The Choice

by Gillian McAllister

  Reuben looks back into the flat, a puzzled expression on his face. “Have you checked the spare room?” he says. “Sometimes you get in and just dump stuff in random places . . .”

  “I’ve checked everywhere, Reuben,” I say, my tone short.

  “There’s no need for that,” he says mildly.

  I catch his surprised expression. I have wounded our relationship with the crime I committed, and now the collateral damage is materializing in front of us. “Please leave it,” I say desperately. I’ll tell him if he pushes me. I’ll tell him. I shake my head violently from side to side. I’ve got to get away. My secret is sitting right in the center of my mouth, ready to leap out if I utter another word.

  I have killed.

  I have hidden evidence.

  I have broken into my place of work.

  My crimes are stacking up.

  His eyes darken. He doesn’t deserve this. But neither do I. He reaches for me. His right hand trailing upward, the left instinctively moving toward my waist. It’s a movement we make often, almost like a dance, but I step out of it. I can’t. I can’t be near him, my head on his shoulder, smelling our shared fabric conditioner. I can’t stand with my waist pressed to his, my mouth against his ear. I would tell him. I would tell him where my coat is, and why. It wouldn’t be absolution. It would be a selfish, sordid confession that would ruin his life. I’ve already ruined my own, but it must stop there.

  “I thought you loved that coat,” he murmurs.

  “I did,” I say.

  “But you lost it.”

  In Reuben’s world, things are simple. If you like your possessions, you take care of them. People are never negligent, or reckless, or unthinkingly careless.

  I turn away from him and walk back into the flat. I can feel his hurt gaze on the back of my neck like the warm coat I am missing.

  * * *

  —

  The next day, the Chiswick stop has nobody waiting. Ed parks up and opens the door, but then gets back into the driver’s seat. He’s wearing a fleece, and he tucks his slim hands in its front pouch, crossing his legs. My trench coat flaps around my waist. It could fit twice around me now. The weight keeps falling off.

  These days are the slowest. I’m never happy, no matter where I am. Not at home and not at work—but in each location, I think I will be happy in the other.

  Ed starts making up the library cards for the recent joiners. He sticks their photographs down, then passes them to me to seal with sticky-back plastic. I hate doing it, usually; I mess them up with little air bubbles and misaligned plastic that collects fluff and hairs, but today I quite like the meditative quality of it.

  Until he passes me Ayesha’s.

  My hands become still, hovering over it, as if they are passing through a force field. My thumb seals the plastic over her face, but then remains there as I stare and stare.

  Ed brushes past me as I am turning it over in my hands, looking at her library card number, the barcode, scrutinizing her photograph.

  “Getting a good look at that,” Ed says, his tone impassive.

  I drop the card immediately.

  20

  REVEAL

  It is late January, and it seems everybody has an opinion about me on the internet. Reuben was right—it’s become a thing, somehow. In the Daily Mail. The Express. HuffPost. Some of them say that we have all been there. That every woman has felt her heart speed up when she’s heard footsteps behind her on a night out, or when simply walking alone. Some of them say Little Venice has become dodgy, run-down. Others say the effect of men frightening women is cumulative, that the catcalls, the thrown insults, the mansplaining, all add up, and many women are merely waiting to be attacked. Of course we appear to overreact, the women on Twitter say, because it is always bubbling under the surface. Provocation over decades.

  I saw an article about myself, recommended to me on Facebook. I clicked it instinctively, then closed the tab, then reopened it. I couldn’t avoid it forever. My trial was approaching. I’d started reading, just the first few sentences. After all, some of the commentators might—as Reuben said—be nice.

  I must have used more force than was reasonable. That’s what one woman—a lawyer—is saying. I can’t possibly have only intended to defend myself. Nobody defending themselves lashes out first, and with such initial force. They do not know that he was already running, already heading for the steps, already had some momentum. They do not know, and they do not care. Was it really possible to make such a mistake? she goes on to ask. Isn’t it the job of the reasonable person to check?

  There’s an article with a photograph of me inserted into the right-hand side. I haven’t seen it for years. It must have been taken from my Facebook account. I’m staring moodily into the distance, holding a Starbucks Christmas cup, the winter sunlight behind me.

  And, farther down, there’s one of Imran. I gasp, looking into his eyes for the very first time. They’re set widely apart, almost bulbous. He’s grinning, a lopsided, self-conscious grin. His distinctive bone structure cuts shadows into his cheeks. He was handsome, undoubtedly.

  I scroll past, unable to look at him any longer.

  I’m everywhere: on crappy internet journalist sites and in articles by women for The Pool—a woman called Caroline writes so sympathetically about my plight—and the comments section of The Guardian. Was I right to lash out? Can self-defense be preemptive? Did I have a duty to check? Is it a feminist issue?

  There are reams of articles about how women are always being accused of lying in court and yet rarely do so. We never accuse people who have been mugged of making it up or berate them for having brought it on themselves. Let’s believe Joanna, one woman writes passionately. She rescued the man immediately. Let’s trust that she made an honest mistake, that if it had been the man from the bar, she would have been justified. Let’s stop vilifying women, presuming them guilty and not innocent.

  I stare at the article in shock. I have goose bumps all over my arms and back. My face in the window is lit up blue, by the computer screen. I can see it reflected.

  The article is sympathetic and passionate and well written. Only, a small voice speaks up inside me: I have lied. I am lying. I left him there in the puddle while I was procrastinating. While I was deciding what to do. Does just one lie, annexed to the main story like a distasteful extension to a period property, invalidate my main defense? I don’t know. I’ll never know. I don’t know the legal position. I can’t ask Sarah.

  I close my laptop, and my face falls into darkness, disappearing entirely.

  * * *

  —

  Sarah calls me later.

  “I’m meeting Sadiq next week,” she says. “I’ll get a statement from him.”

  “Good,” I say.

  21

  CONCEAL

  January passes. I hardly remember it. The news is filled only with weather—how much snow there’s been, how consistently cold it is, every single day—and Reuben sometimes tries to talk to me about that most banal of subjects, but I can’t bring myself to discuss even the weather with him. I can’t remember the last time I looked him in the eye. I don’t sleep, and I certainly don’t sleep with him. I lie awake most nights, listening for sirens, listening out for the doorbell or the thrum of a text message vibrating on my bedside table. And, lately, reliving it all. The moment I pushed him. The moment I left. But others, too. Reliving it from his perspective. What he might’ve been thinking as he was innocently running behind me. How it felt to feel his life ending, there in Little Venice, as his murderer stood a few feet away, not caring, not helping.

  It’s a white February day, and Ed is telling me in great detail about his house extension. “We couldn’t just convert the loft,” he is saying. “Some bureaucracy, you know . . .”

  My wrist splint is off, but my hand is not quite the same. I suppose it is because o
f the delay in seeing my doctor. It still feels stiff and strange.

  I stop listening when Ayesha arrives. She materializes just as I am thinking about her, tuning Ed out, thinking about how much I would like to see her.

  She looks different. Or maybe she’s changed only in my mind. She’s more beautiful than I remember. That wide, smooth forehead.

  “These are so late,” she says, gesturing to the stack of books she’s holding. “They’re the ones I . . . man, it was weeks ago. I almost nicked off with them, I was so embarrassed,” she says, putting a hand in front of her mouth, “but then I thought ‘No, Ayesha. Take them back!’”

  She is wearing rose-gold bangles up both of her arms. They jangle as she brings her hands up to help Bilal climb the steps. “Sorry, hi,” she says to me.

  She tilts her head as she looks at me, remembering. Wilf. That lie.

  “Hi,” I say.

  Bilal is taller, his limbs having moved from toddler to child in only a few weeks, and he waves at me. His hands are still dimpled, though, little rings of fat around the base of each wrist.

  “What’s the damage?” she says, waving the books.

  “Oh, nothing,” I say vaguely. How could I ever fine her?

  She and Bilal head to the back of the bus and, like I am an orbiting moon, I follow them. I am powerless to stop.

  The heating’s on in the bus, and it’s at its loudest right next to the vent, at the back. She stands next to it. She’s slim, must feel the cold, but all I can think is that I am pleased; nobody can hear us here—the noise will obscure our words. I can ask her . . . things.

  Bilal sits on the floor and pulls a Julia Donaldson title off the bottom shelf and splays it open like a butterfly in his lap.

  “Bil,” she says softly, then turns to me, crossing her legs as she stands, so her right and left feet are the wrong way around.

  “How are you doing?” I say.

  “Knackered. This parenting lark . . . Hey, how’s your brother?”

  I shrug, trying not to look blasé. “He’ll be okay. He is okay,” I say. “Better.”

  “I wish I was,” she says.

  “Yes.”

  “Everyone’s so angry,” she says. “It doesn’t help.”

  “Who’s angry?” I say sharply.

  “No one cares. You know?” She blinks, then seems to hear my question, on a few seconds’ delay, and answers. “The internet, I guess. People on forums. Organizations. They think maybe the police didn’t investigate it enough—because he was a Muslim. We had a little protest sort of thing, outside the mosque, but only eight people came.” Her expression twists into a bitter smile.

  “What’re the police doing now?” I say, my tone strangely proprietary, as though I am an interested party. An aunt or a friendly GP, rather than what she believes me to be: a librarian who is sympathetic that her brother died. I’m desperate to know so many things. To know that Bilal is okay. That she is okay. And underneath all that is something self-serving: I am desperate to know that they do not suspect.

  I glance down at Bilal. Is his new slenderness just growing up, or is it something else? He is running his fingers along the tops of the books, lining them up so all the spines are exactly level. I feel a wave of nostalgia as I recall my childhood trips to the library. Age five, ten, fifteen. When it was all still to play for. Wilf would head to the sci-fi section, and I’d go for Sweet Valley High and The Baby-Sitters Club. We’d reconvene, out the front of the bus, stacks of books teetering in our arms. We walked home that way. We never thought to bring a bag. We’d read one a day, all week. Occasionally lend the other a particularly good one. My brother is still alive. I could call him up right now. I look at Ayesha and wonder how I’d feel if it were me.

  “What was he like?” I say softly, the impulse to ask the question a complicated, tangled mixture of curiosity, atonement, and sadness.

  She gets her purse out and flips it open. “Here,” she says. She shows me a photo of her and Imran.

  It’s a selfie. He’s holding the camera. Just as Sadiq did, twenty minutes before I made the biggest mistake of my life.

  I feel like a rubbernecker, a voyeur, but I can’t seem to stop. I stare at his face, his slim, smiling face. He has high cheekbones. A wide smile, with straight, white teeth. He looks like he should be playing soccer in America. Bounding home for Oreos and milk.

  “Imran,” I say, tracing a finger over the photograph.

  Imagine if she knew. Imagine if she knew who I was, standing here in front of her.

  “Yeah,” she says, letting me take the photograph. “I’ve got loads. But that’s my favorite.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  “He wasn’t perfect,” she says, which surprises me. “You know when someone is killed”—she says the word easily—“everyone always says they were a shining light or something.” Her accent’s becoming more London. Getting stronger as she continues speaking. “He wasn’t. He had mental social anxiety. He’d go to parties and stuff but come home and tell me everything that he’d said . . . ask me for reassurance. All of that. Did my head in.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. He was talented, though. Loved food. He was doing a cheffing course. In central London. Used to do those posh food smears on plates, bring them home on the Tube.” She pauses, studying her nails, then adds, “He was good.”

  “I see,” I say. There’s something in my throat. The old animal that lives on my chest has momentarily climbed up, making my voice sound heavy and husky.

  “He was a park runner, too. He got up at eight every Sunday morning. What was your brother’s girlfriend like?”

  “Oh no,” I say. “I’d love to hear more about him. Imran.”

  It’s hot, here in the back of the bus, and my top clings to my chest under my jumper. The panic sweats are back, but I don’t walk away. Can’t seem to.

  “He was funny,” she says. “He was fun. You know? One of those people who makes things more fun.”

  I nod. I know the type. Wilf used to be that way, when we were growing up, before we lost each other. We used to spread the sofa cushions out on the living room floor when Mum and Dad were out. It was massive, our living room, with no television in it—that was in the den—and they’d have had a fit if they knew what we were doing. We’d bounce from sofa to sofa, pretending the floor was covered in lava. We called it electric shock. We’d shriek with laughter. I’d keep an eye out on the drive, checking for Mum and Dad, and Wilf would almost always nearly wet himself with laughter. So much so that I would have to remind him to use the toilet before we played.

  I stare into the distance. How would I feel if he wasn’t around anymore? I can’t imagine the scale of that loss. Not in spite of the fact that we don’t see each other much now, but because of it.

  “We had a traditional funeral, which he would’ve hated. But there you go. Mum and Dad came back. From Pakistan. We were living on our own, before that.”

  “Are they back there now?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “Just me and Bilal now. Imran’s room is empty. Probably get kicked out soon—the bedroom tax, you know?”

  I close my eyes, briefly, against this story. I can hardly stand to hear it—their losses.

  When I open them again, she’s looking at me. “That’s why he was on the cheffing course. He discovered he liked cooking. For us. Well, he sort of had to cook for us.”

  “I see.”

  “I’ve got loads more things,” she says, opening her purse. One section is stuffed. She passes me two more pictures. Both are her and Imran again. One on a holiday, tanned against a bridge crossing a river. The other is from when they were little. Their high, distinctive bone structure leaps out at me, like stars in the night sky, getting more obvious the longer I look.

  I could tell her now. It would be so easy. She might even be misled by me,
at first—by my casual tone. She might not realize the enormity of what I am telling her. She’d grasp it soon enough, of course. But maybe I could fool her, for a moment. And I could say sorry, and she’d say she forgave me. And then, afterward, she’d angrily realize, and turn me in.

  My hands start to shake. My eyes fill with tears. I look down as I wait for them to disappear, but they won’t. They keep gathering, my throat feeling tight.

  “But now it’s over, you know?” she says.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, my voice barely audible.

  “He probably didn’t know it was happening.”

  I think of the reality of his death. He couldn’t catch his breath. It would have been freezing. The ground. The air. That water all over his nose and mouth. Maybe he would have thought of her, as he died. Maybe he would have seen his parents in his mind. Maybe he would have wondered, Who would do this to me?

  I meet her eyes. They’re damp, the bottom lashes clumping together.

  I can’t help but ask, “Do you know what happened to him?” My voice is raspy and strange. Desperate sounding.

  “That night?” she says sharply.

  “Yeah.”

  She closes her eyes, looking as though she’s in prayer. Her skin is flawless but becoming lined. Not happy lines—smile lines around the eyes, the mouth—but miserable ones. Forehead lines.

  Her eyes open. “No,” she says, blinking. “The police say . . . they said it was suspicious. But now . . . we don’t know. We just don’t know what happened to him. Nobody knows.”

  “Are you any closer to knowing?” I say, and, to me, my tone is so obvious. So hungry. I marvel once more that people don’t know, that they can’t tell, that it is not broadcast above my head somewhere in neon.