Jonty’s walking the man over to the edge of the boat. Laura grabs my arm. Her hand’s warm and damp, and she says, ‘I’m so sorry, Jo. I had no idea he was … I had no idea he would be so rude. So judgemental.’
My face is burning. But you are, too. Only internally, I think.
‘We’re all here,’ Laura says.
Reuben’s still looking at his phone, and we both glance at him. And suddenly, I realize. Jonty marched the guy off. Laura consoled me. But what did Reuben do? He turned away when I was discussing prison, and he stood by and said absolutely nothing when I was being harangued. How can he justify that? How can he say nothing?
I look at him, but he’s not looking at me. He’s looking down. At BBC News, probably. Some war. Some tragedy. He’ll care about that. But what about here? What about events in his own life? Me?
We leave shortly afterwards. The evening isn’t salvageable. We can’t get it back. The boat is still lit up behind us as we walk along the canal towpath. Reuben reaches for my hand and I feel like there are a hundred Joannas walking along here next to me. The Joanna who hurt Imran and called 999. The Joanna who visited the canal the day she went to prison. It’s not the same canal, but it may as well be. I take a deep breath, smelling the air. London smells the same as it always did in the early summer: musky, congested. But, just like after a particularly long holiday, I can truly smell it again.
I take another deep breath, and then I ask him. Dispassionately, directly, in an adult way, as I’ve been told.
‘You didn’t defend me,’ I say quietly.
Reuben’s hand is still around mine. ‘What?’
‘To that man. That man who said I was making him uncomfortable.’
‘No,’ Reuben says.
‘Why not?’
‘Jonty defended you.’
‘Well, yes,’ I say.
We negotiate the pathway as it narrows. Even though we go in single file, Reuben still has my hand in his. It starts to feel strange, that hand in mine. Like we are clinging on to a useless life raft.
He’s saying nothing as the path widens again. The air is soupy and warm. A fine layer of sweat covers my skin. The air was always so controlled in prisons. I haven’t sweated for months. It feels nice as it evaporates, like fine, soft cold needles prickling my skin.
‘But why didn’t you?’ I say.
Reuben drops my hand. We are separate now, on the towpath. It looks perfect, this night, walking along with my husband. It’s what I’ve counted down to for two years. And yet it’s not perfect. The lights of the boats glow strangely and the world feels too big and I am utterly alone, it seems to me, with no idea of my next steps.
‘I …’ Reuben says.
And then I see it: a brief closing of his eyes, a straightening of his posture.
‘I was embarrassed,’ he says simply. ‘I didn’t know how to handle it.’
‘Right. So you … didn’t,’ I say.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘What is all this – all this navel gazing?’ Reuben says. ‘I lost you for two years. I watched all the fucking TV shows you could ever imagine in those seven hundred nights. You know? Why do we have to fuck it all up with this analysis?’ He grabs my hand again and squeezes it slightly too tightly.
‘But you’re so – you’re so liberal,’ I say, spitting it out like an accusation, as though I have always resented his liberalism, which isn’t true. ‘You’re all for rehabilitation. And innocent until proven guilty. And making mistakes. That’s your whole,’ my hand is moving in circles in front of us, like a Catherine wheel, ‘ethos.’
‘Yes,’ Reuben says.
‘Seems like you’re not liberal when it’s on your own doorstep. When I’m on your doorstep.’
His jaw clenches at that, but he says nothing further. The conversation is closed, banging like a prison door in the night.
It’s time. We both know it. Our only intimacy for over two years has been across a table. Limited touching. Eye contact only. I’ve showered communally with other women, slept under the sometimes watchful gaze of security guards, but now here I am, with my husband, in this most usual and intimate arena: our dim bedroom. He takes his shirt off and I see the body I haven’t seen for years, not properly, not like this, lit up by the lamp, reflected again in the window.
He looks at me, a serious, suggestive look, then walks over, brushing my hair back from my face. I shiver at that touch, that sensual, sad touch. There were a thousand Joannas out tonight, and now a thousand Reubens are touching me. The Reuben who sat on the stairs with me at an Oxford party almost a decade ago. The Reuben who proposed to me, who married me, who stayed with me during my incarceration. And here he remains, still wanting to skim those elegant fingertips over my forehead.
‘Number three thousand-odd, I reckon,’ he says softly, his breath tickling my nose.
‘Are we?’ I say. ‘We missed a few.’
‘I kept track. I made a list,’ he says, gesturing behind him, but not moving. I’ve no doubt there is a list, somewhere. He wouldn’t lie to me.
‘Can I see it?’ I say back.
‘Later,’ he says pointedly.
And then we are kissing, and then he is inside me, on the bed, the same old way we used to do it: seamlessly, as though we were meant to.
And then, as he comes, he says it. ‘I’m sorry.’
I think I mishear, at first, but I haven’t; I know I haven’t.
Afterwards, lying on his side, facing me, stroking my hip, he doesn’t acknowledge it, and so neither do I.
He stands and flicks the lamp off. We always used to sleep, right away, after sex, neither of us needing to read.
But as he’s standing there, in total darkness, his body ghoulishly lit from the street lamp outside, I look at him. He seems to be hesitating, wanting to say something to me, but then stops himself. I sit and look properly at him. There’s an expression on his face, for just a moment. Agony, I would have said, if I didn’t know better. He looks agonized. After a moment, it is gone.
He turns and leaves the bedroom. He goes and washes. I hear the tap running. He is washing me off himself.
I’m watching Reuben play, for the first time, at a jazz club nearby. He wears a suit, to play in, with trainers, and everyone seems to know him. They don’t seem to know who I am, and I wonder what he’s told them.
We have descended some wooden stairs into the basement where the lights are low and purplish. It smells of stale alcohol and sweat. I miss the cigarette smells. Not only from when they used to be allowed in public buildings, but also from the prison. Everyone smoked in the yard where our clothes were hung out and blew in the wind, and so everyone’s clothes smelt faintly of cigarettes. I got used to it. It’s one of the many smells that mingle to form home for me.
Reuben’s playing style has totally changed. It’s become more theatrical. He bends backwards, his back arching, and then he almost falls over the keys, his head bent low.
I half watch him, wondering who he is. I’ve had a total of six hours a week with him for two years, at communal tables pushed so close together they might as well have been linked, like at a bingo hall or at Wagamama’s. The chairs in the visitors’ centre were hard, folded metal. They made Reuben uncomfortable as he sat there for the duration of his visit. We often made small talk. He was never a great talker, and he couldn’t easily touch me. And so we talked of stupid things, things neither of us cared about. The weather. How I was finally learning to cook – his mouth twisted into an indulgent smile, at that. I couldn’t get him talking, not the way I used to. He was too shy. And we couldn’t just be with each other, the way our relationship demanded. Just sitting together in the living room, occasionally remarking on the news. Taking a lasagne out of the oven, the steam misting up the room as Reuben got a plate out and asked me how my meeting had been. We had none of that. Our relationship had been strip-searched, like me, and I didn’t know whether or not it had survived.