His tears fall anew, at that.
And then I’m being led away and my entire body is trembling and I’m being taken into the courtroom and it occurs to me that this is the last time I’ll breathe true, free air for a while and these are the last windows I’ll see and it’s the last time for a while that I’ll feel my own bag in my hand, my own shoes on my feet, my husband’s grip in mine, and I try to take it all in but it’s impossible to enjoy them, these dying moments, these dog days. I think maybe we can adjourn it, over and over, like people on death row, just about managing to stay in the sun by running as the globe turns, but it’s just impossible. It’s impossible.
I get four years, only reduced by just a fraction for a guilty plea. I’ll serve almost two years. But that’s all. They’re all my reductions. No more for me.
Two years.
Two Christmases.
Almost seven hundred sunrises, all missed, unless my cell has a window. Maybe it will have a window with bars. A slat that I can dangle my hand out of.
Ninety-three Sunday nights, none spent with the luxury of worrying about work.
Two years.
Twice around the sun.
33
Conceal
It should be the break-up of my marriage that thrums in my mind as I get into my car, but it’s not. It’s Ed. He knows. He knows, he knows, he knows. I have been so reckless. I add up all the instances where he has seen me. The police outside our house. Cornering Ayesha in the back of the bus. And then the lie about Wilf, uncovered in front of Reuben, along with the clothes.
I get in my car, headed nowhere. Away.
This is the thing with being a criminal. There’s no way further down I can go. I am at the bottom of the well. I’ve already killed someone. I’ve already covered it up, hidden the evidence. Running away won’t make it any worse, and I might just get away with it. I am lawless.
I take a left down our street, then a right and turn on to the Hammersmith flyover. It’s busy. I don’t know why. I don’t know what day it is. Maybe it’s a Monday morning – rush hour. Who knows?
I don’t signal. I pull on to the roundabout at full speed, my bad hand stiff and painful around the steering wheel. I don’t know if I don’t see him coming, or if I don’t care.
And then his headlights are flashing, like eyes lighting up in surprise, and I am hearing and feeling all the evidence that I’ve crashed – the metallic sound, the crunch, the sensation of being thrown forward. But I’m sure I haven’t – positive, actually – because I am still thinking these thoughts and the elephant is still on my chest.
And then, of course, there is nothing, until I wake up.
One Year and Ten Months Later
34
Reveal
The final key opens the final lock and I am released without ceremony. Nobody can see and sense the things I can; it feels like the bones in my neck are extending as I look left, then right, seeing both horizons for the first time in nearly two years. How strange it feels to smell a woman’s perfume as she drifts by me, walking into the main visitors’ reception. I try to discern the notes. Something woody. My nose is out of practice. I have only smelt cigarettes on the yard and stale dinners and sweat for two years. These other scents – these outside scents – feel strange and uncertain.
There’s a bus at the end of the road. The timetable has become electronic. A computer has been installed, orange font on black. Like the tube. Suddenly, as I’m walking – the furthest I’ve walked in years – I’m gripped by a feeling that, although the sky is the same, the sun is the same, the grass over there rippling in the April wind is the same, perhaps everything is different. Alien. I feel a prickling kind of anxiety, but I rehearse the self-talk the counsellor recommended. I’m safe. I’m a valid person. Those thoughts aren’t true.
Feeling calmed, I round the corner to the car park.
And there he is.
Reuben, in our car, the engine idling.
‘Where do you want to go?’ he says softly, the engine still running. He hasn’t turned to face me fully, and he hasn’t yet kissed me hello. The counsellor said he might not. The probation officer didn’t want to discuss it, but the counsellor did.
The counsellor – Alan – said it might not be like coming home from a holiday. It might not be like slipping into an old pair of worn jeans.
I’d argued with him, at first. Two years was nothing, I said. I’d had jobs for longer. Dresses from H&M that cost ￡12.99 and I didn’t expect to last but did. Hardly anything could change in two years. Everybody was still on Facebook and sharing cat photo memes, I had said.
He had looked at me sympathetically then. Almost pityingly. He had a birthmark on his cheek that I always wanted to ask him about, but never did. He changed the subject, asked me about where I’d go home to.
‘The same flat. The same basement flat,’ I had said triumphantly, as if I had won that argument.
And he’d asked me how I felt about that. I hadn’t answered. It seemed so theoretical. That flat in Hammersmith. Like a relic from an old life.
For two years, I’ve had all my meals made for me. My laundry washed for me. My days metered out. Yard time at four o’clock. Association – time outside my cell – at six. Lights out at ten.
‘Home?’ I say, remembering the first time we went home after our honeymoon.
There was no carrying over the threshold – of course not. Reuben said bluntly, ‘I’m not going to carry you.’ We went inside, and I ripped too enthusiastically (with a knife) into a packaged set of feather pillows, and made the worst mess I’ve ever seen. Reuben merely looked at me, and said, ‘So this is married life with Joanna.’
Reuben leans forward now, starts the engine, and then programmes the sat nav as we’re moving. We’re far from home, out here in Surrey.
‘I’ll do it,’ I say, leaning forward and reaching for the sat nav.
He shoots me a strange look.
Perhaps, years ago, I might’ve sat and daydreamed. But it’s different now. I have a plan, and getting home is just the beginning.
‘It’s fine, really,’ Reuben says.
During every visiting hour, on reading every letter, I thought he wanted to touch me, but couldn’t. But now, here we are in the car with – remarkably – nobody looking, and he doesn’t seem to want to. I shift on the car seat. I’m used to hard benches. It feels cloying, like I can’t get out of it when I want to.
Reuben brings the car to a stop at the barrier, his foot just bouncing on the accelerator. I wonder if I’ll be able to drive; if it will be like riding a bike, or if I’ll need top-up lessons. I imagine it in my mind. Swinging up through the gears. Taking a roundabout. No, I remember. I remember.
‘Oh, before I forget,’ Reuben says. He opens the glove box, handing me an iPhone.
‘Where’s mine gone?’ I say.
I missed that old iPhone with its curved edges. This one in my palm feels huge. I can’t find the power button, like a technophobe, and Reuben presses it for me.
‘I got your number ported over. Yours wasn’t compatible with anything,’ he says, looking mildly incredulous that he’s having to tell me. Somehow the expression is very Reuben. The quiet helpfulness, but also the disbelief. That judgemental edge. The way he makes his opinion known.