‘I didn’t tell Reuben anything. All he knows is that you dumped your clothes. And that you lied about Wilf, of course.’
‘I can’t … I’ve come back to do some things but I … I can’t stay here,’ I say, still reeling from the shock of his admission.
He nods again, not saying anything, just looking up at me, sadly. A letter’s sticking out of the top of a wooden box fixed to the side of his house. The envelope looks dry, parched in the heat. I focus on it, not looking at him, not able to.
‘Thank you,’ I say to him.
He nods, once, in acknowledgement.
He kept my secret for me. How can I ever truly thank him?
‘She stopped coming to the library,’ he says softly.
His voice is huskier than it used to be. Or perhaps he is just upset, speaking quietly to me, outside his house, so his wife doesn’t hear, so that she doesn’t know our secret, too. Once again, I find myself wondering what happened that night I left him in our offices. I went home and dumped Reuben, as though he was a dress that had to be returned because I needed the money badly; looking for short-term solutions to my problems. But what did Ed do, that day? I wonder. And what did he do when he heard about me?
‘Did she?’ I say, ready to face things. To stop avoiding them. ‘When did you last see her?’
‘That time with you,’ Ed says with his Ed-like laugh. He brings a hand self-consciously to his mouth and covers his lips, then exhales again, another little laugh. ‘She never came back. And the police stopped investigating.’
‘Oh,’ I say quietly. ‘I’m here to … that’s why I’m back.’
Ed shrugs, not looking at me.
Nobody ever came for me. He never told anybody. I wonder how much of it he had to cover up? Did he ever look at the CCTV?
‘Are you really?’ he says. He places his hand on the doorknob, and I see it’s my time to go. He may know, he may have kept my secret, but the friendship’s over: of course it is. ‘Does it matter? Now?’ he says sadly.
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s over, Jo,’ he says. ‘You’ve … you have suffered. Haven’t you?’
‘Yes, but –’
‘Who would it help?’
I look down at my feet. It’s as though he knows about my novel. It’s all ready. It’s all ready to go. The book I have written about a woman who commits a crime but chooses to hand herself in, and all about the man she pushed and who he was and what he liked. It’s all ready, so that I would be ready. But I’m not so sure I am now. The reasons for handing myself in that seemed so clear this morning are hazy now.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says to me. ‘I’m sorry it’s this way.’
He opens his door with a loud click.
I look at him for one last time. Of course it is this way. I’m a killer. He is forced to live with my secret – I wonder if the animal’s on his chest, too. And I left him with it as I bolted. Abandoned the scene.
‘Me, too,’ I say. I turn away from him, momentarily not feeling the guilt or the shame or the paranoia or the panic, but just the sadness. That I was there. That it happened. That I made it happen, and how I acted afterwards.
I hang my head, for a moment, and he reaches out again, and this time his fingers land on my arm as softly as the breeze itself. I feel the elephant shift its weight, just for a second. I bring my hand down on to his, and we clasp our fingers. And then, without another look at him, I turn and walk away.
The decree absolute listed our old flat as Reuben’s current address, and so I go there. I don’t know how he affords the rent alone. It is a strange thought, one I would only ever have in London, and it promotes a rush of nostalgia for those times; those funny, happy times watching the top one hundred movies of all time and hearing the woman in the flat above us arrive home in her heels at three o’clock in the morning, and walking to the underground station in the rain together.
Hammersmith is dusty and hot. It’s late by the time I’m walking up our road. I train my brain not to think of all the places I was when I was panicking – that entrance to the tube station, the stretch of path outside our flat, the road where I fell – and instead look for the happy memories, too. There must be some. That Sunday when we got back from our honeymoon and I felt so pleased to be home again, with our English tea and our own bed and even our commutes: married. The first time Reuben took part in our local MP’s surgery and he kissed me goodbye, that Saturday morning, the kiss quick with his excitement. How I would feel when I watched him playing the piano in the back bedroom. I loved the theatre of it. His body language changed; his body changed. He bent low, towards the keys, paying attention to the high notes as though they were plants he was nurturing. Nothing like his usual, dour, stooped form. The one I loved equally. The one I loved just as well, for its differences.
I am standing on the street outside now, looking down at our front door. He’s probably out, on a Friday night, two years later, but I look in the window anyway.
There’s evidence of him everywhere. The plants on our steps that the postman always had to gingerly inch past are still well cared for. An Islamic Relief sticker in our kitchen window. He’s still here. I puff my breath out, into the hot, summer air, take a second, and ring the doorbell.
He opens the door, which surprises me. Not because he’s in, but because he always used to ignore the doorbell. He wouldn’t be at all intrigued by it.
And yet here he is, in front of me. In dark skinny jeans and a white top. He’s barefoot. I didn’t think he’d age badly, with his freckles and his ginger hair, but he has.
As he realizes it’s me, his expression darkens. That’s the only way I can describe it. His lips purse. His eyebrows come down. He tilts his head back in a reverse nod; how he conveys recognition. Even after two years, I recognize it all. The way his fingers linger on the door frame. The way he holds his weight on one foot, the other resting on his ankle. The way his green eyes are darting over my face, trying to glean something.
Eventually, he holds his hands up, palms to me. A gesture of defeat. And then he steps aside and lets me into the flat I lived in for years.
It’s almost the same, but it’s more sparse. That’s my first impression. All the stuff was mine. Painted peg magnets I stuck to the front of the fridge. Stacks of magazines I subscribed to and never got around to reading. They’re all gone. The surfaces are empty. It’s strange to see how he would choose to live, without me. That I was clutter in his life.
He leans against one of the white bar stools. I can’t sit on the one next to him – it’s far too close – so instead I stand awkwardly.
‘Long time no see,’ he says.
‘Yes.’ I put my handbag down on the floor, as I have done a thousand times before. I wonder if Reuben is thinking the same thing, because his eyes stray to it, then back to mine, and for a moment I think they look glassy. If only.
Everything else is the same. The sky outside. The wooden flooring underneath my feet. The man in front of me. Why can’t this be a few years ago? Before. Time stretches strangely in front of me, and for just a moment I let myself pretend.
I stop and pause. This is it. The moment. I will afford him the courtesy of telling him. And then …
‘How are you?’ he says, his gaze searching.
I remember the last time I saw him, in the hospital, where I reaffirmed that I didn’t want to be with him.
‘Fine, now,’ I say.
We talk briefly of my injuries. He knew what they were – and he tried to visit multiple times, after the first time, but I wouldn’t see him. But I tell him, fully, now. My pelvis. My hysterectomy. My rubbish breathing capacity. He doesn’t seem fazed.
‘Right,’ he says.
‘I had a reason. For leaving you,’ I blurt out.
It comes back to me, interacting with him, as if I’ve never really stopped. It’s like riding a bike or catching a ball. Our directness. The stuff I couldn’t say to anybody else. No wonder I left. It was too hard in those early days.