And then, on 21st December, almost a decade later, Reuben proposed. I’m glad it was after all of that, and after Oxford; that Reuben asked me to marry him in my second guise, and not my first. That his love seemed – to me – to be unconditional.
And now here we are, and the wheel has turned again, and everything is different.
It’s sleeting, hardly daylight, and the traffic is slow moving. It takes us longer than usual to get to Brentford. Sometimes, when traffic is bad, I pretend I am a celebrity in a slow-moving convoy. Reuben thinks it’s ridiculous; Ed doesn’t know.
It’s 11.03 a.m. when it happens. We’ve just pulled into our stop and there’s somebody already waiting. A tall woman, holding a little boy’s hand. He has floppy dark hair, a turned-up nose. Plump cheeks, like a hamster. She’s wearing bright green trainers and a black leather jacket that’s spattered with sleet.
I think I know immediately, but I pretend not to, organizing library cards in their filing boxes, ignoring it. Ed opens the door, letting in a blur of cold December air. And then they’re here, on the bus, and I can’t ignore it any longer.
‘Alright,’ she says, clambering up the stairs, the boy behind her. She has long, angular legs, like a grasshopper, and takes the steps two at a time.
I am standing against the counter, listening to the sleety rain on the skylight. Deliberately looking up. Up, up, away from her. When I glance back, she’s looking at the boy, who’s standing on the top step, holding his tiny hand, palm up, to feel the flakes on it. Slightly impatiently, she reaches out and grabs him, like pulling on a dog’s lead when it wants to stay and sniff the grass.
The child joins her, and when she turns her face to me, I have to acknowledge it. Those dark eyes. That mole. Her grief, worn like a layer of foundation slicked across her skin. Underneath her eyes. Across her forehead, which is furrowed, more lined than before.
And, as if my body remembers, too, it’s as though there is a Catherine wheel of fire in my stomach. It churns so much I feel as though I might vomit, but it also creates a heat of its own, radiating outwards. Sweat forms in strange places. The small of my back. My upper lip. My sides, trickling down from my armpits in rivulets. She is here for me. It is over.
Ayesha. The surviving relative of the man I killed. And a child. Whose child?
‘Hi,’ Ed says, stepping towards her. He glances at me.
It’s only a momentary look, but I know what it means. He’s wondering why I am standing, stock-still on the bus, instead of serving our only customer. He is probably wondering why I am staring so intently at her. Perhaps he’s caught my expression. He is very perceptive. Spends his time, like me, people watching. We used to discuss people together. Before.
I don’t care what he thinks. I have to get off the bus. Away from her. Out into the cold air again.
‘I’ve been sick and I’m going to be sick again,’ I say in an undertone to Ed, which isn’t too far from the truth.
‘Um,’ Ed says, dithering. A book of mindfulness is splayed open on the counter behind us, which he’s been reading during the quiet stops – now that I don’t talk to him, I suppose. ‘Do you need to go outside?’ he says.
‘Yes.’
I clamber down the steps and out into the cold. What’s she doing here? Who’s the boy? My breath clouds up the wintry morning air. Sleet pours down, as cold as snow but as fast and needle-sharp as rain. I’m cold, but I don’t care.
I can hear Ed serving her. I cock my head, trying to listen.
She’s trying to get the boy – Bilal – into reading. They’ve had some family problems recently, she explains in her south London accent. I’d forgotten how husky her voice is. ‘Very recently,’ she adds, as I listen. ‘Only two weeks ago, but it’s never too soon to try new things, is it? Maybe reading picture books will help him to – forget?’
Ed is silent as she talks, which is his way.
‘So you’d like picture books?’ Ed eventually asks, mildly. His voice is more muffled than it should be. He’ll be squatting down, his knees clicking, as he tries to find the right age books for Bilal. I’d deal with them much better than Ed is doing. For all his compassion, his calm silence is unnerving. I’d find out what Bilal liked. Adventure. Colourful picture books. Escapism.
‘My brother was – well. We don’t know what happened,’ she says. ‘Bilal wants – his uncle was – I think he should be … aren’t books supposed to be a great distraction?’
Blood pounds in my head. Bilal’s uncle. Guilt and regret hit me like a first frost. I feel myself withering underneath it. I think of all the things he might miss out on, with the uncle that he’ll never really know. The sharing of a cheese platter late at night while they watch The Godfather together. Phone calls about things he couldn’t tell his parents. Those things. Those adult, uncle–nephew things. I can picture the scenes so vividly, they may as well be playing out in front of me. Poor Bilal, I think, my back to them as I look out across Brentford, feeling sick and repulsive.
‘Distraction sounds good to me,’ Ed says.
‘Yes,’ she says softly, so quietly I can barely hear it.
Perhaps … perhaps she is not here for me. Perhaps she doesn’t know. Maybe it really is simply about books, and the things they can do for people. I would turn to a library in grief, in tragedy. Why not her?
To my frustration, Ed says nothing back to Ayesha. Couldn’t he console her, where I can’t? But then, this is not Ed’s way. How many times has he sat silently, munching on pick ’n’ mix, back when I have had problems, and said nothing? (He loves sweets, and is one of those people whose preferences seem to dominate, and so all we ever eat on the bus is pear drops and bonbons and foam bananas.) Hundreds of times. He just listens, does Ed. Without judgement, and with compassion. I am never usually irritated by it.
I keep breathing in the winter air until I hear them coming down the steps. Bilal’s clutching two picture books. Ayesha has a few more. She glances at me, just briefly, but I see it. Ed waves them off, then perches on the top step where Bilal had stood, catching flakes of sleet, looking at me carefully.
I avoid his gaze, walking up the stairs and squeezing past him. My bad hand brushes the door frame and I wince in pain. Ed leaves it. He’ll choose his moment. He tilts his head back and I see his huge, thick glasses blanch white as they catch the reflection of the skylight. We are both silent for a moment.
And then, suddenly, she has appeared again, right at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at me, her nose scrunched.
‘Hey,’ she says, her tone upbeat, her voice higher than usual, for just a second.
I freeze, knowing almost before it happens what’s to come.
‘How’s your brother doing?’ she says.
Ed looks at us, his head moving left and right, from her to me and back again.
‘I thought it was you, when I saw you – when we were coming out,’ she adds.
‘Oh,’ I say, wondering if I can deny it.
I had my scarf around my hair in the mosque. Perhaps I could get away with pretending not to know her. No. I can’t. She hasn’t asked if I’m the same person: she knows. I can’t lie. I won’t get away with it. The sweat is back, the heaviness on my chest, and I shift, gulping as I loosen my scarf. The same scarf. Stupid Joanna. Why did I go? How could I have been so foolish?
‘My brother,’ I say.
She’s nodding, encouragingly, a faint frown crossing her features. She wishes she hadn’t asked. She has embarrassed me. And that’s what stops me lying – trying, and failing, to be good. It’s not fair to pretend I don’t know what she’s talking about. It is strange, this new world I inhabit with its contradictory rules.
Ed is still in his own world, looking up at the skylight, and so I answer her.
‘He’ll be okay,’ I say. ‘I hope.’ I give a worried, hopeful shrug, playing the role of my life: the sympathetic sister. Sympathetic over a fabricated death.
‘I hope so, too,’ she says, bobbing on her toes. An
d then she takes Bilal’s hand, shifting the books to her other arm, and leaves again. ‘We’ll be back next week,’ she says.
My body is flooded with cold, cruel fear. I never realized it before, but fear is the worst of all emotions. With sadness, you cry. With grief, you miss somebody. But fear. Fear gets under your skin. And you can do nothing but feel it. Worry about it.
She will be back. There’s no getting out of it. I have to keep the lie going. Package it up, as though it’s the truth. Absorb it into the regular rotation of lies I have told.
I look back at Ed. He’s still looking up at the light, but his eyes are on me. The effect is strange. Almost animalistic. Very slowly, he raises his eyebrows, his expression opening, becoming expectant.
‘Wilf’s girlfriend died,’ I say.
‘What?’ Ed says. His head drops, his mouth opens.
‘A while ago,’ I say, wondering how I will explain it away. My colleague, my friend. There’s no way I wouldn’t have told Ed. ‘He hardly knew her, actually. It was all very early days.’
‘Jesus,’ Ed says. ‘How?’
‘Car crash,’ I say, recalling some statistic about the most likely way to die.
‘God,’ Ed says.
He turns away from me, sorting out the children’s shelf, which is messy and disordered from where Bilal has pulled books out randomly. There are gaps, like missing teeth, making the bookcase grin weirdly. ‘How serious were they?’
‘Just a few dates,’ I say.
Minimize it. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? To dampen the effect of the lie, like slowly, slowly putting out a fire. Next week I’ll tell him it was just one date, actually, and soon he will have forgotten it, like a tattoo gradually getting lasered each week and fading, fading, fading …
‘When?’
‘Just a few weeks ago. I didn’t want to – I didn’t want to make it into a huge deal.’
‘What a shame for Wilf, though,’ Ed says musingly as he neatens up the books.
Ed knows Wilf’s completely blank relationship history as well as I do; he’s forever listening to me moan about how my brother is a workaholic, doesn’t value relationships, only things. Mostly money.
‘And for you, Jojo,’ he says softly. ‘I’m so sorry. You should’ve said.’
I shrug awkwardly. I can’t deal with his intense compassion.
‘I’m so sorry, Jo,’ he says again, glancing at me and holding my gaze.
‘I know. Bad luck,’ I say, bringing a finger up to my mouth and biting the nail.
I tell Ed to drop me back at the office, that my car’s there, waiting for me. I tell him I’ll lock up. He looks up at me, surprised; he almost always drops me home.
When we arrive, he says, ‘I’ve got loads to do here.’
I realize, then, that my working day usually ends long before his. I never knew before.
‘I can help,’ I say, following him inside, even though I will have to come back out to get the clothes.
As he gathers up books, I tug gently on the cupboard where the lost property sits. I can picture all of the items behind it. Jumpers and tops and children’s coats. There’s always loads of it. It will be so easy to hide mine there; they’ll be taken to the tip, one day, but not by me.
But the cupboard is locked. Ed’s keys are always attached to his belt; he wears them like a janitor. There’s not enough time to get to my car and put the stuff into the cupboard without him seeing, anyway. He’s busy tidying up, but close by. Always close by.
There’s no opportunity. He doesn’t leave the office until he’s done, and waits for me, expectantly, then leads me out to my car with him.
I glance behind me as he locks up, wistful, looking at the cupboard through the window, at the opportunity.
Missed.
16
Reveal
It is five weeks After when Sarah telephones me. It was the strangest Christmas, full of foreboding instead of cheer. Where would I be next Christmas?
‘We have witness statements,’ Sarah says. She asks me to go to her office later that day, or the next day, but I want to go now. I can’t wait. She says – reluctantly, it seems to me – that she’s free.
‘Will you come?’ I say to Reuben, standing in my trench coat, which isn’t quite warm enough for the January chill. ‘I don’t know what they’ll say.’
‘Of course,’ he says immediately. ‘Of course I will.’ He isn’t looking at me, fiddling instead with his keys, sorting the flat key out from the others ready to lock up.
I hear him make a call while I am getting my shoes. He is cancelling a meeting. He emerges, his face impassive, and then I see that he is wearing a suit. I don’t ask what the appointment was. Court, maybe. With a client.
We arrive and sit down in Sarah’s foyer. It’s run-down, with a shabby red-carpeted corridor lined with boxes. There is no receptionist.
‘It’s good,’ Reuben whispers as we sit. ‘It means they’re not making too much bloody money.’
It’s called Powell’s. I’ve seen it on signs, I remember now. In less than salubrious areas; above high-rise flats and in back-end car parks. It advertises itself on teal-coloured billboards, posters, business cards left on the tube. As though anyone committing a crime might require their help to deal with the aftermath. And isn’t that true? Look at me.
Sarah comes to collect us and we go to sit in a meeting room. I like her lack of small talk. No discussion of the journey here, the weather, how I’m feeling. She’s wearing a T-shirt, tucked into a skirt suit. It’s styled up, with a large necklace, so it’s just about office appropriate. Her handbag – a leather one from River Island, according to the logo on the zip – and her keys sit nearby. She has a Sea Life keyring, and I wonder why. Perhaps it was her first Mother’s Day present from her child, if she has one. Or an in-joke with her husband, if she has one.
The view from the window is out on to central London. I can see the Gherkin and the Nokia building. I close my eyes and try to imagine that I’m just a high-flyer. That I’m here because I’m smart, not because I am incredibly, incredibly dumb.
The room has a large table in the centre of it, but it’s pine, and rickety, not a mahogany boardroom table. There’s a display of straggly lilies, which Sarah positions to her right. Cheap tea and coffee machines are off to one side.
‘I’ve traced Sadiq, from the business card you gave me,’ she says. ‘I’m hoping he will confirm what you have said about that night.’
I breathe out through my nose. ‘Good,’ I say. ‘Good. He will. It was obvious. Laura will, too.’
‘It will be excellent if Sadiq confirms it himself,’ she says. ‘I’m seeing him next week. Anyway. The victim has woken up. He can’t give a statement. This is from his sister. And then a second one from his treating doctor, about his current condition, which is evidently slightly worse than we thought. We will get another expert statement about his health, but at the moment they both create a picture of it for us.’
She rattles all of this off as though she is talking us through a complicated but tedious paperwork procedure, like how to get a mortgage or to challenge a parking fine.
‘He’s worse?’ I say.
It hits me then. It happens all the time. In the shower when I’m opening a new bottle of strawberry shower smoothie. Taking a first sip of coffee in the morning. Gazing out of a window. Feeling the cold winter air against my face. If we lose, as Sarah puts it, I will be in for a very long time. I haven’t googled it. I haven’t asked her. But I know, from that one-word sentence I saw in her notes.
Life.
It’s ironic, really, when it means practically the opposite of living.
She’s not looking at me, concentrates instead on pouring the water from the jug into three glasses. A segment of lemon plops in, splashing the pine table. A drop of water sits there, distended, on the tabletop, and I reach out to squash it with my index finger. Reuben’s eyes follow my movements.
I leaf through the statements.
None of the words leap out at me. They all blur together. I glean what I can from them: Imran is brain damaged; to what extent, nobody knows.
I don’t want to read on, but I do. The words keep on attacking me, like hundreds of needles across my skin.
Currently, he can’t care for himself. He will probably struggle to work. At the very least, he will not be the same again. He is struggling to regulate his emotions. He is forgetful, reintroducing himself to nurses, over and over. He is not Imran any more, his sister’s statement reads sadly. He drinks tea, mechanically, with a straw, the cup held by a nurse; he has forgotten, his sister says, that he hates tea. My eyes fill with tears.
In all of that – the injury, the life-changing stuff – it’s the tea that does it.
Sarah is watching me reading it. ‘It’s all just conjecture. We won’t know his condition for a while now. Until he’s stable,’ she says. ‘So ignore that. They’re getting proper expert evidence. About his prognosis. His injuries. We need to concentrate on what his sister says about what he was doing that night, and link it to your mistake. To make people see how easily you made it.’
She briefly shows me a couple of photographs, taken from the hospital. A head wound, deep and red. A close-up of his face, in hospital, the eyes closed. He looks nothing, I realize with a start, like Sadiq. He has distinctive, high cheekbones, a wide, sensual mouth that turns down at its edges.
‘Can I see him?’ I croak.
‘Who?’ Sarah says.
‘Imran. What did he look like – before?’
‘I don’t know,’ Sarah says.
Reuben plucks the papers out of my fingertips and lays them, text down, on the table. I look at him gratefully, but really I’m processing the last sentence I read in the witness statement.
Anything You Do Say Page 13
