‘Yeah,’ I lie. ‘Just – chat.’ I like to chat to Reuben’s father, and he respects that.
Mum opens the front door when we arrive. She is tall, unlike me, and has her hair in a conservative up-do. She looks just like Wilf: lithe, with bulbous eyes. They both have the same exaggerated mannerisms. They’re heavy-footed; when we stay over I can always hear her and Wilf stomping around upstairs. The occasional time she tells a story she thinks is actually funny, she juts her jaw out as she tells it, self-consciously, as though she shouldn’t be laughing.
‘What’s all this?’ she says.
The tone immediately annoys me. As though I am being a nuisance. Creating drama. That’s the assumption they always make about me. I try to catch Reuben’s eye, but he’s staring fixedly down at the welcome mat. I once told him off, in the car on the way home, for huffing throughout a Christmas dinner with them, and he behaves differently now, less antagonistic and more mournful.
Wilf is sitting in the dining room, at the head of the table, and Dad is pouring wine from an actual carafe. Reuben nods to them, not saying anything, and sits at the other end. I sit next to him, and his hand lands on my knee, squeezing gently. Mum and Dad sit, too, opposite each other, and look at us expectantly, slightly impatiently. I find myself thinking I’m glad that I’m not pregnant; that I don’t have to tell them like this. I could just imagine their tight smiles, their tiny congratulations. They don’t know how to be joyful. They would say they gave us a happy childhood, my parents. That they took us to meadows where we ran amongst the wildflowers. But those tiny smiles, the condescension, their Oh, Joannas – they erased it all. Only, I am not brave enough to ever say. I might be wrong. Wilf seems happy enough. And so it’s not legitimate, my suffering. It doesn’t feel it, anyway.
I look across at Reuben. I can’t do it. I can’t say it. But I know he can. They trust him. But I become different around them. No, not different: a worse version of myself.
‘On Friday night Jo was harassed by a man,’ Reuben says.
He omits the bar, and the night out. I’m glad of it. I’m glad of all of it. That he’s explaining, and not me. He legitimizes it somehow. It’s not right, but it’s the way it is.
‘Right,’ Dad says, his eyebrows drawing together, not in concern but in confusion.
‘She thought he was following her, but it was another, similar-looking man,’ Reuben says. He swallows, withdrawing his hand from my knee.
Mum picks up a coaster and starts turning it around rhythmically, so that its square edges bang against the table, one side, then the next, then the next. It’s a sound I remember from a thousand awkward childhood dinners. We ate good food – organic food, balanced diets – but we had no conversation. Not real conversation, anyway.
Wilf is sitting back in his seat, his body language languid, but his face serious, appraising mine. He’s grown a goatee. It looks ridiculous.
‘When he got too close she pushed him, and he’s injured and in hospital. The police are involved …’
It’s the best he could do with a bad story. It’s factual, unemotional; exactly as I want it to be.
‘Involved how?’ Mum says sharply.
‘They’ve charged me,’ I say, breaking my silence.
‘With what?’ Wilf says, speaking for the first time.
He’s a City worker. Something in finance. I have no idea what. But he seems to know things about the world. True to form, when I say causing grievous bodily harm with intent, his eyebrows raise, and he says, ‘Section eighteen?’
I cringe when I recall thinking a section eighteen meant I was going home without charge. How do these people know so much more than me?
‘Right. Well. When’s all … that?’ Mum says, awkwardly swirling wine around her glass.
‘The summer,’ says Reuben, before I can. ‘Early June.’
‘Well, there must be something more to it than that,’ Dad says. ‘It’s preposterous for them to charge you for self-defence.’
I suppose his indignation is on my behalf; that it has its roots in sympathy, somewhere, hidden deep.
‘It wasn’t self-defence. Because I was mistaken,’ I say.
‘How badly injured is he?’
‘Quite,’ I say. ‘He was … I didn’t realize it but he was face down in a puddle –’
‘For a few seconds,’ Reuben interjects, and I swallow hard.
‘They must think you did something else,’ Dad says.
He was always this way; sure he was correct even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. About immigration and benefit claimants and London’s knife crime. Reuben used to try to tell him, in the early days, until every visit ended in a row and he stopped.
‘They must,’ Dad says again.
Mum nods ferociously next to him and I see now: this is how it’s going to be. Everybody will have an opinion on me, on what I did, and on what the State did to me in response. Everybody is wearing lenses, and they see me through them now, filtered through their own views of what constitutes violence and self-defence and the law. Even Reuben does it. I see him looking at me sometimes, when he thinks I am engrossed in something else. His expression is puzzled. Incredulous, even.
I am public property. Nothing is private any more. My life has been blown up, projected on to a wall for everybody to watch. A decision I made late at night after too many drinks is being played out in front of us like a tragedy on the stage. I’m not sure even I would defend that reckless, quick decision I made, and yet I have to, to stay free.
‘That sounds really unfair,’ Wilf says. ‘It’s an honest mistake. And you’re … you know.’
‘Well, quite,’ Mum says. ‘Your imagination. You were always … imaginative. Your make-believe world.’
Reuben’s head snaps up and then he lets out a derisive snort. ‘That’s the best you can come up with?’ he says. ‘That’s your sympathy?’ I put a hand out to stop him, but he stands up. ‘I knew you’d be like this,’ he says. ‘Can’t you see she needs …’
He walks across the dining room and I follow him, not out of anger for myself but out of loyalty to him.
Wilf catches us in the hall. Reuben’s hand is on the door, wrenching it open.
‘I meant because you’re a woman,’ Wilf says. ‘I know … I’ve seen those viral videos. The catcalling. Stuff like that. I know it’s different for you.’
‘I know,’ I say, looking up at him. ‘Thank you.’
I remember the fear I felt that night. Sadiq’s body pressed against mine in the bar. His hand shackled to mine against my will. I remember how it felt when I thought he was following me. Like feelings I’ve felt a thousand times before. But bigger, this time.
That everyday sexism. The builders who yell at you – abuse or flirtations – and the men who sit too close on the tube, spreading their legs suggestively. The bouncer who follows you down a side street, telling you what he’d like to do to you. The eager man at the party who thinks it’s romantic to repeatedly pursue you. Are women not always pleading self-defence? Are we not always provoked?
‘Thank you,’ I say to Wilf again. Reuben is standing outside, pointedly waiting – not unusual for him – and I turn again to my brother. ‘I had better go …’
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Shame.’ He reaches out and punches my shoulder; something he’s never done before. ‘Was going to fill you in on my failed love life.’
It’s a rare moment for Wilf. Usually, he’s all about keeping up appearances. Complaining about capital gains tax. Worrying about having to sack his cleaner. That sort of thing. Things dressed up as complaints, but ones I can see behind. I have no idea what his hopes and dreams must really be. It’s impossible to see, with all that rubbish obscuring them.
‘What happened?’ I say, wanting distraction. Wanting, for just a moment, to judge someone else’s life, the way I used to. Before.
‘The latest binned me off. Said I must be posh to live in Wimbledon.’