Anything You Do Say

by Gillian McAllister

  ‘And maybe others in the bar?’ I say, though I know it’s useless.

  It looks commonplace, that stupid hug. That hand-holding. Why would anybody remember?

  I keep replaying the look on my face. That blank look. Stupid Joanna, I think to myself. Pretending I was somewhere else, blanking it out, looking vacant; passive, when I should have been active.

  ‘I’ll appeal for any witnesses,’ Sarah says, though it sounds perfunctory, as though she’s appeasing me. She’s not looking at me, is rhythmically drumming her index finger on the table, gazing behind me.

  She pushes my tea towards me and liquid slops over the side. They’ve used full-fat milk; I can see the grease in pearlescent swirls amongst the brick-coloured tea.

  23

  Conceal

  ‘You didn’t come up last night,’ Reuben says. He always says this: up, even though we’ve never lived in a place with a staircase. It’s a hangover from his old house, his childhood home, the rickety pub with its multiple narrow wooden staircases; the rooms in the roof.

  We watched The Godfather (number sixty) last night. I said I’d come to bed, but I didn’t. Instead, I counted the days. How long since Before.

  It’s been sixty-five days. Wasn’t that how long Jesus spent in the woods, repenting? No – wasn’t that forty, actually? I don’t know. I should ask Reuben. He’s one of those staunch atheists who gets into rows at parties about it, but he’s read the Bible. In order to reject it, he told me once. That fascinated me. That somebody would be so dedicated to their private beliefs.

  I fell asleep counting the days, on the sofa. It felt safer in the living room, away from his raw, naked form. I told myself that the police were following up on the loose ends because they have no idea who did it.

  In the night, dreaming of Sadiq and Imran, I awoke, thinking I heard the police knock again, but they hadn’t. As I was awake, I thought about the library keys, still in my handbag. I have been too afraid to return them. Too afraid of being caught, unable to find time alone in the offices, but also not wanting to give them back – in case I need them. It’s stupid, but it’s true.

  My neck is stiff. My hand throbs, too. The dreams are fading from my memory and I feel as though I am sorting through what’s real and what’s fake, like a child with a shape sorter. Sadiq and Imran were not here, in my living room, as I thought in the middle of the night. But the rest is real.

  Reuben is drying a mug. It’s his favourite mug. Trust me, I’m a social worker, it says on its side. He got it the day he qualified, from his parents. I was there on the last day of his MA. I considered him truly grown-up, that day. The way he rose to the challenges of his course, the volume of work, finding a job at the end of it – and a serious job, a job that mattered. He matured during that two-year MA, becoming – somehow – taller and more muscular. He held himself differently. I was fascinated by it, by the transition I witnessed in my boyfriend of two years. It was a transition I never made.

  And now. He’s continued to change. Never just doing one thing. Going in-house at the charity. Bringing boys home, against the rules, who sleep in our spare room. He took one boy, Ozzie, all the way to Bristol, to show him he could use the train again, after a stabbing on it. Beyond the call. And then the work with our MP. It’s so recent, attending her clinics. If he knew … if everybody knew, it would surely stop.

  Suddenly, the burden of him is too much to bear. The burden of his goodness. It is impossible to live with somebody who is never tempted into jealousy or greed or rash decisions. He is never prone to egotism or materialism or miserliness.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I slept downstairs. Re-watched The Godfather,’ I add, although I didn’t.

  I don’t know why I say it. I want, I suppose, to discuss it. Michael Corleone’s transformation from good to evil. I am always looking for an outlet; a way to discuss the themes of my crime without talking about them directly. To discuss it and to not discuss it, all at once. As though, somehow, I might find a way of telling Reuben without really telling him.

  ‘Oh, I thought we’d watch part two tonight,’ Reuben says. ‘It’s number fifty-three, anyway. Godfather Two.’ He finishes drying the mug and places it neatly in the cupboard, then turns back to look at me. I have never once slept on the sofa before, away from his warm body.

  ‘Well, I’m sick of it now,’ I snap.

  ‘What’s next – number fifty-nine?’ he says. He runs a finger down the blackboard.

  ‘I don’t want to watch any,’ I say, looking up at him, across the room from me, thinking, Why can’t you just be bad, like me?

  ‘There’s something weird about you lately,’ Reuben says. His tone is soft. Almost wheedling. I look over, and his jaw’s clenched. ‘You don’t want to do anything.’

  I say nothing, staring at him.

  ‘No,’ he continues, ‘not like you don’t want to do anything. Like you don’t want to do anything with me.’

  ‘Well, I do,’ I say. ‘I just …’

  ‘You’re never moody,’ he says to me.

  Tears fill my eyes as I stare down at my phone. I open Facebook. Close it. Open Instagram. Looking for likes.

  He’s right. Before all this, I was happy-go-lucky, too happy, if anything; busy ignoring my problems, prioritizing ASOS orders and having just the right amount of tea, and three square meals, and being in just the right mood, before doing anything important.

  ‘But you’re moody. At the moment,’ he adds.

  ‘I’m not,’ I say quietly, wanting him to stop talking, and wanting to tell him, all at once.

  ‘Seriously. You’ve been in a mood for ages,’ he says. He shuts the cupboard, irritated.

  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 towards 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?’

  ‘O
h, 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 afterwards, 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 towards 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 towards 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 oedema 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 offence.’

  ‘What complete offence?’

  ‘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 naively, 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, afterwards, 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 afterwards.

  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. 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.

  ‘Alright,’ 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 inwards, 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.