‘Okay,’ I say.
‘We can.’
‘Okay,’ I say again.
‘Let’s get to it, then. We need to put your defence statement together. It’s your evidence.’ She turns to Reuben. ‘So, according to the phone records, Joanna called you at eleven thirty-three.’
‘Yes,’ he says.
‘And how did she sound?’
‘Well – frightened,’ Reuben says, looking at me. ‘Of course.’
She looks at me. ‘So you hung up, and then you must’ve walked for …’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Your 999 call was at eleven thirty-nine.’
I think quickly, am forced to think quickly. ‘It happened at eleven thirty-nine.’
But the reality, of course, is that it will have been eleven thirty-four. Right after the call cut out. The rest was … the rest was the dithering.
‘So you were pursued while on the phone to Reuben, and then pursued for a further five minutes.’
‘Yes,’ I lie.
‘Right,’ she says. ‘And where were you when you called Reuben?’
My mind spins. Did I ever tell him I was right by the bridge? I don’t think so. ‘Outside the bar,’ I say, hoping there will be no accurate telephone call records. I thank the stars that Reuben turned off my GPS that one time, said Facebook was tracking my every move.
She writes it down. ‘Okay, then.’ She looks up at Reuben. ‘And you agree with this – you corroborate?’
‘Whatever Jo says. That’s the truth,’ Reuben says, his face open, trusting.
Reuben and I are in the car behind Sarah’s office. Neither of us is saying anything. He’s not put the keys in the ignition yet. It’s one of those January days where it seems as though it’s not ever going to get light, the rain beating down like God is drumming his fingers on the roof of the car. I made Reuben come to V Festival with me, years ago, to see The Killers, and it rained like this as we left. You hated that, didn’t you? I’d said to Reuben in the car. He’d nodded, smiling that half-smile. Never make me attend a festival again, he’d said, the car’s wheels spinning in the mud. We failed to move, had to call the AA out, left after dark in the end. I was unable to stop laughing on the way home and, eventually, Reuben joined in.
‘I can’t believe he’s so badly injured,’ Reuben says now. His voice is low. Gravelly.
‘I … I know,’ I say.
‘He’ll give evidence. If he recovers enough,’ Reuben says. ‘So we’ll see … we’ll see him. In court. The man you –’
‘I know,’ I say quietly. ‘I know.’
‘I feel like a dickhead for sounding off. I sounded like a victim blamer or something,’ he says.
‘You didn’t,’ I say. ‘It all seems … so unfair. So shit.’
‘Yes. If you hadn’t been there … it’s not like you were waiting to hurt someone.’
I can see him grappling with it. My crime. The law. Everything.
‘I mean, you hardly did anything wrong. Did you?’ he says, and when he turns to me, his eyes look desperate, lined and older looking than before.
I squeeze his hand, not knowing what to say. Of course I did, I want to tell him, sadly.
‘You made a mistake. But then you did everything you could to fix it,’ he says. ‘I just … I just don’t know why they’re going after you like this.’
I can’t think about it. People may be sympathetic, but it is hardly commonplace. A man is disabled because of me. I swallow. If I had left two minutes later. Two minutes earlier. If he had been wearing different trainers. If only Sadiq hadn’t frightened me – surely some of this is partly his fault? – then none of it would have happened. If I had been brave enough to turn my head, just a few degrees. I would have seen.
God, I am so stupid. I have ruined my life. I have ruined his life. I have ruined Reuben’s life. The only person winning is Sarah.
‘I wish things had been different,’ I say, my voice low.
‘Me, too,’ he says. ‘I wish we’d stayed on the line. That we hadn’t got cut off.’
‘I really thought … I really thought it was curtains. I thought he was going to – to … to get me,’ I say, and my voice breaks. Because, underneath it all, of course, I am a victim, too. Imran is worse off than me, but I am a victim of something.
‘I know,’ he says.
I think of the lie I told. The tiny lie that felt meaningless. I got him out of the water straight away. They fight, the instinct for self-preservation and the instinct to tell the truth, like stags with locked horns, both sitting on my chest, their antlers stabbing my heart. And suddenly I am telling him, my husband, and maybe he can help. Maybe he can share the weight.
‘God,’ I say, wishing – foolishly – to downplay it. To mislead. ‘I wish I had got him out of the puddle immediately.’
It’s as though a silent bomb has gone off in the car. Everything looks the same. The gear stick. The Yankee Candle hanging air freshener left over from the previous Christmas, now faded to a light pink. The rain running down the windows, the drops with trailing tails. And yet everything has changed. The air crackles with it, like that moment between lightning and thunder, like the moment between the two final chords of a piano concerto.
‘What?’ Reuben says softly, slowly, a note of danger in his voice.
I turn and look at him. His stubble has become a full beard, the strands a dull auburn in the fading winter light, stark against his white shirt. Of course, he’s not misled.
‘What?’ he says again.
‘I didn’t get him out of that puddle as soon as I said. I was … I was so scared. I wasn’t doing anything.’
‘How long? So those call records – so your account of it? It’s wrong? My evidence is wrong?’
I ignore his other questions. ‘Minutes. I almost called you again. I almost … I almost walked away.’
Reuben makes a sudden movement, towards the gear stick, his left hand reaching to grab it. He grips it like it’s an enemy’s hand.
‘You almost left?’
‘I was so afraid. I thought he was going to kill me. And then I was so afraid … of what I’d done. I was in shock. You’ve no idea. You’ve no idea how something like that – it changes things.’
‘I’ve some idea,’ he says.
It has the desired effect: it reminds me that this isn’t happening only to me. That it isn’t my life alone that’s changed forever.
‘Yes. I was just … I don’t even properly remember,’ I say, although I do. I remember absolutely everything: the descending mist. The bright, lemon yellow of the street lights. The man I thought to be Sadiq lying at the bottom of the stairs, his limbs bent at strange angles. How wet my clothes got. My hair clinging to my neck like snakes. How I was paralysed. With fear of him, of course. But also with shock. At myself.
‘Can’t you see?’ I say. ‘I was terrified. I was dithering.’
Reuben says nothing.
And so I add, ‘Nobody knows.’
I shouldn’t have told him that way. I should have been straight with him. Looked him in the eye. A full and frank confession. I could have told him I was ashamed of it. Paved the way. Not this. This selfish, stupid, offhand confession. I went in the back door instead of the front way; I surprised him, like a burglar in the middle of the night, and now he’s surprising me back.
‘Wouldn’t you ever consider leaving? Wouldn’t you dither for just a second?’ I say.
His gaze swivels to me. That green gaze.
‘Did you know?’ he says. ‘About the puddle? That he couldn’t breathe?’
‘No. No.’
He nods.
‘But wouldn’t you ever consider leaving?’ I push, pressing him, ransacking his mind for a grain of forgiveness, of understanding. But it’s not there. I am opening drawers and cupboards that I have already looked in, searching for something I am never going to find.
He doesn’t answer me. He puts the keys in the ignition. The car into gear. Checks each mirror. Methodically. I wait. I wait to hear, but nothing comes. Only the sound of the rain, like a timer, ticking down.
‘No,’ he says, after a few moments have elapsed. ‘I’m sorry, but – no. That’s a life. There. In the puddle. While you waited. While you stood and did nothing.’
17
Conceal