I can’t believe I’ve gone back to work, but I have, and I’ve managed a day.
Ed often drops me home, then takes the bus back to the garage to fill it up with petrol and park it, safely under cover, for the night. That’s how it works. He is nice like that.
I used to find the library bus comforting, being surrounded by the pages and pages of other people’s thoughts: whatever you’re going through, I would think, somebody has been there before you. I don’t think that today.
I have gone to tell Ed three times today, during our proximity together on the bus. He has always brought out a confessional quality in me, like a priest. He would be less judgemental than Reuben – of course – but he has almost too much perspective sometimes. If we’re not in war-torn Syria, if we have a roof over our heads, there can be no problems in his world.
We met six years ago, when he hired me. He never asked once about Oxford, and never has since, even though I mention it often. It’s one of the things I like most about him. He observes me dispassionately. He brings me in a cake on most Mondays – he bakes on Sunday night, to stave off the pre-work feelings, he says. We eat it and peruse the new books that have come in. I have become used to always having a copy of the latest bestseller, for free. A few years ago, that would have been all I wanted from a job.
We pull up outside my flat. It’s in darkness. Reuben’s at his youth club’s Monday meeting.
Ed has left the engine running, is waiting for me to collect my bag and go. It’s just after five thirty, and pitch black outside.
‘You have guests,’ he says mildly, gesturing with a liver-spotted hand to my door. His glasses glint as he turns to look at me.
And that’s when I see them. Two figures at my door. I can only see the tops of their heads, one dark, one blond, lit up by the street lamp above them. They’re at the bottom of the stairs to our basement flat, their legs disappearing into the shadows. It’s the police. It must be.
I wonder how they have walked down past all the plants I bought recently on a whim.
And then the panic sets in.
The sweating is back. The late-night animal is sitting heavily on my chest again.
I can’t make Ed drive me back now. I can’t raise his suspicions. I try to think of a story, a reason to go back, but my mouth is parched, the well of lies dried out.
‘Oh, I know what that is,’ I gabble.
‘The pigs,’ Ed says mildly. He looks at me, his eyes moon-like in the darkness.
‘The what?’
‘Police,’ he says, gesturing down at the men.
They’re not moving.
‘How do you know that?’ I say.
‘Oh, two blokes. A Vauxhall Insignia. A second rear-view mirror. Pretty obvious,’ he says.
His voice is toneless, no judgement, no suspicion – and no derision that I didn’t know myself. That’s Ed’s way. Once again, I am struck by how much the people in my life trust me.
‘You’re expecting them?’ he adds, looking closely at me.
I realize I have already shown my hand, already said I knew who they were. I try to think of benign offences, but my mind is blank.
‘Three,’ I spit out, after an embarrassing silence. ‘Three burglaries in two weeks on our street. Must’ve been another.’
‘Oh, Jo,’ Ed says, his eyes full of compassion. ‘How scary for you, in the basement.’
My eyes fill with tears at how much he cares about me.
I grab the door handle with my good hand and leave without saying goodbye, walking towards our flat. I can’t speak to them. I must hide.
I hear Ed pull away, the engine fading as he disappears down the road, leaving me alone, trusting that I am not trying to dodge the police who wish to speak to me, that I am not – whether I intended to be or not – on the run. How slippery that slope really is.
I don’t want to walk past them, and Ed dropped me almost at my door, so I have no choice but to ascend the steps two doors down from mine, not looking at the police, looking only straight ahead. I don’t press a buzzer. I don’t try the door. I merely stand in the alcove, hoping I am in complete darkness, an anonymous figure the police don’t want to speak to. I can hear them murmuring, two doors along, beneath me at my basement door, but can’t make out their words.
My back is flat against the blue door, and my heart is thudding heavily in my chest. I close my eyes and pray for them to leave. To give up. That nobody comes out of this door, expresses surprise, calls me by my name. I stand there in silence, hoping I haven’t been seen, and wait.
It is ten minutes before they leave.
It is a further five before I come out, my knees trembling.
They have left me a note. Please call them, it says.
8
Reveal
The solicitor arrives at nine o’clock in the morning. Sergeant Morris is back – I don’t understand her shift patterns – and she comes to get me from my cell. I leave my cell in my prison-issue wear and meet the solicitor in a large interviewing room.
I am hung-over. I have had half-hourly wakings for seven hours. The one time I didn’t acknowledge my name being called, the police officer came into my cell and shook me awake. Every time I fell asleep it was time for the next one.
Sarah is not how I imagined her, but she’s not far off either. Long, dark fluffy hair. Tall and willowy; perhaps as tall as Reuben. There is an air of chicness about her. Red lipstick to start the day. Crooked teeth, but very white.
‘Joanna – the duty solicitor, Sarah Abberley. Sarah – Joanna.’ Morris turns and leaves without another word.
‘So,’ Sarah says, once we’re alone.
I like that proactive so. She explains the caution to me. She breaks down all of the words, even though I know what they mean.
‘You’ve been assigned to the CID, who are for serious crimes,’ she adds, when she’s finished.
‘I just … what’s happening? It was just a push.’
She looks up at me sharply. Her eyes are blue, and incisive, like a hawk’s. They move quickly, darting around, taking in my clothes, my shoes, my shaking hands.
She gets out a pen and a branded notepad from her law firm.
She is looking down at the pad, taking down my name, the date and the time, but then she raises her eyebrows to me. They’re plucked but not overly so. Smooth, angular dark lines.
‘What happened?’ she says simply.
I start from the beginning.
Sarah writes notes occasionally, but she mostly just sits, looking at me. Nodding and mmm-ing.
I tell her everything.
Except one thing.
It’s not even a lie. Not really. Simply an omission.
I don’t tell her of my pause. My tiny pause as the man in the street lay in that puddle. I can’t tell her; don’t want her to know that I dithered. That, in another life, I might’ve fled. I tell her I got him out of the puddle immediately.
When I’ve finished, she says, ‘Look, they won’t give me any disclosure. So you need to give a no comment interview.’
‘No comment? Why would I do that? I have lots of comments,’ I say. ‘I want to explain.’
‘I know. You have a strong defence. But they are being obstructive. They won’t tell me anything. What you said at the scene. The position the victim was in. His injuries. If they have witnesses.’
‘I … he was at the bottom of the stairs. I said I pushed him –’
‘My advice is to give a no comment interview,’ she says, her voice razor-sharp, cutting me into ribbons.
Embarrassed, chastened, by her tone, I look around the room. There’s cladding on the walls. Grey-green, the colour of a dirty pond. It’s spongy, and makes the room look smaller. Soundproofing, maybe. There’s a gap in the cladding, like a dado rail, only it’s white plastic, with a red strip running around it. I extend my fingers towards it.
‘Don’t,’ Sarah says, reaching a slim arm out to stop me. ‘It’s a panic alarm. You’ll send a load of police in here. The last thing you want.’
‘Okay. I’ll give the no comment interview,’ I say after a moment’s thought.
‘Good. Now, Joanna. I think they will be talking about causing grievous bodily harm with intent.’
‘What’s causing grievous bodily harm with intent?’