‘He was found, face down, in a shallow puddle in the early hours of Saturday morning. It has now been confirmed that he died from a lack of oxygen reaching his brain during this time and catastrophic head injuries sustained from a fall. He had been out jogging.’
It feels as though my body’s not mine any more. My hand holding the mascara wand. My feet nestled in the carpet. They do not belong to me.
It could have been prevented. That’s the worst thing. I keep thinking that something is the worst, and then finding something else, like a layered onion with a rotting core.
They cut to a video of a woman standing nervously outside a white building. I can’t make out where it is.
‘Now we’re speaking to Imran’s sister, Ayesha,’ the news presenter says.
‘We’re so sorry about Imran,’ another presenter says.
There they are. The people I have tried to avoid.
‘I am – was – his sister,’ the woman says carefully. She’s beautiful; petite, with huge eyes, a turned-down, full mouth. She has a mole, right in the middle of her cheek. A beauty mark. ‘Our parents are back in Pakistan. It was – it was just us.’
I can’t stop looking. At this woman whose life I have ruined. If only … if only I could reach out into the television and touch her. Tell her how it was. My cataclysmic mistake.
Imagine if I had handed myself in. Dragged him out of the puddle. Explained myself. They might’ve let me go. Surely they would have, once they’d seen that I was good. But I am not good and he is dead and I have no choices left: I have run out of them.
I finish applying the mascara, mechanically, like a robot.
Outside, sleet flurries swirl around an illuminated halo of a street lamp. It’s still dark. Edith has put fairy lights up. She does it every year. Reuben says it’s tacky, but I like it. She puts them around the Hammersmith and Fulham Council parking meters and along the steps leading to the front doors. I can hardly believe the world is continuing.
I wonder how many other near misses I have had. How many times have we laughingly crossed the street and not seen a car speed past moments later?
Reuben comes into the bedroom, his keys in his hand. ‘Be back late,’ he says. ‘Got a thing.’
He is always mysterious about his work; will hardly ever tell me exactly what he’s doing.
‘Okay,’ I say woodenly, but my voice catches.
He stops, his hand on the door, and looks at me. ‘You alright?’ he says softly. ‘You seem kind of … down.’
‘Yes,’ I say, thinking, Don’t come near me. Don’t reach out to me. I’ll tell you if you do. I nod quickly, looking off to the left, not meeting his eyes.
‘Hey,’ he says, dropping his keys on the bed and coming close to me. In a single movement, one we have practised again and again, he wraps me up in his arms. My head slots neatly into the place between his shoulder and his neck. His hands come around my shoulders. ‘Jojo,’ he says.
It wasn’t Sadiq. That is all I can think about while the man I love holds me close to him.
I have killed without reason. It was bad enough before, but it is worse now. Somebody innocent has died at my hands.
‘What’s up?’ Reuben says.
Perhaps I could … perhaps he would help me. Stand by me. Make it better. My confession looms tantalizingly in front of me.
I lean back and look into his eyes for what feels like the first time since Before. ‘Nothing,’ I say glumly.
‘Tell me your worries,’ he says; a sentence he’s uttered many times before.
I keep staring at him, and he raises his eyebrows, just a fraction, like somebody encouraging a frightened, unsure toddler to take its first steps. He raises them further, then gives me a tiny smile, a smile just for me, and it is as though my chest is expanding and letting all the good feelings in again: hope and optimism and forgiveness and love.
‘Something happened on Friday,’ I say slowly, wondering what I’m going to say, unable to stop thinking about the intoxicating relief of telling him.
He steps back, but runs his hands down my arms, as if warming me up, then takes my hands in his. ‘What?’ he says. ‘With the man?’
I nod. I’ll start at the beginning. I’ll tell him – properly – about the bar. And then … and then I’ll see.
‘Yes. Sort of,’ I say, taking a deep breath. It wouldn’t be just mine any more. It would be our secret. Shared. He would help me. ‘I did something bad.’
There. It is out there. My confession. My half-confession.
‘What?’ Reuben says gently. ‘It’s okay.’
‘He had … he’d grabbed me. In the bar. I felt his …’ I’m surprised when the tears come. This isn’t about that. And yet – isn’t it, all the same? ‘He grabbed my bum,’ I say. ‘It was really full on. Worse than I made it out to be. I was very scared.’
‘Shit,’ Reuben says. ‘I’m so sorry, Jo. You should’ve said.’
‘I know, but – but after that –’
‘Yes?’ he says. And then, because he works with youths, and always knows the right things to say, he looks me directly in the eyes and says, ‘It wasn’t your fault. You did nothing wrong. It’s never okay to do what he did. To grab you and to follow you.’
I nod again, but now the moment is over. I can’t tell him.
It was my fault.
It was all my fault.
We break apart soon after that.
10
Reveal
‘Interview tape is running,’ Detective Inspector Lawson says. ‘Video on.’ He cautions me again.
I can see myself reflected in the lens of the video camera.
‘Can you please state your name for the record?’ Lawson says.
I lean forward. ‘No comment,’ I say.
It’s what Sarah told me to do; it’s what we decided I would do. To buy us time to build a defence. So that I wouldn’t incriminate myself. It was for the best, she said, until we knew what we were up against.
‘And please can you state your date of birth for the record?’ the other detective, Detective Sergeant Davies, asks.
‘No comment.’
‘And can you give us your address, please – otherwise we won’t be able to process this interview at all.’
I dart a look at Sarah. She’s looking intently at me, and then the police officers, and then me again. She nods her head, just once.
‘No comment.’
‘What happened that night, Joanna?’
‘No comment.’
‘If you explain, we might be able to end things here. We’ll release you. You can get some sleep. If you cooperate, Joanna, things will be much easier for you.’
‘I …’
The CID both sit back, together – they are like one unit, with the same body language and expressions, one a paler, taller version of the other.
‘No comment,’ I say, feeling like a clown in the middle of a serious meeting.
‘Let’s just cooperate, Joanna. I take it your silence means you’re thinking about it? Pleading guilty?’
‘No,’ I say.
‘The victim’s name is Imran Quarashi.’
‘Imran,’ I say. Who is he? What does he like? Where is he now? Will he get better? I can’t ask these questions, of course.
Sarah shoots me a look. Do not say anything except no comment, she counselled me. I’ve failed already. I smile apologetically at her, but she ignores me.
‘How did you injure Imran, Joanna?’
‘No comment.’
‘You pushed him pretty hard, didn’t you?’
‘No comment.’
‘And he was in the water, wasn’t he? Do you know he’s on a ventilator?’
That’s the question that does it. I can’t handle it. I can’t let this go on. These useless no comments. These accusations. It’s the truthful accusation that hurts the most.
And so I tell the lie. The same lie again.
‘I got him out of the puddle straight away,’ I say. It doesn’t really feel like a lie as the words come out. They rasp from the back to the front of my mouth, feeling urgent and correct and true.
Sarah’s eyebrows shoot up, and she reaches a hand out, as though I’m a volatile dog about to bolt. ‘A moment,’ she says, rising.
We go into a side room on our own.
‘Not a word,’ she says.
‘But –’