On the morning of my trial, my phone springs to life, as if woken from a slumber.
‘Hi,’ I say to Sarah.
‘Joanna?’ she says.
I look at the clock in the bedroom, glowing green across the room at me.
‘It’s six o’clock,’ I say. My body is trembling with anticipation. Maybe they’re calling it off. Maybe they’ve realized it’s all a mistake.
‘Just checking you’re ready,’ she says. ‘Got the suit?’
‘Got it,’ I say.
We said I’d buy a new one. A nice one, from Hobbs. Reuben paid. I haven’t earned any money for six months.
The kitchen is cool and quiet. It used to get slugs in overnight, coming down the steps, we presumed, until I laughingly suggested we plug the holes with Blutack. Reuben was amazed when it worked, called me a genius.
But it still has a smell. Chilly, wet. Like cold stone buildings. I didn’t think it was possible to smell your house’s smells unless you’d been away. But maybe my body and mind are preparing me. Maybe I am already in prison.
Or may as well be.
‘I want to go to Little Venice,’ I say to Reuben.
I’m sitting on the end of the bed. He was like a wooden board beside me all night. It occurs to me, in the back of my mind, that I’m not sure where I will sleep tonight. It might be here.
It must be here.
The alternative isn’t possible, though I’m aware of it, like the Syrian war on the television, like the Boxing Day tsunami. It plays out, in my blind spot, looking too horrendous to be real.
Somehow, I know that, whatever happens later on today, nothing will be the same, even if my head does hit this pillow tonight. I won’t seriously come home and resume my life. How could I? What life is left?
‘Okay,’ Reuben says. He doesn’t question me.
I am like a person granted their dying wishes. Whatever I say goes.
He doesn’t check that we have time. He takes the back seat, again and again. He puts his clothes on, his limbs moving automatically.
I avert my gaze.
This station is Warwick Avenue, the tube announcement states dispassionately. My hand slides on the red pole I’m standing next to.
The doors open and we get out and follow the journey I made that night. I got the tube here, met Laura, injured a man, and never came home again. Not really. Reuben reaches for my hand and I stop in surprise. It’s warm, and he squeezes mine. It’s less of a lover’s gesture and more of a carer’s. He is showing solidarity. I appreciate it nevertheless.
I ascend the tube escalator and emerge, walking for a few minutes in silence until I see the Little Venice bridges.
‘It’s over there,’ I say.
Reuben nods, although he must surely know.
The dregs of the May blossom hang on the trees, a mouldy pinkish colour, and it’s a glorious day. The trees have hit their stride; verdant, overgrown, approaching midsummer. A couple are embracing at the other end of the bridge. I can’t look at them. I, a wife in the last chapters of her story, compared to them, at the very beginning. I may as well be old; a haggard, homeless nomad.
It is too painful to be here, in beautiful London in the springtime, like looking at glass reflecting the sun too sharply. Little Venice is just waking up. It looks to be a perfect June day.
I walk across the road and stare at the spot. The spot where it happened. You would never know. There is no crime-scene barrier up. No white chalk outline. No bloodstains. Nothing. Just a normal spot in the heart of London, some brick steps. Some shrubs. A tree. The place where my life changed forever. The grass just over there has recently been cut, too close, like a newly shorn animal.
I look at Reuben. He’s staring down at the flight of stairs.
I take a step forward and sit down on one of the stairs. The concrete is already sun-warmed.
I’ll see him today for the first time. I’ve seen snatches of him on the news as my trial approached, one video on the BBC website which I watched over and over, covertly, like an ashamed teenage boy with an obsession, but I’ve not seen him in the flesh, not since that night. Sometimes, when I’m reliving it, I still picture his face as Sadiq’s, and have to correct myself. I’ll see Sadiq, too, of course; a traitorous witness for the prosecution. All three of us, connected together, through my actions.
I keep thinking of the doctor’s witness statement. I can’t stop.
He’s forgetful. Demotivated. Anxious. Depressed. He has to outsource his memory. That’s the phrase they used. He relies on Post-it notes and calendars. Otherwise he won’t know what he’s doing that day.
Because of me. Because of my mind. Because of my body. Its reflexes. A rush of chemicals released.
It’s like a kind of telepathy. Imran and I were at the centre of an event that’s changed our lives forever, but we can’t see each other.
And it’s funny, but it’s not in the courtroom that I realize. No. I’m not in the dock, looking at the victim slowly, painfully, arthritically making his way into the courtroom. And it’s not when I’m cross-examined, re-examined. And it’s not when I’m faced with a judge telling me how wrong I was, or with Imran’s sister, or his cousin, or his parents.
No. It’s here, sitting on these steps, my husband standing up next to me, a hand extended so I know he’s there. I realize when I look down at these steps, which bear no scars from what happened that night six months ago.
It was wrong. I ruined somebody’s life, for no good reason. I have no justification. No excuse.
I deserve everything I get.
Reuben gives me a small, sad smile as we leave, doleful and strange.
‘What?’ I say softly.
‘Nothing … just.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ he says again, even more sadly this time.
‘You look sad,’ I say bluntly.
He squeezes my hand. I like the squeeze, at first, until I realize it’s part of his removal. He withdraws, and places his hand back in his pocket, even though it’s too warm.
‘I am sad,’ he says. ‘I’m sad about Imran. And I’m sad about you.’
‘Me, too,’ I say, looking at him as we walk towards the tube.
The sun is already warm over London. It will be a beautiful Monday, for most.
My whole life I’ve ignored the people who don’t get to experience those beautiful Mondays. The homeless and the people looking for drugs. The people who want jobs and can’t get them. The people checking in for bail every day. The people attending at contact centres. The people in care homes, no visitors. The chronically sick. The forgotten; the people in the justice system who were invisible to me. And now, here I am. It’s only right. I deserve it. I had thirty years of a middle-class existence, only worrying about needing a vocation and when I’d ever find the time to have a baby.
But now everything’s changed, and I am other.
‘Really sad for Imran,’ Reuben says.
His words irritate me, and I can’t work out why for a moment. I walk along the street lined with white mansions, to Warwick Avenue, confused at my own emotions, wondering what it is. The thing I’m trying to hide from.
And then it reveals itself to me. It’s my expectations: I expected more. Of my husband. I expected him to feel sorrier for me. To want to tell everyone my side of it. Instead, he’s being fair. Reasonable. Rational. Isn’t he?
But maybe not to me.
I look at him. He’s squinting into the sun and I can’t see his eyes.
29
Conceal