these things. They happen on the periphery of my vision, like planets orbiting the sun. Reuben asked if he should tell them, and I remember saying yes, but what I remember more vividly is eking the tea out of the tea bag as I squeezed it against the white cup and being struck with the notion that I might only have a finite number of cups of tea left in the outside world. In freedom. That, after a few hundred more, or maybe fewer, my next tea might be a prison cup of tea. I poured it down the sink, suddenly terrified, not wanting to use them all up.

  News travels fast, and a colleague texted me. I’m outraged on your behalf, she had written. She went on to say she couldn’t believe I would ever be charged for that. I didn’t know what to say back.

  We’re both silent as we approach the Hammersmith Library and the offices behind it. We both know. Of course the government library service isn’t going to let me work for them. The government is charging me with wounding with intent, after all.

  Reuben stops, a hand on the door handle, his eyebrows raised. I nod. I want him with me.

  It is quick and painful. I am suspended. I am not innocent until proven guilty. It is quite the opposite. Ed looks at me with what I first think is embarrassment but
later—in bed, at four P.M.—I realize was actually fear.

  He is afraid of me. And of what I might do.

  * * *

  —

  The next day, I report to the police station at noon. I have to go at noon every day.

  It’s snowing again.

  There is already somebody at the desk, wearing an ankle tag, and I sit down on a bank of gray chairs affixed to the wall. The tag is a wide, sturdy band, like a Fitbit. It has a gray face with an eye on it, like a webcam. The man’s skinny jeans ruck up around it. Evidently it is new to him, because he asks how he’ll shower, gesturing down with his right hand, cocking his leg like a dancer. The woman at the desk tells him in a bored tone that it’s waterproof. He swears at her, and she threatens to report him.

  He makes a loud phone call on the way out. “Finally done. Some bitch all up in me,” he says.

  I blink, trying to ignore him. I wonder if they prefer me, here, at the reception desk, sitting primly with my handbag.

  I have no tag. No conditions except this reporting. This endless reporting. Every day. Even weekends. Just to prove that I am . . . here. It is tautological. Pointless.

  Two women come in as I’m at the desk. They’re both skinny, ill-looking.

  “This, then methadone, then to the shops,” one says to the other.

  I start, my body jolting, then stare at them. And then I feel the strangest dart of emotion: envy. I am envious. That this is not shocking to them. That they don’t think their lives are ruined. That maybe court appearances and bail conditions are routine—a nuisance, an annoyance, like flies in the summer heat.

  “I heard about you,” the woman behind the desk says to me. “For what it’s worth, I’m on your side. He deserved a lamping.”

  I don’t correct her. I don’t remind her of my mistake. I simply nod and say thank you.