It is late January and it seems everybody has an opinion about me on the Internet. Reuben was right – it’s become a thing, somehow. In the Daily Mail. The Express. The Huffington Post. Some of them say that we have all been there. That every woman has felt her heart speed up when she’s heard footsteps behind her on a night out, or when simply walking alone. Some of them say Little Venice has become dodgy, run-down. Others say the effect of men frightening women is cumulative; that the catcalls, the thrown insults, the mansplaining, all add up, and many women are merely waiting to be attacked. Of course we appear to overreact, the women on Twitter say, because it is always bubbling under the surface. Provocation over decades.
I saw an article about myself, recommended to me on Facebook. I clicked it instinctively, then closed the tab, then reopened it. I couldn’t avoid it forever. My trial was approaching. I’d started reading, just the first few sentences. After all, some of the commentators might – as Reuben said – be nice.
I must have used more force than was reasonable. That’s what one woman – a lawyer – is saying. I can’t possibly have only intended to defend myself. Nobody defending themselves lashes out first, and with such initial force. They do not know that he was already running, already heading for the steps, already had some momentum. They do not know and they do not care. Was it really possible to make such a mistake? she goes on to ask. Isn’t it the job of the reasonable person to check?
There’s an article with a photograph of me inserted into the right-hand side. I haven’t seen it for years. It must have been taken from my Facebook account. I’m staring moodily into the distance, holding a Starbucks Christmas cup, the winter sunlight behind me.
And, further down, there’s one of Imran. I gasp, looking into his eyes for the very first time. They’re set widely apart, almost bulbous. He’s grinning, a lopsided, self-conscious grin. His distinctive bone structure cuts shadows into his cheeks. He was handsome, undoubtedly.
I scroll past, unable to look at him any longer.
I’m everywhere: on crappy Internet journalist sites and in articles by women for The Pool – a woman called Caroline writes so sympathetically about my plight – and the comments section of the Guardian. Was I right to lash out? Can self-defence be pre-emptive? Did I have a duty to check? Is it a feminist issue?
There are reams of articles about how women are always being accused of lying in court, and yet rarely do so. We never accuse people who have been mugged of making it up or berate them for having brought it on themselves. Let’s believe Joanna, one woman writes passionately. She rescued the man immediately. Let’s trust that she made an honest mistake; that if it had been the man from the bar, she would have been justified. Let’s stop vilifying women, presuming them guilty, and not innocent.
I stare at the article in shock. I have goosebumps all over my arms and back. My face is lit up, blue, by the computer screen. I can see it reflected in the window.
The article is sympathetic and passionate and well written. Only, a small voice speaks up inside me: I have lied. I am lying. I left him there in the puddle while I was procrastinating. While I was deciding what to do. Does just one lie, annexed to the main story like a distasteful extension to a period property, invalidate my main defence? I don’t know. I’ll never know. I don’t know the legal position. I can’t ask Sarah.
I close my laptop, and my face falls into darkness, disappearing entirely from the window.
Sarah calls me later.
‘I’m meeting Sadiq next week,’ she says. ‘I’ll get a statement from him.’
‘Good,’ I say.
21
Conceal
January passes. I hardly remember it. The news is filled only with weather – how much snow there’s been, how consistently cold it is, every single day – and Reuben sometimes tries to talk to me about that most banal of subjects but I can’t bring myself to discuss even the weather with him. I can’t remember the last time I looked him in the eye. I don’t sleep, and I certainly don’t sleep with him. I lie awake most nights, listening for sirens, listening out for the doorbell or the thrum of a text message vibrating on my bedside table. And, lately, reliving it all. The moment I pushed him. The moment I left. But others, too. Reliving it from his perspective. What he might’ve been thinking as he was innocently running behind me. How it felt to feel his life ending, there in Little Venice, as his murderer stood a few feet away, not caring, not helping.
It’s a white February day and Ed is telling me in great detail about his house extension. ‘We couldn’t just convert the loft,’ he is saying. ‘Some bureaucracy, you know …’
My wrist splint is off, but my hand is not quite the same. I suppose it is because of the delay in seeing my doctor. It still feels stiff and strange.
I stop listening when Ayesha arrives. She materializes just as I am thinking about her, tuning Ed out, thinking about how much I would like to see her.
She looks different. Or maybe she’s changed only in my mind. She’s more beautiful than I remember. That wide, smooth forehead.
‘These are so late,’ she says, gesturing to the stack of books she’s holding. ‘They’re the ones I … man, it was months ago. I almost nicked off with them, I was so embarrassed,’ she says, putting a hand in front of her mouth, ‘but then I thought “No, Ayesha. Take them back!”’
She is wearing rose-gold bangles up both of her arms. They jangle as she brings her hands up to stop Bilal climbing the steps. ‘Sorry, hi,’ she says to me.
She tilts her head as she looks at me, remembering. Wilf. That lie.
‘Hi,’ I say.
Bilal is taller, his limbs having moved from toddler to child in only a few weeks, and he waves at me. His hands are still dimpled, though, little rings of fat around the base of each wrist.
‘What’s the damage?’ she says, waving the books.
‘Oh, nothing,’ I say vaguely. How could I ever fine her?
She and Bilal head to the back of the bus and, like I am an orbiting moon, I follow them. I am powerless to stop.
The heating’s on in the bus and it’s at its loudest right next to the vent, at the back. She stands next to it. She’s slim, must feel the cold, but all I can think is that I am pleased; nobody can hear us here – the noise will obscure our words. I can ask her … things.
Bilal sits on the floor and pulls a Julia Donaldson title off the bottom shelf and splays it open like a butterfly in his lap.
‘Bil,’ she says softly, then turns to me, crossing her legs as she stands, so her right and left feet are the wrong way around.
‘How are you doing?’ I say.
‘Knackered. This parenting lark … Hey, how’s your brother?’
I shrug, trying not to look blasé. ‘He’ll be okay. He is okay,’ I say. ‘Better.’
‘I wish I was,’ she says.
‘Yes.’
‘Everyone’s so angry,’ she says. ‘It doesn’t help.’
‘Who’s angry?’ I say sharply.
‘No one cares. You know?’ She blinks, then seems to hear my question, on a few seconds’ delay, and answers. ‘The Internet, I guess. People on forums. Organizations. They think maybe the police didn’t investigate it enough – because he was a Muslim. We had a little protest sort of thing, outside the mosque, but only eight people came.’ Her expression twists into a bitter smile.