‘I know,’ she says, and her eyes are flashing. The whites are clean and pure looking, and I wonder if she self-medicates with eye-brightening drops, late at night, at her desk – like they might do in Suits or Law and Order – and she looks so angry that I can’t bring myself to tell her. To tell her that I have lied.
It’s okay, I am thinking. Nobody will ever know. Nobody knows. Perhaps I can mould time – the sequences of events, the pauses, as the man lay there – like they are plasticine.
We have to go back into the interview room. Sarah leads.
‘My client was not made aware of the extent of the victim’s injuries,’ she says.
I sit back down in the hard plastic chair, which is warm with my own anxiety, and close my eyes. I have no idea what any of it means. I try to block out the two doors, opening one after the other, even though they’re only a centimetre apart, and the panic strip and the soundproofing and the tape recorder and the video and the threadbare carpet and the policemen, and I hope – just hope – that if I think hard enough I will be able – just this once; oh, please, just this once – to go back.
I’ve been back in my cell for an hour when Sergeant Morris comes to collect me. ‘Out,’ she says to me through the hatch.
Sarah and the two CID officers are waiting in a new room. She still looks immaculate. If things were different, I’d ask her what she uses and how she applies it. Perhaps she uses a heat-protecting spray.
It simply says Private Room on the front of the door, just off the custody suite. Three polystyrene cups are littered around, teabags clumped stickily in the bottoms of them.
Sarah looks up at me, and I think I see a hint of an apology in her eyes.
‘Joanna Oliva,’ the blond CID officer says.
‘No comment,’ I say, and I see a ghost of a smile on Sarah’s face.
‘You do not have to say anything,’ the blond man says, ‘but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something you later rely on in court. Anything you do say will be given in evidence.’
I turn to look at Sarah again, confused.
‘You are charged that on 4th December you did cause wounding or did inflict grievous bodily harm with intent on Imran Quarashi, contrary to section eighteen of the Offences Against the Person Act eighteen sixty-one.’
In my mind’s eye, I see Reuben’s eyes widening in shock. I don’t know why I always imagine his reaction, and not my own.
I drag myself back to now.
Charged. I’m charged. There’s to be a trial.
I will be cross-examined by barristers in wigs, intending to catch me out. I’ll stand in the dock of the Crown Court while a jury sits and judges me. Will this be on my record forever? I think of the Open University course in social work I considered doing. I see us turned away from a flight to America. I see Reuben, standing by me, because it’s the correct thing to do, but being aghast at what I’ve done, at the change I’ve inflicted on our lives. The image is so vivid, it is almost real.
It goes on: Reuben telling a nameless, faceless colleague that he’s off to visit his estranged wife in prison. The colleague will offer him a drink. One for the road, she’ll say. He’ll accept it, unwillingly at first, and then one drink will turn into two, and he will miss visiting hours, and spend the night telling a blonde woman how much he used to love me.
That thought takes root, right in my stomach, able to germinate in the hollow left by the crime I committed.
The Offences Against the Person Act. Eighteen sixty-one. I turn the words over in my mind like somebody milling soil, uncovering the plants underneath it. Eighteen sixty-one. I’ve done something that a government in Victorian times thought was wrong. Something that’s been wrong since almost the beginning of time. A rung below murder, attempted murder, manslaughter. It sends a shiver through me.
‘Do you have any comments?’ the police officer says.
‘No,’ I say. ‘None.’
I am released on police bail. I’m to return to court on Monday for my bail hearing, proper.
Sarah says, ‘See you then,’ in a businesslike way, as though we’re merely meeting for a coffee, and leaves.
I am given my charge sheet, and there, as I walk into the reception, is Reuben.
He’s leaning against a wall. His legs are crossed at the ankles, and he’s raking a hand back through his hair. He’s wearing dark blue jeans, white trainers and a navy-blue coat with fur around the hood. He looks serious, his grey-green eyes raised to the ceiling. He is a tableau of somebody waiting for bad news. It feels like years since I have seen him.
‘Hi,’ I say, which comes out more like a croak.
‘Jo,’ he says, and the tone he uses is gentle. Kind. He extends a hand towards me, and it envelops mine. It’s cold. ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here,’ he says.
I close my eyes, drinking in his tall, assured form. When I open them again, he’s looking derisively around the reception. It won’t be snobbery; it’ll be something else.
Sure enough, he turns to me and says, ‘So this is where they process everyone.’
I nod once.
His tone is the same as the last time he came with me to see my parents and they were going on and on about a Sancerre wine, pouring it and wafting it and tasting it. ‘You don’t know about wine, do you, Jo?’ Mum observed, and Reuben said, ‘Why would you? Pretentious wankers,’ into my ear, which made me laugh.
I’m given a plastic bag containing my things. My bracelet. My purse. There’s nothing else in there.
‘Where are my clothes …’ I say. ‘My phone?’
‘They’re staying with forensics,’ a police officer says.
I can feel a heat spreading across my cheeks. Forensics. Bail hearings. The future isn’t stretching out in front of me any more. The road’s turned; headed off at a right angle. It’s become overgrown, wild with trees and weeds, so thick we can’t see our way. There is no normal path. No house in the suburbs. No children on our horizon, though it pains me to think it.
‘Oh,’ Reuben says, reaching over and sliding open the Ziploc of my things. ‘This can’t wait.’ He gets out the bracelet, my wedding bracelet, and manoeuvres it on to my arm. It sits loosely, it’s screws removed, but I don’t mind. His gaze holds mine the whole time, the same look on his face – a kind of serious happiness – as on our wedding day. I understand the message immediately.
We walk out of the police station and the cold winter wind feels glorious against my face. I close my eyes into it, like a dog on his first walk of the day, my face held up to the sky, just smelling and feeling the clear air and the space and the freedom. Reuben stands next to me, silently, holding the Ziploc bag, not saying anything. I breathe in the smell of the London car park. The pine trees. The minty-cold winter breeze. The exhaust fumes. It’s overwhelming after twenty hours of the same cell.
When I open my eyes and look at Reuben, I expect to see sympathy – my heart lightens in anticipation of it – but instead there’s a strange expression on his face. And then it occurs to me: he can always see both sides of things. He will always defend the party being slagged off at a dinner party. It’s his way. It annoys my friends, my family, but I like it.
So what if he sees it from the victim’s side?
I can’t think of that. Not now I’m out; free. Who knows how long this freedom will last? I must try to enjoy it.
And, like a woman whose husband has left her, or who’s just been sacked unceremoniously from her job, I don’t think about where that road’s going. I will just concentrate on going home, tonight, with Reuben. To my own bed.
Tonight, I will dream of the hatch. I know I will.
Reuben pours a cup of tea, milk in first, amber steaming liquid second, and passes it to me. Edith is outside, coming home from her dog-walking with her daughter. Edith’s in the wheelchair she sometimes uses. The dogs look older, their beards whiter, their legs rangy.
I turn away from them, cradling my tea, and Reuben looks at me, his eyes watchful, and waits. He doesn’t need to say anything further. I hardly ever owe him anything, and he hardly ever asks anything of me. But he wants this, tonight: an explanation.