I close my eyes. Oh, please let me go back to Before. Before we met Sadiq. Before we left. Before he followed me. Before I pushed him.
But we can’t. I can’t. And now … it is After.
I look down at Sadiq. His left arm is underneath him, twisted strangely. He’s fallen only seven steps, but they’re concrete, and wet. His right arm must have reached out in front of him. It’s landed just to the side of his face. He hasn’t moved at all.
I should go to help him. Call an ambulance. Confess.
Or I should run away, in case he’s about to get up again. Sprint home. Pretend I never did it. Go back to Before, even though I know I can’t.
The street lights are too bright, refracted a hundred times in each drop of misty rain. I can see moisture on the concrete steps like thousands of beads of sweat. I can feel the cold air seeping into my coat. Sadiq is lying still but breathing in and out, in and out, and I look down at him and then around me, and think.
I could run, or I could stay and call him an ambulance.
Now it is decision time.
2
Reveal
I stand and stare at Sadiq. I could walk away. Avoid, like I’ve done for my entire life.
I turn around, my back to him, and take three steps away. And then I stop, looking over my shoulder, sure that he will have risen up behind me like a villain in a fable. But he hasn’t. He’s still there. Still lying down. Still not moving.
Fat raindrops are striking my nose and leaving a trail of smaller ones as though they’ve been split apart.
I am still looking over my shoulder as I think it: I could leave. Little Venice is deserted. I check, up and down the length of the canal. Nobody.
And that’s when the sweating gets worse. I puff out my cheeks and raise my eyes heavenwards and try to think, but all I’m doing is panicking. It’s as though all of the world’s dread and fear and madness have been set free inside my abdomen. My mind is racing but saying nothing, my hands are flexing and making fists – alternating clenched and open, like starfish – and my legs are wobbling.
I look down at Sadiq. Are those headphones? One earbud has fallen out of his ear, the cord white against the concrete like a worm.
I wonder what Reuben would do. Perhaps I can call him back, and ask him. No. I am certain of what he would say. He always does the right thing. His favourite poem is ‘If’. His favourite TV show is The West Wing. He is a social worker for an Islamic charity. My mind throws up these headline points in support of its application to make me leave, now, and never tell him, and it won’t stop. Reuben stacks chairs up at the end of the working day, even though it is the cleaners’ job. He was adopted, thirty-two years ago, and has never once held a grudge. I scraped another car’s door once – so lightly as to be almost imperceptible – and reached to rub at the scratch with a tissue, and Reuben was on his feet and writing a detailed note, leaving our numbers, before I could even protest. He chooses, again and again, the right thing – even though it is hardly ever the easy thing.
For God’s sake, ring 999, he would say, panicked, astonished I was even asking the question.
Perhaps this moment will forever change how he looks at me; that I even have to ask. He will – finally – see me as I truly am: flawed, selfish, pathetic.
No. I can’t be like that.
I venture down two steps. I can hear something. A voice. I stop again, sombre for a moment, saying a mournful goodbye to my life as I know it. Am I sure? If I call now, there’ll be a procedure. An ambulance, dispatched immediately. I’ll be in a system. Not Joanna any more, but … somebody else. A number.
It’s been over a minute. Maybe two. One hundred and twenty seconds of staring.
Where is that noise coming from? I am sure it is a woman’s voice. I creep two steps closer, and realize: the headphones.
And even though I have decided what to do, I am procrastinating. Trying to put off the moment when I have to make the phone call, even though I know that makes things harder, not easier. I’ve been procrastinating my entire life, and I’m not stopping now.
One more minute passes.
I don’t know what spurs me into action. Perhaps I needed those three minutes to come to terms with how things will be; to move into the After. Perhaps it was to make sure he wasn’t about to reach for me, grab me. I don’t know, but I pull out my phone, standing almost at the bottom of the stairs, and dial 999. I have never dialled these numbers in my life, though it feels as though I have, from BBC dramas and books and films.
It doesn’t ring. There’s a strange noise, then an operator answers immediately. I step gingerly down the remaining stairs as I hear a Scottish voice, as if I can only get close to him now I have her protection.
‘What’s your emergency?’ the woman says.
‘I … there’s a man who’s been injured,’ I say.
As I stop, above his body, I can hear the noise again. It is a voice. Take a deep breath in for five counts, it is saying. Some sort of hypnotherapy. Meditation, maybe.
‘Okay, my love, how badly injured is he?’ she says.
‘I … don’t know.’
‘Alright – what’s your name?’
‘Joanna Oliva,’ I say, though I wonder after uttering it whether I should have used a false one.
‘Okay, Joanna. We’re going to send a first responder,’ she says. Her tone is neutral. She doesn’t provide reassurance. She doesn’t explain what a first responder is.
I wonder what her hopes and dreams are. Maybe she had an emergency, once, and now she wants to help others. I close my eyes, imagining I am somewhere else, and on the phone to a friend. Perhaps I am by the sea, on holiday, and calling a friend because I am bored. Or maybe I am idly calling Reuben on the way home to him. He always takes my calls on the way home, and we chat, often right up until I get to our door.
I give her the address. Well, an address of sorts. ‘One of the side bridges. The centre of Little Venice. The canal.’ I can hear her typing.
‘And now I’d like you to assess the man, is that going to be alright?’ she lilts.
I wonder if she was hired because of the soothing quality of her voice. Maybe she does television adverts in her spare time. I cannot stop the thoughts. It strikes me as strange that I am still me; still overly imaginative, even when thrown into these most extraordinary of circumstances.
I lean down and tentatively touch his shoulder, his black jacket. It’s softer than I thought it would be; fleecy. He’s in tight black trousers, almost leggings. I was sure that he was in jeans, in the bar. But there are the red trainers. Just the same.
‘He’s face down,’ I say. ‘On some concrete – he fell … he fell down some steps. Seven,’ I add uselessly, because my guilt has made me count them.
‘Okay, and is he breathing? I don’t want you to move his neck. Okay? Okay, Joanna?’
Her tone frightens me. Everything frightens me. It’s like the world’s been filtered, black, and I can feel the hot, sweaty nausea again. I say nothing.
‘Okay?’
‘Yes,’ I say. There’s a man lying injured beneath my fingertips and I did it. I can hardly dare think about it. It’s like looking at the sun.
I can’t turn him over. I can’t do it.
The voice from the headphones is still speaking – about imagining a beach scene, waves rolling in and out – and I listen to that instead.
‘Can you look, listen and feel for whether he’s breathing? Do you know his name?’ She enunciates these words like a primary school teacher.
Look, listen and feel. I do not know what these words mean. I look over my shoulder, at the illuminated street, slick with rain, and along the canal, to the bridges stacking behind us, almost all aligning, tessellating, like my vision has gone blurred.
Look.
Listen.
Feel.
I stare at him, face down on the pavement.