I look at him as he stirs our porridge on the hob.
He is always cooking. He does the cooking, and I do the washing. Two years ago we divided the chores up to stop arguments. Needless to say, the dishes are stacked neatly, the dishwasher never used to store dirty plates, while the laundry basket is overflowing, belching washing like a drunkard by the side of the road.
My hand is getting worse. It is damaged and dysfunctional. It doesn’t do what I want it to. It was stiff this morning.
Reuben is serving the porridge. The kitchen and living room of our flat are open plan. It is basically a studio, even though it has two bedrooms. But we love it; we don’t care that we can hear the upstairs neighbour come home in her high-heeled shoes at three o’clock in the morning. We like the unapologetic griminess of it, of London. The artificially warm air; the hot dust smell of the tube that tells me, after a holiday, that I’m home again. That my feet in flip-flops go black in summer from the smog. The way everybody looks like utter rubbish on the underground at the end of a night out, all pale skin and smudged eye make-up in the bright, harsh lights. That, once, we saw a man with a snake on the night bus, and nobody even stared. All of it. All worth the price tag and the lack of space. Our parents don’t understand it. Reuben’s wonder why we don’t sell up and get out of there. There are other economies, his dad will say to us.
A picture of our wedding day is hung on the wall opposite the cooker. It isn’t staged. ‘I don’t want a massive, pretentious canvas of us grinning,’ he said to me soon after he proposed. And, after all, we didn’t even end up having a big wedding. It wasn’t the best day of our lives. We were pretty nonplussed by it all, after his non-proposal (‘I don’t want to patronize you …’ it began). It was a small affair. I wore a knee-length dress. We went out for a boozy lunch afterwards, at Ask. He drank too much red wine and didn’t remove his hand from my lap even once, ate his pizza one-handed. And then, out in the courtyard – he used to smoke – we had a moment I’ll remember forever.
‘We did it,’ I said.
He nodded, vigorously, his cheeks hollowing as he sucked on the cigarette. ‘We did the thing we wanted to do,’ he said plainly, summing up my happiness exactly.
That simple joy of living our lives for us. Sod everyone else.
We held hands, then, under the umbrella, as he smoked in the rain. I wore red shoes, and felt luckier than I thought it was possible to feel.
I stare at the photograph now. It’s candid, both of us facing each other. I’m laughing gleefully. Reuben’s eyes are raised heavenwards, but there’s a tiny smile on his face.
How could I tell him? He would stop looking at me in that way. That tiny, knowing smile of his. I’m one of the only people he likes. And so how can I tell him, before anyone else?
It gets too much at four o’clock in the afternoon. I’ve escaped into the bathroom twice and dialled 999, then stopped myself at the last moment. My hand is still throbbing. It looks just the same – no bruising – but my wrist still feels weak and useless. I will see if it gets better. And then I will go to the doctor, once all of this is sorted.
I tell Reuben I’m going to go for a walk. I’m light-headed – I have hardly eaten – but I put my jacket on anyway to leave. Reuben looks out at the twilight but says nothing. I look both ways before ascending the stairs out on to the street, as though the police might simply be waiting there for me, too worried to knock.
The cool night air is chilled inside my lungs. I thought I would feel calmer, after a few minutes, than I did in our hot flat, but I don’t. Nothing helps. My stomach churns and I can feel a weight across my shoulders. Everything seems scary, on the walk – out, by myself. The distant sound of sirens. The street lights that seem too bright. It is the beginning, I suppose. The beginning of living in fear. I’m not happy out. I’m not happy in – holed up, inside.
When I let myself back into the flat, Reuben is playing the piano in the box room at the back. He only ever does it when I am out. I stand for a second, then shut the door behind me. As expected, the playing stops. He sits uneasily with that talent, does Reuben. It is too extravagant for him.
He appears in the doorway. I have always loved the proximity our flat affords. I like being able to call Reuben from anywhere, to make casual conversation with him when I am in the bath, when he is cooking.
‘Number two thousand five hundred and eighty-nine,’ he says, still standing in the doorway, ‘how cute your cheeks look when they’re red. When you’ve just come home from a crazy walk.’
I never even have to think about the list of things I love about him. It is endless. I love how shy he is about his brilliant, artistic, instinctive piano-playing. How he is forever crossing boundaries with his clients, bringing them home, taking them on trips, when he shouldn’t: how much he loves those messed-up kids. How he once told my brother, Wilf, that he was being condescending to me.
I should respond. I should offer up something I love about him. Or cross the room and say thank you. A full hug. The length of our bodies pressed together. I should tell him how happy the sound of his piano-playing makes me feel when I get in.
But I can’t.
Because if I do that, then I’ll tell him. I know I will. Or, worse: he’ll know. He’ll see the blackness at my centre. He’ll guess. And he’ll hand me over.
He’s still looking at me, almost expectantly. I avoid his eyes, looking down.
What he’s not expecting is my rejection. And so it makes it worse when it comes. When he realizes I’m not going to answer, I sense his gaze shifting. He’s embarrassed for me to see how hurt he is, and so he turns away from me, messes uselessly with the plants on the windowsill. He starts watering them, not looking at me.
The water trickles, the only sound in all of London, it seems to me.
We take it in turns to make coffee in the evenings. It was his turn this evening, but I followed him, not wanting to be alone, my body fizzing with acid.
I promised myself a day, but now’s the time. We are alone in the kitchen. This is the moment.
‘I didn’t even tell you about my Brixton boy,’ Reuben says, looking up at me as he packs ground coffee carefully into our stove-top espresso maker.
‘No?’
‘You know the one – the boy who got out of the gang stuff, last Christmas? Behaved himself?’
‘Yes,’ I say woodenly.
‘Well, he’s been out with other lads … torching cars.’ He leans against the counter. ‘I can’t work him out – it was all fine.’
Reuben is often bewildered by things like this. I suppose it is a symptom of having a steady mind. If you remove the boy’s problems, the boy will behave. Very logical, but untrue.
‘But don’t you remember being a teenager?’ I say, with a tiny laugh, turning to look at him, grateful for the distraction, for the chance to emerge out of my own head, even if I have to fight while doing it, like climbing a rope with no support, burns on my hands.
‘I was just … I was very boring,’ he says, flashing me a small smile.
I wish for a moment that other people could see this Reuben. That he would let them.
‘But you of all people had reason to be – to be angry,’ I say.
‘My adoption was hardly personal.’
I can’t hide a smile. ‘You are very blessed to have a sound mind,’ I say, reaching to touch his hand.
He pulls me to him, immediately, and I step back. He leans his weight against the kitchen counter, looking thoughtful. The coffee maker is on the hob and the second it starts to bubble he turns the gas off. ‘Don’t want burnt coffee,’ he says, looking pointedly at me.
‘He’s not happy, then,’ I say. ‘Even if he’s out of the gang and with functional people … he’s not happy.’
‘Why not?’