We are in the offices, today. The backrooms, inputting data from our stocktake. I like these days. These unusual days, away from the mobile library where I look for Ayesha at every turn. I like to be here, static. I hear the sirens too much out on the road. End up hiding in the bus from innocuous Police Community Support Officers. My anxiety is getting worse, not better. I see things, sometimes. Things I’m not really sure are there. Flashes of blue lights coming for me. I look constantly, shiftily, at the CCTV, which now stares back at me, unblinkingly, from the suspended ceiling.
I haven’t been able to find out the inquest verdict, despite trying to catch the news every night for weeks without attracting Reuben’s attention. Who knows what it said? Unlawful killing, I bet. Unlawful killing by Joanna Oliva.
Nothing more has happened about the keys. But it’s just a matter of time. I know it. They’re still in my handbag. Anybody could find them at any time. I’m too scared to put them back. Frozen in procrastination, as ever. The police haven’t been again, either. But they will. I am sure of it.
‘Adult fiction?’ Ed says, typing into the computer.
‘Five hundred and two,’ I say. My hand aches after moving the books around so much.
‘Ah,’ Ed says, and something in his tone of voice makes me look up.
And there he is. Reuben. At the door, holding a bunch of spring tulips. They’re yellow, incongruous against the tired, shabby surroundings.
‘What’re you …?’ I say.
He shrugs, a small, self-conscious shrug. He’s wearing a T-shirt, his freckled arms out, and I see his stomach muscles tense under the material, the way they do when he is shy, feeling exposed, and my heart twangs for him.
He gestures uselessly with the flowers. ‘I bought you these,’ he says quietly. ‘I thought we could … go somewhere. In the weather.’
It’s been six months since that night. The world’s turned from long nights to long days, sailed around the sun half an orbit, and yet hardly anything at all has changed. I look at the flowers, and that’s the part that breaks my heart. Reuben has never once bought me flowers. And here he is, with a bunch of them, forced to act so utterly out of character to try and bridge the gap I’ve formed, to try and journey back to me. I imagine him picking them out. He’d have chosen carefully, slowly. His palm out as he thought, scanning over the flowers. Perhaps he picked the most expensive bunch, or the prettiest. He’d bring them to my work, he thought. Surely he would be able to find a way back to me, with flowers? A few tears leak out of the corners of my eyes and I shake my head again and try to stop them, even though tears are nothing to me now.
‘Oh, I …’ I say.
‘Anyway, here they are,’ Reuben says awkwardly. And then he speaks again. And maybe it’s because he’s trying to cover up the tense silence. Or maybe he welcomes the change of subject. ‘Hey, maybe your coat’s here? Have you seen Jo’s coat?’ and he turns to Ed. ‘She lost it in the winter …’
Of course he’d ask, I find myself thinking. He hasn’t seen Ed for ages, but of course he’d remember to ask. He probably noted it somewhere, for the next time he came.
I feel my face heat up. Oh, no. This isn’t happening. My coat is just over there. Reuben will recognize it immediately. I have been so concerned about the CCTV, and the stupid keys, I forgot the main thing: that hiding my own evidence in my place of work was unbelievably, unspeakably stupid.
‘Jo’s coat?’ Ed says. ‘No?’
‘She lost it.’
‘Oh, let me check the cupboard,’ Ed is saying.
The world is becoming quiet and dim around me. I need to disappear inside my mind, somehow. I cannot witness this fallout.
‘It won’t be here,’ I croak.
‘You don’t know where you lost it,’ Reuben says. ‘That’s the point.’
‘I wouldn’t have left anywhere without it in winter,’ I snap.
‘Well, it’s not at home.’
Ed holds a hand up, like we are bickering children, and locates his key on his belt.
It’s okay, I tell myself. It’s okay. I can pretend not to know why it’s in there.
But the shoes.
Reuben will recognize the shoes. No work colleague would have, but Reuben will. They are completely distinctive. Worn once. He will not hesitate to exclaim that they are all mine.
And Ed knows about the keys. That time some careless burglar left one lock undone. Me.
And Ed, I realize, with a painful swallow, knows, too, about the police. That they asked me about that night. That I have questioned Ayesha on the bus.
It will all unravel. Right here. Right here, in front of me. There is no way around it.
And, finally, it is no longer panic I feel. It is something else. Something worse. A spidery, shivery, certain dread, like seeing a knife swing towards me, like watching somebody cock a gun, and aim it at me.
I strong-arm in, trying to steer the conversation away. I point at the flowers, gesturing to Reuben’s general presence in our office. ‘I thought we were seeing Wilf,’ I say weakly. A pathetic attempt at distraction. We were supposed to be meeting him at the opening of some bar he’d invited us to.
‘I’ve cancelled,’ Reuben says.
Another un-Reuben thing to do. He would never usually take control of me in this way. He must be serious.
‘Oh – but how is Wilf?’ Ed says, stopping, the key in his hand.
I blink, wondering, for just a second, why he is asking. He never usually enquires about Wilf. And then I see his expression. Clear concern, the eyebrows knitted, behind his thick glasses.
The blood runs from my face. I’m surprised nobody else can see it; that it’s not cascading right down my neck in red rivulets. Wilf. That lie I told.
Ed’s still holding the key, standing by the cupboard. He is going to go into the cupboard, and find my things. And then he is going to tell Reuben that Wilf’s girlfriend is dead; that I told a stranger this. And either one of these facts, or maybe both of them, will hand me over. It will expose me. They will figure it out.
It’s strange how wide the range of bad emotions is.
Happiness seems somehow saturated. The feeling of stepping off a plane in a foreign country is the same as leaving work on a Friday and waiting for a takeaway. The feeling of getting into Oxford is the same as taking a bite of a fresh mango on a summer morning. Marrying Reuben was the same as curling up with a great book on a wintry Sunday. Happiness, it seems to me, is either on or off.
And yet, the bad emotions. Their wingspan seems enormous, like an albatross’s. The wretched, stomach-churning ache of guilt. The thud of shame. The slow, hot, wet-eyed creep of disappointment. A deep, throbbing sadness. Missing somebody so much that the world feels utterly altered. The empty, dreadful feeling of loneliness. I’m so alone with it; with it all. I fantasize in the shower about telling somebody. It’s the only time I let myself dream about doing it. Laura. Reuben. Ed. Wilf. Even my parents.
And now this: back to panic. Wanting – above all else – to be able to keep my terrible secret. The contradictions of it don’t make any sense to me.
‘He’s fine,’ Reuben says, a frown casting a sheen across his features like a lamp switched on in the next room; the effect is subtle.
‘Is he really?’ Ed says.
And all the while, I’m watching it, like a natural disaster unfolding in front of me. Oh, that lie. How stupid it was. How needless. I could have said anything. That I was visiting a long-dead relative at the mosque. That I was seeking spirituality. Why did I have to mention my brother?
Ed looks from Reuben to me. It’s a casual look, but it’s significant to me. He puts the key into the lock of the cupboard and turns it.
I’ve been so careful around other people. Reuben. Laura. But not Ed. His presence is so benign, almost like a priest or a therapist. Impartial. But work is where we reveal ourselves. Our day-to-day selves. You can’t hide things from your colleagues.
I think of all the things he’s seen. Me asking Ayesha about the investigation. The police. Oh God, the police. The lie about Wilf. The change in me. Surely, he’s noticed.
‘Yes – he’s fine? I think?’ Reuben says, looking at me. He’s still clutching the flowers, but his arm has dropped down to his side, defeated. The tulips hang upside down.
‘When did it happen – again?’ Ed says. ‘December? January?’