‘It’s very serious.’
She passes me a sheet of paper, an Internet printout. It has Offences Against the Person Act 1861 written across the top.
Offences Against the Person. ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I’m still not really understanding.’
‘Okay,’ she says, grabbing a blank sheet of paper and a pen. On a page she writes murder, followed by attempted murder, manslaughter, s18 (GBH with intent), s20 (GBH), common assault. ‘These are in descending order of seriousness,’ she says. ‘Killing, trying to kill, killing with reason or excuse.’ She points to the words as she runs down the list.
‘But I didn’t kill anyone.’
‘Section eighteen is causing grievous bodily harm with intent. Section twenty – causing grievous bodily harm. GBH.’
‘Right.’
‘Lastly – common assault.’ She taps her pen against the sheet of paper.
I wonder dimly if she loved law school; if she always wanted to be a lawyer. If the bureaucratic justice system disappoints her. I’d never thought of being a lawyer. But perhaps I should have. I would like to do what she does. Turn up on weekends and save the day in a pinstriped suit.
‘Causing grievous bodily harm with intent. Just below attempted murder,’ I say, tracing a finger over the words. She’s pressed hard with the ballpoint pen, and the letters feel three-dimensional, the paper curling underneath them. ‘I didn’t have any intent,’ I say.
‘You pushed a man.’ She says it kindly.
‘But …’ I say. ‘He was … Sadiq was …’
‘I know. And we’re going to run that. We’ll say it was self-defence, but back it up with another legal doctrine. Called mistake. It says if you believed the mistake you made – genuinely – then the court will treat you as if it were true.’
‘Good,’ I say.
Causing grievous bodily harm with intent. What intent? Am I a monster? I wish there was a mirror in the interview room that I could look into and inspect myself. To see if I have changed. I haven’t seen myself since Friday evening.
She pushes her hair back. It’s flyaway, fine, like mine, and it falls forward again, like grass swaying in a spring breeze.
‘Okay, Joanna,’ she says, leaning forward. Her foot squeaks against the linoleum underneath us. ‘Let’s talk worst-case scenarios.’
She’s levelling with me. Making the mistake that – because I am well spoken and intelligent looking – I am not a mess: a fuck-up. That I deserve to be levelled with.
‘No, I …’ I say. ‘I don’t want to know. I don’t like worst-case scenarios.’
I don’t add that I prefer to bury my head in the sand, that I have lost jobs and failed exams and simply not turned up to things when it mattered. That I have quit things that just seemed to be – somehow – too hard to continue with.
She sits back now, looking at me with those bird-like eyes. ‘No?’ she says. ‘I would want to know.’
‘No.’
‘What do you do for a living?’
‘I work in a library,’ I say. ‘A mobile library.’
Already, that life – my job – feels like another universe. The regulars who I would nickname. Quiet, calm Buddhist Ed, the librarian and my manager. The children I help to discover reading; a world of complete magic. I love lots of things about the job. I love sitting in the sun under the skylight on quiet days. I love recommending my recent favourite thriller to people. I love meeting everybody: babies, elderly people. Lonely people.
Sarah nods. ‘There are some things in your favour, anyway,’ she says to me. ‘Some good news.’
‘Yes?’ I say.
‘You stayed and called 999. You did CPR. The court like all this stuff.’
‘Yes,’ I say, not telling her how close I came to walking away entirely. How easy it would have been. How much I regret it. ‘Is it very serious?’ I say after a pause, wanting her reassurance.
But, just like her steel-grey bag and her stern red lipstick, she doesn’t hold back. ‘Yes,’ she murmurs. ‘I’m afraid so.’
I look down at her papers, avoiding her eyes. She keeps staring at me. Not intensely. Just thoughtfully. Impassively. My eyes run over her notes, and I avert them after a second, in shock.
I look at the wall, at the door, down at my hands. Anything to stop my brain from processing what I’ve seen, like a partner in denial about a text spotted on their other half’s mobile phone.
But I can’t forget it.
I can’t un-see it.
A printout from the Internet. The CPS Sentencing Guidelines. Three years was written at one end of an arrow.
And at the other, there was simply one word.
Life.
9
Conceal
Reuben’s made a fry-up. The smell turns my stomach. I am now nine stone.
‘Alright,’ he says as I walk, ghost-like, into the kitchen. My pyjamas are damp from sweating all night. I have made lists in my mind, lists that I am too afraid to commit to paper for fear of creating evidence.
Tread marks. Hairs. Glove fibres. CCTV.
Reuben kisses me on the top of my head. Unconsciously, I duck away from him, jerking my head away as though I am infectious, poisonous, and he might catch it from me. And isn’t that true? I can’t believe we were on the verge of making a baby together.
He looks at me in surprise. I have never done anything like that – have always been the needy one, the clingy one; childlike in my need for cuddles.
‘Made you eggs,’ he says, instead of asking me what’s wrong.
I don’t reply for a second. He hates eggs. He never cooks them. ‘Tuesday morning cheer-up eggs.’
I can feel tears waiting in the wings, but they won’t come. I am too frightened to cry. I can’t bring myself to say anything, either. I have become almost mute with guilt.
‘Really,’ I say eventually. My voice is hoarse.
He knows I need cheering up. What else has he noticed?
‘Look,’ he says, flopping a fried egg out of the pan. I nod, once. He’s still staring at me, but I ignore him and silently take the plate to the breakfast bar.
I push the egg and beans around my plate. They leave orange smears that start to congeal.
Reuben’s silent, too. He’s hurt, I can tell. He would never say so, would never be so petty as to pick an argument over eggs, but I can tell.
‘I can’t eat this,’ I say. I can’t force it down my dry throat.
I stand and scrape my egg into the bin. Right there, on top of the other rubbish in the bin, is another floppy white disc. Another egg, already in the bin, slightly blackened underneath. He must have burnt the first one. Made me a second.
Sky News is on a silent loop in the background as I dress. I try to use both hands, but my left is still useless; stiff, now, more than painful. We have a TV in our bedroom. Reuben resisted it, at first, said it was dysfunctional, but I like to watch Don’t Tell the Bride and scroll through Instagram on my iPhone before bed. I loved that time.
My top hangs off me. I can see my ribs, just below my collarbones.
I avert my eyes from my changing body and reach for my mascara. I have to leave in half an hour, and all I am thinking is that I shouldn’t be putting make-up on. Maybe if I hadn’t worn mascara, hadn’t worn those shoes … maybe Sadiq would have left me alone. Maybe he’d have approached Laura instead. Or somebody else entirely. Maybe I looked up for it.
And then he wouldn’t have followed me.
And then it wouldn’t have happened.
And now I wouldn’t be hiding.
Just as I apply the last stroke of mascara, the news bulletin changes again.
‘The body of a man left for dead by the side of the canal has been identified by his sister. It is that of Imran Quarashi.’
I am staring at the television. Waiting.
A photo pops up. Imran in a field in the summer. They zoom in, cropping out a woman. He’s smiling. Happy.
I can no longer ignore it. No longer deny it. I killed the wrong man.