I shrug. ‘Some of us are screwed up. We sabotage our lives. We don’t know why.’
He gets the milk out of the fridge. ‘You’re my people person,’ he says, reaching a hand out to me tentatively. It brushes my stomach and I move away from him.
He’s always called me that. His ‘people person’. One of his many nicknames for me.
He turns his eyes to mine. There’s a question in them. ‘You alright?’ he says. ‘You sound sad. You’re not a screw-up.’
‘I am,’ I say hoarsely.
He looks at me. ‘You’re holding your arm weirdly,’ he says.
This is surely the moment. I have put it off and put it off. But now I have run out of excuses. My deadline is upon me and I have yet to begin. It is the story of my life.
He sits down at the kitchen counter, at the breakfast bar that divides our kitchen from the living room, but turns towards the television, sipping his coffee. He has the BBC News Channel on. He always does, even though it irritates him.
I open my mouth. In some ways, it would be so easy. They’re just words.
My mouth stays open, like I am waiting for something. Waiting to feel ready. Waiting to be sure. I am never sure about anything. It is easier to do nothing. I glance at the window, out on to Edith’s yard, and then back at Reuben. My gaze slides away from his and towards the television. Focusing in on it like a camera lens, I see the news bulletins. They flash up, narrated, and interspersed with music:
Surrey MP in expenses scandal
A passing doctor has delivered a baby born in central London’s flagship Topshop store
How London is dealing with the growing migrant crisis
I turn towards Reuben as I hear the final headline. It’s almost like I’m waiting for it. A bong, and then:
London canal-side attack
I know before I know. I know before they’ve said it. I know because of that bong, as though it is meant only for me. Unthinkingly, I grip the counter, scratching it with my nails.
The news has moved on, back to the first story. Some politician fiddling his expenses. I don’t care about that, I don’t care about that.
London canal-side attack. I repeat it, over and over, to myself.
My body contracts as though I’m in labour. I feel it right in my heart, moving down my arms and legs. I don’t respond to Reuben about my hand.
He has turned back to the television. ‘We’re ruled by the corrupt and nobody even gives a shit,’ he says, gesturing to the screen. ‘How am I supposed to teach young kids to stop lying and cheating when the people who run the country do it? How hard is it to think “I’m not going to fiddle my expenses now I’m an MP”?’
It is one of the only topics he is verbal about; he is often sounding off at parties while people stare awkwardly into their glasses. The day Laura met him, she looked knowingly at me and said, ‘There is nothing as sexy as a socialist.’
I usually sit there and think: I am glad my husband is the moral one, the uppity one, the one who actually does practise what he preaches, and not the one who finds it awkward. Like the time he said he thought women never lied about having been raped, and the room went silent. But now I don’t think anything. I can’t. I am hot and panicky, feeling as though Friday night’s act is written across my forehead, that my thoughts have materialized right there in the living room in front of us. I have turned around and am staring at the television, waiting.
‘Lying,’ he continues. ‘They call it these stupid names. Bespoke offences. No one calls it what it really is. It’s not an expenses scandal. It’s lying.’
I raise my eyes up to the ceiling. What is the universe telling me? Should I keep quiet because I have already told lies, or fess up to stop myself telling even more?
I sit numbly on the sofa.
I try to control the wild anxiety. It might not be about him. It might be somebody else. Yes. A stabbing. A shooting. It’s London. So what if it’s by a canal? How many canals are there in London – miles, isn’t it? More than Venice – or is that Birmingham? I don’t know. I don’t know anything. Oh God. How am I supposed to get away with a crime?
Attack. It’s so presumptuous. They don’t know. They don’t know how it was. He threatened a woman. She was frightened. She fled.
‘I mean,’ Reuben says, gesturing with his coffee. It sloshes on to the wooden floor, fawn-coloured liquid seeping between the cracks. ‘Shit,’ he says. He immediately puts the cup on the table and goes to find a cloth. ‘I always thought power corrupts,’ he says, as he’s wiping up the stain.
The presenter cuts to the baby news story, interviewing people who saw the woman’s waters break in Topshop. ‘Not sure why she was shopping,’ one of them says with a laugh.
I’m half aware that Reuben is wiping up beneath my feet, but my whole mind is turned towards the television, and that last news story.
‘Don’t know why we put up with this shite for news,’ he says, standing up and reaching for the remote. ‘So what if she was shopping?’
I go to stop him, then admonish myself. I can’t do that. No – I can. I’ve got to tell him. ‘Leave it on,’ I say, my voice casual. I’ll tell him when it comes on. I’ve got two minutes, max.
‘Can’t deal with this drivel.’ He ignores me and flicks to a cooking channel.
Reuben does this every day. Puts the news on. Gets annoyed. Turns it off. He’s not very good at listening to my preferences.
A man’s preparing to skin a rabbit.
‘Jesus,’ I say, involuntarily. I inch my fingers towards the remote control, wanting to switch back. It gives me the perfect excuse to put the news back on. But, as I press, a thought chills me.
They know.
It’s not on the news because they don’t know, but because they do. Soon, a grainy image of me – on CCTV, maybe, or a photofit – is going to appear. I really have only got two minutes left. Two minutes here with this man, in Before.
I curse that I’ve spent my entire adult life scrolling in front of laptops and telephones and not paying attention to anything. Daydreaming. Thinking of career swaps I could do. Making up backstories for people. Not looking and listening and learning. Does it being on the television mean they know it’s me? Or does it mean they definitely don’t?
They’re talking about the Calais migrant crisis. It goes on and on. I sit, rigid, like I am on a bench outside in the cold, not in my warm living room with my husband.
And then. And then. It is my headline’s time. No, not mine. Not mine.
A man was discovered by the side of a canal in Little Venice in the early hours of Saturday morning.
It’s as though I have been plunged into a vat of hot acid. My whole body fizzes. I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it. That this is happening. That this is my life. What have I done?
Caroline Harris, our correspondent, is at the scene.
They cut to her, right close up to her face.
‘I am standing at the scene of a strange attack,’ Caroline says, her voice clipped.
The camera pans out slightly, and I feel the contraction again. Just don’t think about it, Joanna. Just ignore it.
But I can’t ignore it. It’s right there in front of me.
‘A seventeen-year-old man was discovered at the edge of the canal at six o’clock this morning by a dog walker.’
I sigh with relief. It can’t be me. Seventeen? Sadiq was not seventeen. There’s no way.
And then the camera pans out further. And she’s right where I was, just eighteen hours previously. There are the steps. They’re no longer wet. They’ve dried out. The weather’s clear, the sky a navy blue. The reporter’s breath blooms in front of her, just like mine did. The police tape flickers in the breeze. It’s blue and white. A yellow and white tent sits inside the cordoned-off area. What on earth is that? I think, looking curiously at the television.
‘God,’ Reuben says. ‘Reckon it was that nutter?’ He has a fantastic memory for details, and I silently curse it.
‘What nutter?’ I say, hoping to throw him off the track. To pretend me and my nutter were somewhere else.