‘This isn’t a hospital,’ he says.
He’s older, with white hair and a pink complexion. I can’t see anything else: his mannerisms, his height. It’s a strange, contextless interaction.
‘I thought it was like a prison,’ I say, swallowing hard. I can feel myself sitting forward, eager, like a dog waiting for its owner to return. Please don’t close the hatch. Please don’t leave me here.
‘Get real.’
7
Conceal
I stand idly on the scales. Then get off, and then step on to them again. Nine stone two. I was always, always nine stone seven.
I pull my pyjamas on, and I see that they are loose. I must start eating.
We have just climbed into bed when my phone goes off.
‘You haven’t read in months,’ Reuben says, pointedly looking at my phone.
I sleep better and read more books when I charge it in another room, but for every time I learn this lesson, I forget it again, sneaking it back into the bedroom, scrolling and scrolling for hours until my eyelids are slowly closing. I can’t deal with any of that tonight. Personal improvement goes out of the window when you’re dealing with something like this.
Reuben shifts in bed next to me, sliding a foot to cover mine. His feet are always icy cold. I call them dead man’s feet. The thought now makes me wince. I wonder if Sadiq is … no. I stop myself there. I can’t think about him, though images flash through my mind. His feet. Trainerless, now, in a morgue. Bloodless and cold.
The message on my phone is from Laura. I am holding it with both hands – my left hand is working better, but it still aches. Laura’s WhatsApp avatar is a close-up selfie. Her hair styled upwards, in an almost-Mohican. She’s grinning at me through the phone’s screen, her eyes squinting attractively into the sun.
Heh – a non-uniformed police officer (not sexy; really weird) just came to my door asking me about Friday. WTF?
She’s sent a string of emojis, ending with a man in police uniform, and I blink at the phone, my heart beating in my ears.
She sends a photograph, after that. It’s a new painting she’s done. She often sends them over to me for my opinion before they’re finished. It’s a photographic-quality portrait of a woman with armpit hair. For the first time, I ignore her art.
What do you mean? What about Friday? I send back.
One grey tick. Sending.
Two grey ticks. Delivered.
Two blue ticks. Read.
I fight the urge to delete myself from WhatsApp, Facebook, everything. To disappear.
Reuben shifts next to me. Our mattress is cheap, the bed an IKEA double. It feels small, and I bob like I’m at sea as he moves. He’s reading something highbrow. One of the classics. There are too many great books in the world to read shit, he will say, and I will feel guilty when I sneak a romcom into the bath.
Instinctively, I hold my phone away from him. A sharp pain radiates up from my wrist.
The police are coming. No doubt. Surely, I have to tell him. To pave the way for the lies I will soon tell.
‘Look at this,’ I say, surprised by how shocked my voice sounds.
I would never have said I was an actor, but perhaps I am. I was always changing. Reuben’s the only person I’ve ever been myself with. I’m a free spirit with Laura. A naughty younger sister with Wilf. My opinions become those of the people I’m with, as if the fabric those people are made of rubs off on to me. And, underneath it all, who am I? Who is Joanna? I am opinion-less, formless, smoke.
But here I am, forced into a starring role I never asked for.
‘Not up for chatting,’ Reuben says.
And, despite myself, I smile. People think he is gentle, shy, but there it is: that steely core. There is nothing people-pleasing about Reuben. It is one of the very first things that attracted me to him. His autonomy. That he can say to me: no thanks, and not mean it offensively. It makes it all the better when he asks to join me in the bath, or sits up all night chatting with me, like we did just a few weeks previously, playing old indie songs we loved. Because I know he truly wants to.
‘No, look.’ I hand him my phone.
And then, after a second – he is an exceptionally fast reader – he drops it on the duvet, face down, still lit up, so it tinges the edges of the quilt a bright, lit-up white.
‘What about Friday?’ he says.
‘No idea.’
He rolls over, away from me, withdrawing his cold foot. ‘That bloke,’ he says sleepily.
‘Oh, yes. Must be that,’ I say. ‘The follower.’
‘No. The one from the news. You should tell them. That something suspicious happened to you.’
I close my eyes. How wrong he is. But how could he know?
‘Maybe,’ I manage to say, feeling the blood moving around my head. It thunders past my forehead. I have to tell the police. I have to approach them. But how could I?
I need to let Reuben think I have.
He rolls over fully now, right on to his side. And he doesn’t ask. He doesn’t ask me whether I saw anything. Whether I know anything. He believes me, implicitly.
I lie awake, fizzing, watching the top of the WhatsApp screen that says: typing.
Laura replies.
So he arrives and says there’s a man found by the edge of the canal, believed that he hit his head and died that night (on the news? IDK). He says he saw from the CCTV that I walked nearby – did I see anything? How bizarre?
CCTV. CCTV. CCTV.
I bet it’s everywhere. CCTV. I have never thought about it. Perhaps they cover the entirety of London. Maybe it is a matter of time, for me. Perhaps they’re producing a photofit as we speak. Perhaps, as I was dithering, I turned and looked right at a camera. Staring into its eye, unknowingly. They will be here at any moment.
Was it accusatory? I type.
And then I delete that. I am unconsciously preparing my own evidence.
How strange, I type instead. I’ll let you know if they come calling here … shame he’s weird and not hot.
The banter comes easily to me. The lies.
I put my phone on the bedside table and make a list of evidence in my mind, the light off. I am ostensibly sleeping, and Reuben’s breathing becomes even.
I try to reason with myself. CCTV might not have found me. And I can’t do anything about it. What could I do – sneak into buildings and wipe it? I almost laugh. I wouldn’t even know how. And I don’t want to. I don’t want to get away with it. I want it to never have happened.
What else? I try to think. A hair at the scene. My hair is forever falling out, clogging drains and brushes. But – would they know it’s mine? My mind isn’t clear. No. Not unless they suspect me, and test me. They wouldn’t know. I don’t think.
What else?
No fingerprints. But fibres from my glove on his chest.
The tread of my heels. Was there mud, or just concrete? I can’t remember. It stacks up against me, the evidence. There is no point trying to stop it. They are coming. I lie, rigid, listening for sirens, for the knock at the door.
The anxiety seems to bloom across my body, as if an elephant has taken up residence on my chest. It shifts around as I think, harder and harder, about what I’ve done. I’ve ruined my life, and ended another’s, with that push. That reckless push. I will surely never be the same again. I’ve killed a man. It feels so abstract to me, here in my bedroom.
The right time is now, isn’t it? Before they find me, and after I realize that it’s over for me. That there is too much evidence. That I am too unskilled to pull it off. That the stakes – murder – are too bloody high.
I sigh, trying to shift the elephant, and I roll on to my side. Instinctively, Reuben reaches out for me, scooping me up and pulling me close to him. The duvet’s too hot and his arm’s too heavy. I can’t take it, and so I shift away from him. He makes a disgruntled, disappointed noise; a sort of ohh. But I ignore him.
And then it is morning and Reuben is cooking downstairs like everything is normal. But in the bedroom, I am a prisoner, inside myself.