‘Did you?’ he says. ‘Other than not loving me any more?’
He says it so factually, it’s as if he has opened me up, right there in the kitchen. I draw my arms around myself. I was away from the damage I caused everybody, with my guilt, and I never saw it materialize like this.
‘I never stopped loving you,’ I say, then swallow.
Reuben’s eyes flicker, but he doesn’t say anything else. And then he speaks. ‘My dad died,’ he says. ‘Not long ago. I’ve been wondering … whether to say. I know you liked him. But it was …’
‘Oh,’ I say.
And then, of course, I can see it on him. The grief. He’s slimmer. More lined. Not through age, but through other things; through life and death.
‘Anyway,’ Reuben says.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I say.
‘Heart attack. I was there.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘What do you want to tell me?’
‘I don’t want to tell you now.’
‘Tell me.’
And here it is.
The moment.
We’re in our Before. In one sentence, it’ll be After.
‘Before I tell you,’ I say, taking a step towards him, ‘will you just …’
He stands, motionless, but doesn’t move away, so I step closer still. And then his arms are around my body and it is glorious, like all my summers have come at once. I haven’t hugged him for so long. The last time was, truly, Before; the night before it happened. But I can’t remember. I can’t find the distinct points in that otherwise ordinary day, no matter how hard I look for them. They’ve been buried, like bad news on a good news day, forever obscured by the cloud of what followed.
‘I don’t know why I’m doing this,’ he murmurs.
It’s a very un-Reuben sentence, and for just a second I hope something might’ve happened to open that closed mind I love so much.
I step back from him, and his fingertips stay on my waist just a fraction longer than they would usually. I see a blush creep slowly across his cheeks, stealing across like a rash. I’d forgotten that blush. How much I loved it. The barometer of his emotions.
I take two more deep breaths, and now it’s time. I’m ready to move to After.
‘I killed somebody,’ I say.
And then I tell him everything.
He sleeps on it. A very Reuben thing to do. I stayed at the Travelodge, near the Broadway. One last night of freedom, I bargained with myself.
He texts me the next morning, and there he is, waiting in the seventies-style foyer of the Travelodge, less than a mile from where we lived together.
‘Do you want to know what happened with Dad?’ he says.
He is standing in front of a bowl of apples. Anybody could overhear us, but he doesn’t seem to care.
‘He reached for me, while Mum was doing the CPR on him. The ambulance was coming. And I was so freaked out by that arm reaching for me – I think he knew he was going to die – that I … that I left him and went into the bathroom, and when I came out, he was gone.’
‘Oh shit,’ I say.
He nods, once. ‘I understand avoidance now. You,’ he says.
‘I don’t avoid things any more,’ I say.
‘Not even HSBC?’ he says, with a tiny, tiny smile.
‘Nope.’ We pause, looking at each other. ‘I wish it had never happened,’ I say simply. ‘I don’t know where I’d be if it hadn’t, but …’
Reuben raises his eyes to mine. ‘With me,’ he says simply. ‘You’d be with me.’
We stare at each other again. Of course. Of course I would. We would never have left each other: never.
He reaches for me wordlessly. Our hands curl around each other in that way they always did, and he enfolds me into him.
‘I have to …’ I say, trying to disentangle myself from him, but I can’t; I don’t want to. ‘I have to tell them. Confess. Go to prison. For life, probably, fifteen years,’ I gabble.
But maybe there is an alternative. I can no longer walk without being breathless. I can’t have children of my own. I have spent two years, alone, in exile. Perhaps there is an alternative, here, with this man who loves me. I could choose happiness. Accept it when it comes. Rejoin Reuben, and rejoin life.
Reuben places a long, warm finger over my lips. His smell. Oh, that smell. I had almost forgotten it.
He draws me to him again and the tears flow freely from both of us.
‘Do you know what I believe in more than anything else?’ he murmurs in my ear.
‘What?’
‘Second chances.’
And I don’t know whether he means me and my crime, or us and our life together, but suddenly he is kissing me and I don’t care.
‘I forgive you. I want to forgive you. So I do,’ he says simply.
Two Months Later
42
Reveal
As I approach the bookshop, I see he’s lit up, in the window, wearing a white shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Oh, how I have missed those elbows, those freckly elbows, those forearms covered in auburn hair. He’s standing self-consciously now, and I can tell – only through the decade we spent together – that he’s reading something he doesn’t like. A Friday night in a bookshop, reading something he doesn’t agree with. It is so very Reuben.
We’ve been texting, couldn’t seem to help ourselves. It was one text in particular that did it. I had been in the shower when I heard it beep, the special tone I had assigned just for Reuben. I raced to get it, even though I dripped water everywhere.
I have been an utter shit, it said. I always think I know best but I don’t. I ruined your life for my principles. The second I did it, they seemed to disappear. They mean nothing compared to losing you. People matter. Not stances. I was so judgemental. So horribly judgemental. I’m sorry I seemed distant. I’m sorry I seemed embarrassed. I was ill equipped to deal with it. Unlike you. I bow down to you, Jo.
And then we decided to meet.
I pause, a hand on the round, cool metal door handle. Can I do this? Go in, sit down opposite my husband, shoot the breeze? My hand lingers on the doorknob momentarily.
43
Conceal
I’m expecting to see him, but I nevertheless stop suddenly, stock-still on the street. He’s in the café area of a bookshop, reading, and, only two months since our reconciliation, I still find the sight of him so arresting.
He’s waiting for me. We’re going to read books and drink coffee on this Friday night, together.
There is something about his body language that makes me linger. He’s smiling. A small, knowing smile. That smile he reserves only for me.
I hover, the doorknob cool and wet against my palm.
44
Reveal
I take a deep breath, my hand still on the doorknob. He hasn’t noticed me. I could walk away. We wouldn’t be ready. It’s not the right time. Nothing’s changed, I tell myself. He hates me. He handed me in, handed me over.
And yet.
It looks to me as though something has changed. I’m not sure what, but perhaps something has.
The reality of us. Would it work? Perhaps … perhaps it just takes time to come back to each other, after a two-year break. Because it was a break: no intimacy happens in prison. Physical. Emotional. None. Maybe it takes time. To come back to each other. Maybe Reuben needs to know I’m still the same Jo. The Jo who can’t concentrate on the top one hundred movies. The Jo who buys Swedish planters on whims and tries to grow Japanese blossoms on the steps of a basement flat in Hammersmith. The Jo who loves sudokus and her husband. Maybe I can tell him all that. That, even though I am changed, more confident, have become a Proper Person, I am still me. More so: I am more me, because I have permission to be. No guilt. I look back at Reuben.
And it’s not the portrait of him in the window that does it.
It’s not that he’s reading, though I love that.
It’s not his freckled forearms, though I love those, too.