It’s a commendable performance, I think. The words are false but my tone rings true. I sound distressed, resigned, but honest.
Reuben’s head snaps up and he sets the watering can down on the step. It teeters for just a second, then stills, the sound echoing out in the quiet around us. His mouth has fallen open in shock. Disbelief is etched in lines across his forehead. And, worse than that, there’s judgement, too. A kind of I knew you’d do this.
He puts his hands on his hips, his weight set back, looks at me, and says, ‘Do you mean that?’
I look him directly in those forest-green eyes. ‘Yes,’ I say.
And there it is. Us. Severed. Killed. One marriage, shot dead.
He stares at me for just a moment longer. I expect he thinks it something banal; quotidian. That I have tired of him. That there is another man. That my low self-esteem has pushed him away. He would never guess it’s this: murder. In cold blood. And it’s better that way. For him.
‘I see,’ he says softly.
He is, in our relationship’s death as well as in its life, true to himself. He doesn’t bargain with me, pressurize me, demand answers.
After holding my gaze for a second more, he simply turns and walks inside, without me.
32
Reveal
I see Reuben and the barrister speaking and, only a few feet away from them, Sarah speaking to another, different barrister. The prosecution, maybe? That barrister is tall and blonde, wearing kitten heels. Her nails are painted nude, her foundation elegantly blended, her cheeks highlighted as though she’s been caught in a slice of moonlight. In another time, I’d have wanted to ask her what product she used, and then I would have bought it, smearing it ineffectually over my cheeks, looking like white stage make-up.
Reuben and Duncan are by the door. The barrister is gesturing, and Reuben is following his hands, his eyes watchful. They bend their heads even closer together. Duncan covers his mouth with a hand.
After a few minutes, Sarah arrives back, and I raise my eyebrows at her.
She says, ‘Not the prosecution. I know her. A friend.’
I blink, trying to calm myself.
Duncan returns, and his posture is strange, his shoulders rounded, as though he has just been told off. He runs a hand across his forehead. Reuben hands me a cup of coffee – my last, in the outside world? – and I take it, thanking him with my eyes. I should be making the most of this. Duncan smiles reassuringly at me, and I chastise myself. I’m imagining everything; inventing their backstories and lives again. Reading the worst into my barrister’s body language, worrying he is incapable of defending me, does not believe in my case.
‘I need the toilet,’ I mutter, wanting to be, just for a moment – for the last moment before my trial begins – alone.
‘I have to come with you,’ Sarah says. She smiles apologetically. ‘They want to keep you apart from the witnesses. And your jury.’
‘My jury,’ I echo. I hadn’t thought of it. But – of course. They must be here. As I gaze around, I see the signs up. White laminated signs, with a red arrow on. ‘First day jurors, this way,’ they say. Twelve men and women. Here to judge me on what I did. I can hardly comprehend it.
‘Look,’ Sarah says, stopping my thoughts. She points up high above the doors to the courtroom, to what – at first – looks like a mark on the wall. ‘It’s a shard of glass,’ she says. ‘From an IRA bomb.’ She points behind her, to the doors, to the road outside. ‘It got embedded. And they left it. Two hundred people were injured, and the only person who died – they died of a heart attack.’
I stare at it.
If that could survive – that dysfunctional, flawed emblem – I find myself thinking, then so can I.
Sarah takes my arm, leading me to the toilet. The cuffs of my white shirt are stiff and starched against my wrists.
It happens in a moment. We could be two people crossing paths at the concourse of a busy train station or airport. She’s dressed in a long grey cardigan that she’s dragged over her hands like a child might, in comfort, maybe. Her hair is long and sleek, her eyes lined like Cleopatra’s. She looks just like him. Like Imran.
She doesn’t see me; doesn’t recognize me. I can’t speak to her, and so I duck my head, but I can’t help looking at her as she retreats. I’m sorry, I think. I’m so sorry.
Sarah checks the toilets are empty then waits outside for me. I stare at myself in the mirror. I look older. I wonder if there are mirrors in prison. Perhaps they would be too dangerous, too easily broken. Perhaps I won’t look into my own eyes for years to come. I take ages in there. Sarah probably wonders what I’m doing, but I don’t care. I use the soap, pretending it’s fancy hotel stuff, look into every stall, steady myself, looking in the mirror. I’m at least ten minutes.
When I’m out, something is different. Sarah’s body language is rigid. She leads me to a table; a different one. I can see Reuben and my barrister sitting opposite us, at our old table.
‘Joanna,’ Sarah says. ‘I want you to listen carefully.’ She takes a shuddery breath, and my body seems to know what she’ll say before my mind does. ‘The prosecution has offered a plea bargain.’
I’m not surprised. I knew they would; she said they would, after they upgraded my charge.
‘And I think you should plead,’ she says.
She looks as though she has thrown a grenade. I slam my hands down on the marble, shocked and terrified. And then, as though he knows, Reuben appears by my side. He makes a noise like an irritated horse.
‘Plead?’ I say.
‘They’ve offered a better plea than I thought they would,’ she says. ‘They initially went back to a section eighteen offence but I was very robust with them. I indicated you’d be interested, and they’ve just offered a section twenty.’
‘Section twenty? Why did you say I’d be interested?’ I say. ‘I want my trial – my say.’
‘To see what they’d offer. The lesser offence. Remember? On the ladder I showed you? Section twenty is GBH, Jo.’
‘GBH,’ I say. ‘Right.’
‘I think you ought to plead guilty,’ she says, and she gives me a look.
I’ll never forget that look. Pity and sadness and guilt all at once. Like somebody seeing the saddest thing they can imagine. A homeless person stealing bread. A toddler in Aleppo. There’s that pity, but something else, too. Something in the slant of her eyes and the tensing of the muscles either side of her mouth; she’s relieved. Relieved this is me and not her life. That this didn’t happen to her. She is glad of it.
‘Plead guilty – now?’ I say. ‘We’re about to go in. All that – all that work,’ I say pathetically, thinking of her reams of notes on the doctrine of mistake, her arguments about how unsafe women always feel when walking alone at night, how they’re inclined to overreact. They’re not legal, she told me, but they are arguments. I think of all the experts’ statements and the bundles of papers brought here today in suitcases. All for this? It seems strange to focus on all of the hard work, and not that I might be about to be sent to prison. But I do. I can’t help it.
‘Your sentence will be reduced by one tenth for a guilty plea at the courtroom door,’ she says. ‘And I didn’t ever think they’d offer a section twenty up.’
‘What would the sentence be?’
‘The range is a suspended sentence – which is unlikely – to five years.’
‘What will it be for attempted murder?’
‘Six years is the very minimum. But in your case, ten years to life.’
I close my eyes. I wish I had asked months ago. Armed myself, not ignored it.
‘This is why they changed your charge,’ she says. ‘So you’d be more likely to take a plea. And it’s such a good one. Not just a section eighteen. A section twenty. They’ve come down a lot, Jo.’
I freeze up. She takes it as a lack of understanding, and moves her hand over the table towards me, like a mother making a conciliatory gesture to her child over dinner
. Her palm squeaks against the marble. Next to me, Reuben is motionless. His neck has turned blotchy, uneven, the way it does when he’s approached in the street for directions or spoken to directly at dinner parties. The heightened colour creeps up behind his ears. He’s panicking. We all are. He thinks I am going to go to prison.
I meet her eyes. It’s time to ask the question I should have asked months ago. ‘What would you do?’ I say.
‘The thing is, Jo,’ Sarah says, and then, like a doctor breaking bad news, she reaches properly across the table for both of my hands.
Reuben shifts out of the way, probably embarrassed. Duncan appears behind us and clears his throat, a soft uh-ah. And then, in my mind, it’s just Sarah and me, looking at each other.
‘Here’s the next three years – say.’ She holds a fist out, like she might be holding a spider enclosed in it. ‘And here’s the next twenty. Pick one.’
‘I see,’ I say.
‘You’d be gambling.’
‘Do you think I can get off?’
She looks me dead in the eye. ‘I think you should take the plea.’
‘Is there any chance they’ll – suspend it?’ I say, the lingo becoming familiar to me.
‘No,’ she says.
The hopeful fire inside me goes out.
‘Unlikely. The guidelines say you’d get some time … but they might be lenient. In sentencing. You never know. They take all sorts into account. And you’d get a bit of a reduction for pleading guilty. And a section twenty is much less serious. There’s no risk of you getting a huge term.’
‘Maybe they’re not confident in their case?’ I say hopefully. ‘Maybe that’s why they’ve offered it.’
‘You don’t want to play that game. I think you should take it, Jo.’
‘What’ll I get?’ I say, my mouth and my throat and my eyes and my chest full of tears. The hollow feeling’s finally gone, but it’s been replaced by something else. Shock, maybe? I don’t know. I never thought this would happen. I’ve got all my things with me. My handbag. My iPhone. I thought I might go to prison, but not today. I thought it would happen after the trial. ‘What do you think? Really?’
‘Five years. You’d be out in two and a half. You’d do the rest on licence.’
Two Christmases.
Two summers.
Almost a thousand days.
If I’d seen my own case on the news a few months ago I might’ve raised my eyebrows. Said the woman deserved more. She seriously injured someone. His life will never be the same, I would’ve said. How on earth could I have been so sure of everything? Did I think years were something other than the earth orbiting the sun, then? Did I think years in penance went faster, that people ceased being human after they made a mistake? I don’t know. I don’t know. It turns out, when you’re facing them, years are years. Two and a half years. A huge amount of time. And yet I know logically that it is better than ten years. The stakes are too high to take the risk.
‘The hypoxia,’ Sarah says. ‘That’s a strong point. And the coup and contrecoup injuries. They will argue that you left him there for too long, in the water, and their expert will back that up. They’ll say you ought to have foreseen the sharp steps. The puddle. They’ll ask you if you know what happens if you land, face down, unconscious, in a puddle. They’ll ask you if you knew it was raining and, when you say yes, they’ll ask you whether rain causes puddles. And then they’ll have you. Even if you say you got him out immediately. They’ll say it takes one breath to drown. They’ll say you should have known – you would have been able to see him gasping for breath, because his chest would have been rising and falling violently. Or they’ll say that you’re lying, and you stood there for ages, watching him almost die. And you’ll have no answer. No matter what the experts say. They’ll say you intended to kill. And it’s a – it’s a strong argument.’
‘I never meant any of this,’ I say.
‘I know,’ Sarah says kindly.
I glance left at Reuben. Tears are coursing down his cheeks.
‘Take the plea, Jo,’ she says. Still patient, her cool hands still around mine. ‘Take it. Bite their hand off. Serve the sentence. Get on with your life.’
‘Is this …’ I look wildly around me, feeling like an orphan about to be transported; like an evacuee. A detainee. Somebody being deported. All those gruesome, human things I’d avoided. Everything Reuben tirelessly campaigned about. Always at protests. Always at the House of Commons. The refugee crisis. The legal aid reforms. The social services cuts. I ignored them. These issues that didn’t affect me. Until they did.
I think, too, of my revelation in Little Venice. It’s not just the right thing for me to accept the plea, but for Imran, and his family, too. They won’t have to face a trial. They won’t have to see me deny it. And I will serve time. Serve time for what I did.
I’m ready, I think, raising my head and looking first at Sarah’s blue eyes, and then at Reuben. It’s time. It’s time to do the right thing.
‘I’ll plead,’ I say.
Reuben’s head drops forward, his chin thudding on to his chest. I hope, one day, when I’m out, or when he’s come to terms with it, that he’ll be proud of me, somehow, in amongst this mess. That he might find something to love, something to be proud of, amongst the shite, like finding glistening raindrops inside a spider’s web. I was brave, he might think one day. I faced up to what I had done.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say to him.
He gets up, his body language defensive. He waves a hand.
‘Don’t apologize to me,’ he says, and I’m surprised to hear his voice is husky. ‘But the babies,’ he says, looking at me. ‘What about the ginger babies?’
‘We’ll have to wait,’ I say.
His tears fall anew, at that.
And then I’m being led away and my entire body is trembling and I’m being taken into the courtroom and it occurs to me that this is the last time I’ll breathe true, free air for a while and these are the last windows I’ll see and it’s the last time for a while that I’ll feel my own bag in my hand, my own shoes on my feet, my husband’s grip in mine, and I try to take it all in but it’s impossible to enjoy them, these dying moments, these dog days. I think maybe we can adjourn it, over and over, like people on death row, just about managing to stay in the sun by running as the globe turns, but it’s just impossible. It’s impossible.
I get four years, only reduced by just a fraction for a guilty plea. I’ll serve almost two years. But that’s all. They’re all my reductions. No more for me.
Two years.
Two Christmases.
Almost seven hundred sunrises, all missed, unless my cell has a window. Maybe it will have a window with bars. A slat that I can dangle my hand out of.
Ninety-three Sunday nights, none spent with the luxury of worrying about work.
Two years.
Twice around the sun.
33
Conceal
It should be the break-up of my marriage that thrums in my mind as I get into my car, but it’s not. It’s Ed. He knows. He knows, he knows, he knows. I have been so reckless. I add up all the instances where he has seen me. The police outside our house. Cornering Ayesha in the back of the bus. And then the lie about Wilf, uncovered in front of Reuben, along with the clothes.
I get in my car, headed nowhere. Away.
This is the thing with being a criminal. There’s no way further down I can go. I am at the bottom of the well. I’ve already killed someone. I’ve already covered it up, hidden the evidence. Running away won’t make it any worse, and I might just get away with it. I am lawless.
I take a left down our street, then a right and turn on to the Hammersmith flyover. It’s busy. I don’t know why. I don’t know what day it is. Maybe it’s a Monday morning – rush hour. Who knows?
I don’t signal. I pull on to the roundabout at full speed, my bad hand stiff and painful around the steering wheel. I don’t know if I don’t see him coming, or if I
don’t care.
And then his headlights are flashing, like eyes lighting up in surprise, and I am hearing and feeling all the evidence that I’ve crashed – the metallic sound, the crunch, the sensation of being thrown forward. But I’m sure I haven’t – positive, actually – because I am still thinking these thoughts and the elephant is still on my chest.
And then, of course, there is nothing, until I wake up.
One Year and Ten Months Later
34
Reveal
The final key opens the final lock and I am released without ceremony. Nobody can see and sense the things I can; it feels like the bones in my neck are extending as I look left, then right, seeing both horizons for the first time in nearly two years. How strange it feels to smell a woman’s perfume as she drifts by me, walking into the main visitors’ reception. I try to discern the notes. Something woody. My nose is out of practice. I have only smelt cigarettes on the yard and stale dinners and sweat for two years. These other scents – these outside scents – feel strange and uncertain.
There’s a bus at the end of the road. The timetable has become electronic. A computer has been installed, orange font on black. Like the tube. Suddenly, as I’m walking – the furthest I’ve walked in years – I’m gripped by a feeling that, although the sky is the same, the sun is the same, the grass over there rippling in the April wind is the same, perhaps everything is different. Alien. I feel a prickling kind of anxiety, but I rehearse the self-talk the counsellor recommended. I’m safe. I’m a valid person. Those thoughts aren’t true.
Feeling calmed, I round the corner to the car park.
And there he is.
Reuben, in our car, the engine idling.
‘Where do you want to go?’ he says softly, the engine still running. He hasn’t turned to face me fully, and he hasn’t yet kissed me hello. The counsellor said he might not. The probation officer didn’t want to discuss it, but the counsellor did.
The counsellor – Alan – said it might not be like coming home from a holiday. It might not be like slipping into an old pair of worn jeans.
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