‘What?’ I say, a tiny giggle escaping.
‘You care so much. About everything.’
‘My recovery,’ I say, unsure of myself. I’m glad there are no other patients here to hear.
He leans against the reception desk. His clinic is almost always empty. The rows of chairs give it an abandoned feel. It’s not private, but it feels it.
He shrugs then, still looking at me, but saying nothing for a moment. ‘Yes. It’ll come. That’ll come,’ he says.
I nod.
He opens his mouth, hesitates, then says it anyway. ‘I mean about life, Jo,’ he says. ‘That would be my number-one tip for … recovery. Try to care less. You’re obviously a striver.’
I smile, a twisted, ironic smile. It’s not actually very funny.
‘So just … relax more,’ he says.
He doesn’t know. Of course he doesn’t. He has never asked why I am cagey. Why I left London, why I am unmarried – now – or about what preceded the accident. He probably knows there is something. But he’s never asked what.
I look across the foyer and out of the window. A couple of cyclists ride past, their wheels spinning like speeded-up second hands on a clock.
‘I promise – you will get better,’ Mr Dingles says to me.
For a moment I wonder if he means something more than my medical recovery. I wonder what he’d do if I told him. If I told him everything from the beginning.
‘Be less serious,’ he advises me.
I let out a tiny laugh. My first in months. ‘How?’ I say.
‘Try it,’ he says again, before disappearing back into his room.
I look sadly at the spot where he was standing, my doctor, before he discharged me. It would work, his advice, for almost anything – anyone – else. But it is not really for people like me. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know who I am. What kind of person I am. That advice is not sound for bad people who’ve done bad things. Who need punishing. It is for good people. Good people who can’t say no. Who put themselves down. Who flagellate themselves over their degree result for ten years. Who don’t do enough ironing or who feel guilty for not going to the gym. People like the Joanna Before. Not the Joanna After.
I step outside. I don’t feel the cold like I used to. I’m fatter again. Not at my old weight, but almost. It’s true what they say – well, sort of. Time doesn’t heal, but it does help.
Birmingham is leafy. Run-down, in places. Upmarket in others. It is nothing – absolutely nothing – like London. Real London. Reuben’s London, with its ancient corner pubs. The cobbled streets. The blue Bloomsbury signs on buildings. Our London.
And so, exactly contrary to Mr Dingles’ advice – but perhaps being discharged has been a catalyst – I suddenly know what to do.
It is time to stop avoiding everything. It is time to face it.
36
Reveal
I can’t remember how to top up my Oyster card. The wallet I kept it in – a Cath Kidston one – is faded, looking dated and tattered around its sides. The machine seems incomprehensible. Was it always touch-screen? I try again.
I use my bank card; a new one arrived halfway through my sentence, after the old one had expired. I hope it’s got the same pin.
After a few seconds, I see there’s no slot for the chip and pin. I scan the machine, feeling like a tearful alien.
‘You just need to put the card there,’ a Scottish man using the machine along from me says. ‘There,’ he says again, indicating a panel on the front of the machine that I hadn’t noticed. It’s yellow and has three curvy lines on it, like a Wi-Fi sign, and as I press the card to it, it beeps. I look to him, hoping he’ll explain, but he doesn’t. He merely does the same on his machine, then turns away from me to the station.
I’m almost afraid to try getting through the barrier in case that’s changed, too. I wonder if everybody can tell? My lack of knowledge of how the world works. My prisoner’s pallor. Perhaps I am unknowingly branded, somewhere.
But then I think about what the counsellor said, and tilt my chin up. It doesn’t matter what they think of me. And, besides, nobody cares. I wrote to Imran, while I was in prison. Alan told me he wouldn’t write back, but he did, just once. The writing was shaky and all over the place. I traced those letters as I cried. I am getting a little better every day, he wrote at the end, the letters huge and sloping down the page. And it was that childish sentence that did it. As though he needed to apologize to me for his condition. I cried for the rest of the night in my cell, too.
I walk through the barrier – that hasn’t changed – and board the tube to Laura’s.
She still lives on the barge, and it’s like a step back. There are things on it that I didn’t know I’d remembered. The Rosie and Jim dolls in the window. The way they have all sorts littered on the roof. Plates and cups and cutlery.
There’s a cat, a long-haired black and white cat on the roof, I know to be called Sampson, who I’ve never met. I heard about him during Laura’s sporadic visits.
Laura dashes out, her arms outstretched, before I can finish truly looking and reacquainting myself.
‘You’re back, you’re out,’ she says. She tilts her head, looking at me.
‘I’m out,’ I say, and her scream of pleasure, the way she embraces me, quickens my heart. I forget her infrequent visits. The way she started speaking to me like I was a distant acquaintance.
Jonty emerges from the boat, waves briefly, and we follow him in.
And although I recognize the objects – the teal mugs, the patterned cushions – it’s the smell that does it. That old-fashioned, dusty, tannin smell. Like the bottom of a teapot. A caravan smell. I breathe in deeply.
But that’s when I see the boxes. They’re everywhere. Ten or fifteen of them.
‘Been on Amazon sprees?’ I say.
‘I said – we’re moving.’ She’s lighting the gas underneath a hob kettle, her back to me as she says it. ‘I meant to say, when I came, that we’d found a buyer, but it didn’t seem –’
‘Oh,’ I say quickly, nodding.
People never feel they can tell you anything when they come to visit you in prison. Or their news will be caveated. It’s nothing compared to what you’re going through, but … they will say, or, No, no, enough about me, I’m here to see how you are. It was well-meaning, but not what I wanted.
‘Where to?’ I say, trying to keep my tone casual.
Jonty is sitting at the very end of the barge, outside in the sunshine. His tanned skin is illuminated. He looks older. Everybody looks older. I saw them ageing, in weekly or bi-weekly snapshots, but everybody’s skin looked old under those fluorescent lights.
Laura’s hands are veiny. Her crow’s feet obvious even when she’s not smiling. Two deep lines either side of her nose. Jonty is fuller in the waist. He still has his boyish body language, but, a few years ago, he’d have been over here, showing me something, talking to me about his jobs. And now, he’s over there. Maturely giving us our space. But then, I think, frowning, I forced us all to grow up. Of course he’s giving us space. I have just been released from prison. I made this maturation happen.
When Wilf came back to visit me, two days later – the Thursday after he first saw Minnie on the train – he, too, looked older. He had greying hair at his temples. My brother, I found myself thinking. The boy I used to play in rock pools with, pointing out darting crabs and tiny fish.
‘Okay, so,’ he said, sitting down opposite me again. He kept his eyes trained on me.
‘Yes,’ I said, sitting forward.
It seemed easy. There were none of the barbed comments, no competing. No gloating about his houses. He had done that, hadn’t he? Or had I just read that into what he’d been saying? I couldn’t tell, but I wanted to ignore it. Just concentrate on him.
‘Your beard’s greying like Monty’s,’ I said, with a laugh. Monty was Mum and Dad’s old tomcat.