‘I’m not being mad. Has something happened to you?’ he says. His gaze is steady, his voice soft. ‘Has somebody upset you?’ he adds.
And I almost laugh. He’s so sure of his own reliability, his niceness, that he would never presume it is him, or even to do with him. There’s a kind of beauty in the logic of it.
He sees my hesitation, and says, ‘What’s happened?’
He’s looking at me so gently, so convinced that something might have happened to me, rather than the truth: that I might have done something to somebody else. He is so convinced of my innocence. It might be partly about Reuben, but it is mostly about me. And yet it feels like it’s about him, and only him. That I am existing – embodied – in his love for me. That, if he disappears, I might, too.
‘I’m being normal. You were weird about my coat, too,’ I say.
‘The present that you lost,’ he says. ‘Carelessly.’
‘You know me. I’m careless.’
‘Not with things like that,’ he shoots back, before speaking more quietly. ‘Our things.’
And then he makes a funny kind of gesture. His arm briefly extends towards me but, when I do nothing – only stare at him – it flops uselessly by his side, as though he knew it would be futile.
‘Forget it,’ he says, with a sigh that breaks my heart.
After he leaves, I look out of the window at the relentless February snow that’s covering, and slowly killing, our dying plants.
When I arrive home from work, Ed texts me.
Have you seen a set of keys? he has written. Missing one.
I stop dead, in the kitchen, with my coat still on, staring at my phone in horror.
He texts again, immediately following the first. We think someone’s been in, he says.
Fuck.
Who’s we? Who’s discussed it? And why is he telling me? Is he telling me because he trusts me – or because he doesn’t?
I can’t risk this escalating, so I dial his number immediately.
‘No,’ I say as he answers. ‘Why?’
‘Oh, we can’t find a set of keys and last week only one of the locks was done up. Not both,’ he says.
‘Well, I don’t know,’ I say, exhaling through my nose.
‘Don’t worry,’ Ed says blandly. ‘We’ll change the locks. And check the CCTV.’
‘CCTV?’
‘Yes, there’s some inside the offices.’
‘Oh,’ I say, speechless.
How could I have been so stupid? CCTV is both inside and out. How could I not have checked? Not have thought? Not have looked up even once in my six years of working at the library?
I hang up shortly afterwards, and gaze in thought at the blackboard, then blink in surprise.
Reuben has written to me on it, next to the list of films he has optimistically left up:
Hi,
I don’t know how to ask you face-to-face and, anyway, you just deflect and it upsets me. I am wondering if there’s something I need to know. If something’s happened. Or changed. If you feel differently about me, just say and I will be nice, Jo. Reply here, if you want. And, if you don’t, just rub it away, and it’ll be like it never happened.
I will always love you.
x x x x x
I am keening by the time I reach the end, my mouth open in a cry that’s almost animalistic, silent, hollow.
It is revealing myself to myself, facing that blackboard message. Self-preservation is more important to me than Reuben. What an awful truth. I would rather live without him than face prison for life.
But the truth is more complicated than that: it would be worse than imprisonment, if he knew what I had done. His thoughts about me matter more than the entire world’s.
I am crying as I erase it, the dust blooming around me. He’s used the same chalk as for our film list, and the dust settles, red, on my hands.
24
Reveal
My doorbell goes on a random Tuesday afternoon. As soon as I see it is the police I feel white with fear, wishing I hadn’t answered. My trial is not yet in sight, but here they are, still surprising me.
‘Joanna Oliva,’ one of them says. ‘I am arresting you on suspicion of attempted murder contrary to …’
I don’t hear the rest. It cannot be getting worse, I am thinking. It simply cannot be true.
Sarah arrives ten minutes after I do.
‘They’ve re-charged you with attempt,’ she says, when we’re in a meeting room. ‘Because of new evidence.’
‘What new evidence?’ I say. My fingers are trembling so much I have to lay my hands completely flat on the table.
‘The experts have filed their statements,’ she says.
‘Our expert?’ I say. ‘Or theirs?’
She pushes two small piles of paper towards me. She points to the one on the right. ‘This is our expert’s report. You saw it in Costa. Briefly.’
‘Yes,’ I say.
It’s chilly today and I draw my jumper around myself. Good. I’m glad it’s cold. I can pretend it’s still winter. That this is not rushing towards me like an out-of-control freight train. Spring is far away. My internment is far away.
‘He supports your version of events. Listen carefully,’ she says, her elbows resting on the table as she reads the statement. ‘The forceful push of the victim caused an injury known as a coup. The brain moved forward in his skull, propelled by the forward velocity.’
‘It was his running, too,’ I say weakly. ‘He was running with momentum.’
‘Yes,’ Sarah says nicely.
She sips the tea we have been given. I notice her lipstick has left a hot pink imprint on the side of the cup.
‘Coup,’ I say. ‘Right.’
‘So, the brain moves forward in the skull. And then, because it was forcefully moved forward, it rushes back.’ She’s still reading from the statement but paraphrasing now, translating it into more understandable language. ‘The second injury, as the brain impacts the back of the skull, is called the contrecoup. The brain swelled up as a result of both traumas, causing oedema and hypoxia. Okay? Swelling and lack of oxygen.’
‘Yes.’
‘You wouldn’t have needed to know this if they hadn’t done this,’ she says, pointing to the expert report on the left. It’s sitting on the table, too, its pages curled up against the cardboard cup, like fingers.
‘What does it say?’
‘The prosecution’s report says that the hypoxia was caused by something else.’
‘What’s hypoxia?’
‘Lack of oxygen,’ she says.
I realize she only told me twenty seconds previously. ‘Oh,’ I say, and I feel my face begin to redden. Not out of embarrassment; I hardly care what Sarah thinks. But out of … panic.
Fear. Little beads of sweat bud on my upper lip and I wipe them away, irritated. I know what she’s going to say.
‘Their expert thinks that the victim – Imran – was in the puddle for too long. There were a couple of bits of evidence that he was in the water –’
‘Yes, he was in the water. I never said he wasn’t.’
‘For longer than you said. Their expert says that parts of his brain began to die. His heartbeat was slower on admission than they’d expect. He was colder. His mammalian diving reflex had kicked in,’ she says.
‘What … I …’ The words may be incomprehensible to me, but I understand what sits behind their meaning immediately: they know.
‘They say his hypoxia is from – the drowning,’ she summarizes.
‘Right.’
‘And we say it’s from the fall.’
I must almost be believing my own lies, because I splutter, feeling angry. ‘Can’t you tell?’ I say eventually, tapping my fingers on the prosecution’s report. ‘Can’t you tell what sort of hypoxia it is? Can’t we prove it’s from the fall?’
She shakes her head. ‘No.’
I think of all the medical things we can do. Laser eye surgery. Heart transplants. How can we not know this? But then, I think darkly: I am glad. I am glad they can’t tell. Because they might be right.
‘So we need to refute it. Cross-examine him,’ she says. ‘There’s no evidence for this. It could easily be from trauma and swelling. Unless …’ She darts a glance at me.
I see why she’s really here: to check. To check and double-check, as lawyers do.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘There’s nothing to tell you. I got him out. Straight away.’
‘Good.’ She nods once, decisively, then sips her tea again. ‘So, attempt.’