I commend his patience. Reuben would only have to be grumpy with me for an evening before I would say something.
“Stop being mad,” I say. It pains me to accuse him, but it’s necessary. He can’t think it’s me. He must think it’s him.
“I’m not being mad. Has something happened to you?” he says. His gaze is steady, his voice soft. “Has somebody upset you?” he adds.
And I almost laugh. He’s so sure of his own reliability, his niceness, that he would never presume it is him, or even to do with him. There’s a kind of beauty in the logic of it.
He sees my hesitation and says, “What’s happened?”
He’s looking at me so gently, so convinced that something might have happened to me, rather than the truth: that I might have done something to somebody else. He is so convinced of my innocence. It might be partly about Reuben, but it is mostly about me. And yet it feels like it’s about him, and only him. That I am existing—embodied—in his love for me. That if he disappears, I might, too.
“I’m being normal. You were weird about my coat, too,” I say.
“The present that you lost,” he says. “Carelessly.”
“You know me. I’m careless.”
“Not with things like that,” he shoots back, before speaking more quietly. “Our things.”
And then he makes a funny kind of gesture. His arm briefly extends toward me, but when I do nothing—only stare at him—it flops uselessly by his side, as though he knew it would be futile.
“Forget it,” he says, with a sigh that breaks my heart.
After he leaves, I look out of the window at the relentless February snow that’s covering, and slowly killing, our dying plants.
* * *
—
When I arrive home from work, Ed texts me.
Have you seen a set of keys? he has written. Missing one.
I stop dead, in the kitchen, with my coat still on, staring at my phone in horror.
He texts again, immediately following the first. We think someone’s been in, he says.
Fuck.
Who’s we? Who’s discussed it? And why is he telling me? Is he telling me because he trusts me—or because he doesn’t?
I can’t risk this escalating, so I dial his number immediately.
“No,” I say as he answers. “Why?”
“Oh, we can’t find a set of keys and last week only one of the locks was done up. Not both,” he says.
“Well, I don’t know,” I say, exhaling through my nose.
“Don’t worry,” Ed says blandly. “We’ll change the locks. And check the CCTV.”
“CCTV?”
“Yes, there’s some inside the offices.”
“Oh,” I say, speechless.
How could I have been so stupid? CCTV is both inside and out. How could I not have checked? Not have thought? Not have looked up even once in my six years of working at the library?
I hang up shortly afterward and gaze in thought at the blackboard, then blink in surprise.
Reuben has written to me on it, next to the list of films he has optimistically left up:
Hi,
I don’t know how to ask you face-to-face and, anyway, you just deflect and it upsets me. I am wondering if there’s something I need to know. If something’s happened. Or changed. If you feel differently about me, just say and I will be nice, Jo. Reply here, if you want. And, if you don’t, just rub it away, and it’ll be like it never happened.
I will always love you.
x x x x x
I am keening by the time I reach the end, my mouth open in a cry that’s almost animalistic, silent, hollow.
It is revealing myself to myself, facing that blackboard message. Self-preservation is more important to me than Reuben. What an awful truth. I would rather live without him than face prison for life.
But the truth is more complicated than that: It would be worse than imprisonment, if he knew what I had done. His thoughts about me matter more than the entire world’s.
I am crying as I erase it, the dust blooming around me. He’s used the same chalk as for our film list, and the dust settles, red, on my hands.
24
REVEAL
My doorbell goes on a random Tuesday afternoon. As soon as I see it is the police I feel white with fear, wishing I hadn’t answered. My trial is not yet in sight, but here they are, still surprising me.
“Joanna Oliva,” one of them says. “I am arresting you on suspicion of attempted murder contrary to . . .”
I don’t hear the rest. It cannot be getting worse, I am thinking. It simply cannot be true.
* * *
—
Sarah arrives ten minutes after I do.
“They’ve re-charged you with attempt,” she says when we’re in a meeting room. “Because of new evidence.”
“What new evidence?” I say. My fingers are trembling so much I have to lay my hands completely flat on the table.
“The experts have filed their statements,” she says.
“Our expert?” I say. “Or theirs?”
She pushes two small piles of paper toward me. She points to the one on the right. “This is our expert’s report. You saw it in Costa. Briefly.”
“Yes,” I say.
It’s chilly today, and I draw my jumper around myself. Good. I’m glad it’s cold. I can pretend it’s still winter. That this is not rushing toward me like an out-of-control freight train. Spring is far away. My internment is far away.
“He supports your version of events. Listen carefully,” she says, her elbows resting on the table as she reads the statement. “‘The forceful push of the victim caused an injury known as a coup. The brain moved forward in his skull, propelled by the forward velocity.’”
“It was his running, too,” I say weakly. “He was running with momentum.”
“Yes,” Sarah says nicely.
She sips the tea we have been given. I notice her lipstick has left a hot-pink imprint on the side of the cup.
“Coup,” I say. “Right.”
“So, the brain moves forward in the skull. And then, because it was forcefully moved forward, it rushes back.” She’s still reading from the statement but paraphrasing now, translating it into more understandable language. “The second injury, as the brain impacts the back of the skull, is called the contrecoup. The brain swelled up as a result of both traumas, causing edema and hypoxia. Okay? Swelling and lack of oxygen.”
“Yes.”
“You wouldn’t have needed to know this if they hadn’t done this,” she says, pointing to the expert report on the left. It’s sitting on the table, too, its pages curled up against the cardboard cup, like fingers.
“What does it say?”
“The prosecution’s report says that the hypoxia was caused by something else.”
“What’s hypoxia?”
“Lack of oxygen,” she says.
I realize she only told me twenty seconds previously. “Oh,” I say, and I feel my face begin to redden. Not out of embarrassment; I hardly care what Sarah thinks. But out of . . . panic.
Fear. Little beads of sweat bud on my upper lip, and I wipe them away, irritated. I know what she’s going to say.
“Their expert thinks that the victim—Imran—was in the puddle for too long. There were a couple of bits of evidence that he was in the water—”
“Yes, he was in the water. I never said he wasn’t.”
“For longer than you said. Their expert says that parts of his brain began to die. His heartbeat was slower on admission than they’d expect. He was colder. His mammalian diving reflex had kicked in,” she says.
“What . . . I . . .” The words may be incomprehensible to me, but I understand what sits behind their meaning immediately: They know.
“They
say his hypoxia is from—the drowning,” she summarizes.
“Right.”
“And we say it’s from the fall.”
I must almost be believing my own lies, because I splutter, feeling angry. “Can’t you tell?” I say eventually, tapping my fingers on the prosecution’s report. “Can’t you tell what sort of hypoxia it is? Can’t we prove it’s from the fall?”
She shakes her head. “No.”
I think of all the medical things we can do. Laser eye surgery. Heart transplants. How can we not know this? But then, I think darkly: I am glad. I am glad they can’t tell. Because they might be right.
“So we need to refute it. Cross-examine him,” she says. “There’s no evidence for this. It could easily be from trauma and swelling. Unless . . .” She darts a glance at me.
I see why she’s really here: To check. To check and double-check, as lawyers do.
“Yeah,” I say. “There’s nothing to tell you. I got him out. Straight away.”
“Good.” She nods once, decisively, then sips her tea again. “So, attempt.”
“Yes,” I say.
It’s been hovering in the background, in the doorway, for the whole meeting. Waiting to be asked. Hoping it was a mistake.
“What’s the sentence?” I say. “For attempted murder?”
She looks at me and blinks, twice, in quick succession. She’s surprised. “Jo. They essentially sentence you as though it’s the complete offense.”
“What complete offense?”
“Murder.”
I can’t say anything.
She must realize, because she speaks again. “With Imran’s injuries . . . it would be twelve to twenty.”
“Twelve to twenty what?” I say, thinking she means odds. Short odds.
“Years.”
“Years,” I repeat.
Neither of us says anything for a few minutes.
“How can they do this?” I say. “The hypoxia is . . . so his injuries are worse?”
“They have taken their expert’s report and used it to infer something needed in an attempted murder charge,” she says, her eyes on me, looking at me carefully. “They’ve presumed you didn’t get Imran out of the puddle . . . that you waited. Deliberately. Looking at him.”
“What’s that?” I say naïvely, not wanting to know, bracing myself for what’s to come. “What’ve they inferred?”
“Intent,” she says softly. “Intent to kill.”
* * *
—
They interview me again, afterward, on only the new evidence.
“When did you get Imran out of the puddle, Joanna?”
“Immediately,” I say.
“So how come he has got all of the injuries a drowning person might have? Why was he so cold? Joanna?”
“I don’t know,” I say quietly.
Sarah sits next to me, impassive.
“I don’t know.”
* * *
—
They have upgraded the charge,” I say to Reuben as we are undressing.
He’s been home for three hours, and I’ve said nothing.
His eyes widen, aghast. “What to?” he says.
“Attempt,” I say, my voice strangling. “Attempted murder.”
But how could I have been attempting to kill somebody I also rescued?
I know the answer, of course. You only need to momentarily attempt to kill somebody. It only has to happen once. No matter how much time you spend undoing it afterward.
Reuben crosses the room and gathers me up in his arms. “Why?” he says softly to me.
“The puddle,” I say to him. “The stupid puddle.”
If he requires more information, he doesn’t say so. He merely stands there, holding me.
25
CONCEAL
We meet Wilf for a drink after work, though I can’t think of anything worse than alcohol at the moment. It’s the first evening where the sun has some warmth to it, even though the air is still cold. Apricity. That’s what it’s called. A word Reuben taught me: the warmth of the sun in winter.
“How’s things?” Wilf says levelly.
He looks guarded, standing in his suit, while Reuben and I are casual. I’m too casual; my clothes swamp me. The splint is off, but my wrist is no better. Wilf leans over, takes a careful sip from his beer, which is almost overflowing, then looks at me.
“All right,” I say. I consider my brother, the boy who used to stamp his feet with excitement whenever we played together. “How’s work?” I add, because it’s what I suspect he wants to be asked about.
He’s standing oddly, his feet turned almost inward, self-consciously, and I wonder why. Reuben shifts next to me. He’ll be hating this. Usually I would throw him a sympathetic smile, a grateful smile. Promise him some quiet time later. A movie and some introversion. But I don’t. He has hardly looked at me lately. His gaze has stopped landing on me. I don’t know what to say to him, so I say nothing at all. Our life used to be so full, I find myself thinking.
Wilf hasn’t answered, is looking vaguely behind me, so I say, “How’s your list?”
He told me about the list in the autumn. He was going to do ten big things a year. I wouldn’t be surprised to discover I am a different species from him, from people like him. People who go to Indonesia to build an orphanage or who start up their own newspaper when they’re twenty-five or join the UN.
“All right—Stonehenge is all booked,” he says.
“You’re going alone?”
He nods. “Why not?” he adds after a moment. “It’s on my doorstep and I’ve never been.”
“I didn’t think you’d be interested in Stonehenge,” I say, thinking that perhaps I would like to go.
“More up your street than mine,” Wilf says with a ghost of a smile.
Mysticism was one of my very first fads (I bought twelve quartz crystals), and it’s been subsumed into the narrative of our family.
“What’s after that, on your list?” Reuben says. “You put us to shame. We’ve got no plans except a party, in July.”
And it’s just that sentence that starts it all. As though it’s an ignition, a catalyst.
“Laura’s boat thing?” I say. “I haven’t been invited.” I remember last year, and the year before—always this time of year. They’ll come over and invite us, in person.
But he had been invited already. And he didn’t tell me.
“They texted me. I said we were both going,” Reuben says quickly, but his tone is off.
His eyes meet mine, for the first time in weeks and weeks, and I see clearly what he’s thinking, the error he’s made in speaking without thinking. His brow wrinkles.
He doesn’t know where we’ll be in a few months’ time, even though we are married, even though we promised to stay together forever. He’s not sure.
Wilf turns and orders another drink, moving a few feet down the bar. He always drinks quickly. He does everything quickly. It leaves me alone with Reuben.
Perhaps he feels more able to confront me in a bar, because he says, “Did you see my message? On the blackboard.”
“Yes,” I say, “but it said . . . if I rubbed it off that would be that.”
“So you rubbed it off,” he says, looking across the crowds of people clustered near a set of high tables.
Two of them are holding hands, tightly, under the table, and I gaze at them wistfully.
I nod, though he’s not looking, and when he turns his gaze back to me it is imploring.
“What’s going on with you?” he says, and the sentence, and the context—when Wilf is only a few feet away, due to turn back any second—is so not like the considered Reuben I know that I overreact.
“Nothing’s going on with me,” I say.
I intended my tone to be final
, as though the conversation is closed, but it comes out hysterically. I thought I was putting on a better front of remaining the same. Just the other week I went out for coffee with Reuben’s father—he brought me some political history tome to lend to Reuben—and he couldn’t seem to tell. I thought I was holding up okay.
“You’ve changed—overnight,” he says. “I know I said . . . I know I said you could just rub it off.” He looks at me. “But I didn’t think you would.”
“I haven’t changed.”
“You’re totally different. You used to be . . . affectionate and happy and . . . cool. You’re so thin now. Skeletal.”
“Cool?” I say, my tone imbued with distaste.
Reuben considers me. The hand he’s holding his red wine in is shaking ever so slightly, the liquid rippling. “Yeah—cool,” he says. “Happy with life. Not uptight and secretive.”
“I’m not secretive,” I say, though the animal on my chest is shifting again.
It disappears, for a while, when I am with people, when I am distracted. But it’s back now. It comes back every night, like a domestic pet with a bedtime, a curfew.
And then Reuben says it: the sentence I have been waiting for, second only to “Joanna Oliva, you do not have to say anything . . . but anything you do say may be given in evidence . . .”
He says, “Is there someone?”
He says it quietly, his eyes on me. He isn’t looking for Wilf. He isn’t sipping his wine. He’s looking straight at me, the lights of the bar reflected like candlelight in his eyes.
“Someone?” I say, embarrassed by his directness, and by my lies, my deceit.
They are exponential, my lies. They began with a single breath, the deep breath I took before I walked away. And with that puff, like a dandelion’s seeds, my lies scattered everywhere that December night, even though I thought it would be too cold for them to grow. But here we are, in the almost-spring, and they are popping up everywhere. I am lying to Ed. To Laura. And to Reuben.
Two policemen walk by the window, uniformed, wearing fluorescent jackets that shine eerily in the night like bioluminescence. I cannot help but flinch. As if they might be about to point at me, through the window. They have visited me twice. The third time will surely be soon. I am done for. I am wanted.
The Choice Page 19
