There’s no clock, and no sun, and so I eat, and I look at the items in the room – the cell – with me. The circular fluorescent light. The inside of it is lined with dead flies. The black arrow. It’s painted so neatly; somebody must have used a stencil.
The food is awful. It’s as if somebody has blended an all-day breakfast into a liquid, then cooked the whole lot. Marbled through the eggs and bread are occasional chunks of bacon. It’s cold in the very middle. The eggs feel like jelly in my mouth.
As I finish, lacking anything to do and having run out of thoughts, I reach my hand out in front of me and trace a finger down the blue wall. It’s cool. The cheap paint bobbles underneath my fingertip.
The eggs catch in my throat as I start to cry. I’m crying for lots of things. At my unluckiness, I suppose. At where I find myself, aged thirty. But mostly for Reuben. Because I miss him. Because I know he’ll be missing me. But also because of that judgement. That beat of judgement I heard the second after I told him. I didn’t imagine it. I know I didn’t.
When Reuben and I first met, he was standing at the edge of an end-of-university party, observing coolly, not speaking to anybody. At first, it was his height that caught my attention, but by the time I was uncapping a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, it was other things, too. The way he wasn’t talking to anybody. The way he was simply standing at the bookcase in the bay window, running his finger along it.
‘I’m Jo,’ I said boldly.
After a few minutes’ chat, he inclined his head, led me to the stairs perfunctorily. They were quiet – he preferred them, he said. I liked that he wanted to sit on the stairs and talk about books with a girl he’d only just met. I liked that he didn’t give a shit what anybody else thought of him, that he’d been obviously bored beforehand. A man called Rupert walked past us, talking about where he was going to be summering, and Reuben and I, as naturally as our hearts were beating, exchanged a glance.
‘I hate Oxford,’ I said, and his green eyes lit up.
We slagged off Oxford on the stairs. I made him talk, he kept saying in surprise. He hated talking, but he liked talking to me. Only me.
I saw him the next day. We’d been texting all morning and, when I rounded the corner to him, he nodded, a half-smile on his face, like he was remembering something enjoyable, but he said nothing.
‘Duty solicitor,’ a male police officer says now.
He jerks me from my memories. It can’t have been more than an hour since I requested one. I hope he’s good. Diligent.
I’m taken to the same phone I called Reuben from, the handset dangling like a noose. I thought it would be nice to be out in reception, but it’s not.
My knees shake as I pick up the phone.
‘Joanna?’ my solicitor says.
I’m momentarily surprised it’s a woman. How awful of me. ‘Yes. Hi.’ My voice is hoarse.
‘Hi. I’m Sarah Abberley. Don’t say anything, please,’ she says crisply, her voice clipped. ‘The police are very likely listening.’
‘I just need to explain myself,’ I say desperately, my voice hushed, into the phone. The receiver is sticky against my chin. ‘Clear it all up.’
‘Don’t say another word to the police. No doubt you’ve said some things. They’ll be standing there drinking their tea, but listening …’
I look over at them. They’re just sitting at the desk, mindlessly watching the CCTV monitors. ‘Um, okay,’ I say, sceptical.
‘I’m afraid I am serious, Joanna.’
‘When will you be here?’
‘Soon – they have to …’ I hear a tapping sound.
I picture her in a slimline suit, cigarette trousers. Geek glasses. Dip-dyed hair. Tapping a pen against a minimalist kitchen counter. A man behind her – tall, a wiry-looking academic, maybe – making avocado smash. They eat late, most nights.
‘They have to just get the CID sorted,’ she is saying.
‘CID?’ I say absent-mindedly.
‘Criminal Investigations Department. And you can’t be interviewed until you’re sober.’
‘I am very sober,’ I say.
‘Best wait until the morning. Be there as soon as I can,’ she says.
I like her brevity. Reuben would like her.
‘You have twenty-four hours – anything more than that and they need the superintendent to sign it off. Do you have everything you need – are they feeding you?’ she says.
‘Okay. Yes,’ I say, my voice small, imagining all night in that horrible blue room.
‘You won’t know it,’ she says, ‘but I am doing all I can for you. Here. Promise.’
‘Okay,’ I say. It is almost the only word I have said during our call. She must think me an idiot.
She rings off. The receiver feels heavy in my hand without her on the other end of it. I put the phone down, then stand aimlessly for a second, hanging on to the mild freedom. The different smells out here.
Sergeant Morris arrives again and I consider what the solicitor has said: they were listening. I shiver in the foyer, glancing at her. Not my ally. An enemy.
I am led back to cell thirteen. Soon, the police will go home to their families, and I’ll be here alone. Others will take over. Sergeant Morris will go home to her husband who’ll complain about her hours while he stirs baked beans, cooking on the hob. Her pyjama-clad children will already be in bed.
I tilt my head back and look at the Mecca arrow. Anything could have happened outside – a world event, a death – and I would not know.
I sit still for a while and engage in one of my favourite games: imagining my future babies. Perhaps they might inherit Wilf’s long nose. I play with one baby, in my mind’s eye. She has Reuben’s ginger hair but my imagination. We’re playing with a glockenspiel together. Oh, why have we waited this long? I am ready now, Reuben, I think.
I am checked every half an hour. I can tell by counting. It’s useful to know how much time is passing.
They shout at me through the hatch, their hands closing it before they’ve finished properly looking. It’s perfunctory. They call my name and then, when I look up, they leave.
I wish they would just open the door and I could glimpse the outside; look at a new light or furnishing, or even the flight of stairs I ascended a few hours previously, unknowingly walking to my confinement.
At what must be two thirty in the morning, I ask why they keep checking. An embarrassing hangover is beginning to set in. A sensitivity to the light as the hatch is drawn back. A tightness across my head. A dry mouth. Shaking hands. ‘Why won’t you let me sleep?’ I say, sounding pathetic.
‘You were inebriated, so you’re a category-two check,’ the woman says. She’s new to me, but no less brusque than Sergeant Morris.
‘Category two?’ I say.
‘One: keep an eye on, routine only. Two: check every half an hour. Three: constant watch. You’re in the drunk cell. Mattress on the floor instead of a raised bed.’
‘Wow,’ I say, craving a chat, some reassurance, a kind word, but she closes the hatch. I call out, involuntarily. ‘Has my husband been?’ I say, and the hatch is drawn back, just an inch. I see an eye, the side of her mouth. It’s not smiling. She clicks the hatch shut, and that’s that.
Something must have happened, once, for them to check people like that. I reach my hand out and touch the wall again, next to my head. Perhaps it was in this cell. The person they didn’t check.
I tidy up my three belongings. I straighten the pillow. Make sure the mattress is right up against the wall. Put the empty meal box in the corner of the room, next to the toilet.
I will look back on this and smile, I think to myself. It will be added to the list of feckless things I have done, which my family and occasionally Reuben roll their eyes at. Remember the night you left the bath running and flooded the flat? Reuben will say, tipping his head back and laughing. And I will say, I think I topped that by going to jail for the night.
I lie on my side, waiting for the three o’clock check. I imagine him next to me, his long arms drawn right across my body and around my shoulders in an X-shape. I look at the wall and wonder if he’s doing the same at home.
When a new police officer brings me some more water, through the hatch, I ask him about visitors.
‘When can I see anybody?’ I say. ‘Do you have visiting hours?’