He arrives back in the room and I leave the letter on the side and join him on the sofa. ‘Thanks for the stamp,’ I say. ‘But I’m not sure creative writing is the Thing.’
Reuben nods, putting the paper down he’s reading, and looks at me. ‘You don’t need a Thing,’ he says.
‘No?’
‘I got halfway through the sudoku,’ he says to me. He flicks the paper to the back and shows me.
I look down at it. ‘That’s an eight and that’s a two,’ I say.
‘Too smart for your own good, Murphy,’ he says. ‘Coming to bed? Bring the wine. We won’t be able to do this when baby Oliva’s here.’ He, too, has been talking more and more about babies. Soon, we keep saying, wanting to enjoy the last of each other, like we are on a decadent night out we’re not quite ready to finish yet.
‘Yeah,’ I say. I can see Sadiq again, in my mind, lying face down on the ground. I’ll go to bed with Reuben, reading my book while he spoons into me, and in the morning, I will tell him.
‘Aren’t you going to tell me?’ Reuben says as I climb into bed beside him.
‘Tell you what?’ I mutter, not looking at him. Instead, I am eyeing the blinds, waiting for them to flash blue as the police arrive. I am looking at my phone, waiting for it to ring.
Nothing happens. I can’t believe I am going to bed. I’m really doing it. Really not going back.
‘You know …’ Reuben says.
I instigated the game, but he is fully on board now. It’s become a thing we do seamlessly, like locking up. Like brushing our teeth.
‘No,’ I say.
Reuben looks at me in surprise. ‘We’ve not missed a day,’ he says.
‘I just can’t,’ I say. ‘I can’t think of anything.’
Reuben’s expression darkens, but he doesn’t say anything more.
Ten minutes later, I open the drinks cupboard with my good hand in our tiny kitchen and find another bottle of wine. I’ll just have a few glasses. To take the edge off. And, I think darkly, to try to forget. I hope drunken amnesia might be a kind of blur across the night, obscuring everything, right back to the moment when I pushed Sadiq.
My hand is shaking as I plunge a corkscrew into the bottle, steadying it between my knees, unable to use my injured hand, stabbing the cork through the heart.
I dream of Sadiq, while dozing on and off, and during the night he appears, standing in the doorway, a black, death-like figure, a foot nearer to me every time I blink.
By the third blink, he is right in front of me, his face to mine, his hands held up like they were in the selfie we took, but bloodied, red rivulets running down them.
When I next wake up, it’s light outside. Reuben is sleeping peacefully, on his side, facing away from me.
I don’t remember immediately. It takes an effort, like waking up in a strange bed and having to piece together, for a few seconds, where I am.
Bad dreams. I recall the bad dreams first. A man in the corner of the room. His bloodied hands up close to mine. His breath on my face.
But no.
Not all of this is a dream.
A dark cloak of fear draws around me. I feel the blood seep from my face. It was real.
It was real.
My left hand is clutching at the duvet and it throbs as I flex it. And then I recoil. Those hands. Those hands that pushed that man. That body and mind that left. That hand that got twisted in the road, in my haste to flee the scene. The scene. I’m walking across the bedroom, still half asleep, and into the bathroom. I want to look at myself. To see myself. To check I am real and not changed, and to piece myself together.
In the mirror, I trace a finger down my cheek. It’s almost imperceptible – barely there, but I can see it. A dried bit of white stuff: salt, a crust. In an oblong shape on my cheek. A dried tear. I’ve been crying in my sleep.
I gulp. I have to tell Reuben.
I peer out of the bathroom. My head turns towards him, like a flower to the sun. The morning light has caught his features, making them rosier than usual. I can’t stop looking at him. His beard shines auburn. His eyes are closed. Soon, those beautiful eyes will look at me differently.
4
Reveal
I am shivering as a female police officer approaches. She’s heavily made up, which surprises me. I wonder what she looks like beneath the thick layer of foundation, slightly too pale for her, and underneath her coarse, spiky lashes, the blue eyeshadow.
I draw my coat further around me.
‘Joanna,’ she says to me.
I look up at her. She will surely realize it was a mistake. An accident. Not intentional. Woman to woman, we can work it out. I look closely at her. I wonder what sort of bedroom she stands in as she applies her make-up. Minimalist? Or maybe one full of curated pieces? I wonder what led her to the police and if she finds it difficult as a woman. I wish we could talk about this; that we’d met incidentally, at a hen party or a christening.
‘Joanna Oliva. Yes,’ I say, my eyes still running over her features.
She lets out a sigh, a short, sharp exhalation through her nostrils. And then she shifts her weight. She’s bored. I am just another case in a long line of night shifts. How peculiar that two people would perceive the same event so differently.
The man – not-Sadiq – is coughing in the recovery position as the paramedics are working on him. Relief floods through my arms and legs like liquid happiness. He’s okay. And so I’ll be okay.
I look back at the police officer. She’s still staring at me. The relief opens my mouth for me and pulls the words out. ‘We were in there,’ I say, pointing in the direction of the bar with my thumb. ‘Well – actually, we weren’t. But I thought it was him when I pushed him.’ It’s garbled. I’m babbling. But I trust her, this woman with the blue eyeshadow and the professional job. She is here to help me.
She holds a hand up, like a mime. Her nails are long and pointed, painted a strange matt that doesn’t catch the street lights. I bet she does them herself, has bought the UV light machine and makes a bit of money on the side. Maybe she’s obsessed with nail art and puts her designs on Pinterest. I could never manage that. I am so messy. I paint the edges of my fingers, too, and just hope it’ll wipe off.
The gesture cuts me off. My next words die in my throat.
‘Okay, Joanna, I need to stop you there,’ the police officer says, her hand still held up in front of her. She points back to Sadiq – no, not-Sadiq – on the towpath. The ambulance crew are lifting him up, on a stretcher, a bag over his face like a blown-up rubber glove that one of the men is squeezing. He’s not conscious. That much is clear. There are vehicles everywhere, parked on the road above us. An ambulance. A first responder in a green and yellow car. And the police. All for me. For us.
‘Joanna Oliva, I am arresting you on suspicion of assault contrary to section eighteen of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861.’
‘What?’ I say, flabbergasted.
‘You do not have to say anything,’ she is saying to me.
The words are familiar, but it takes me a moment to place them. It’s not a hymn or a song lyric or a phrase. No. It’s a caution. The caution. All the crime dramas I’ve ever watched – The Bill while my mother was ironing, The Bridge, after which I applied to be a Police Community Support Officer and then didn’t attend the interview – blur together in my mind as I realize what’s happening. I am being cautioned. Arrested. Me.
I could make a dash for it. Down the canal. I start to plot a route. Past this woman, down the towpath, along the canal, up those steps. Back into central London. Into any number of alleys and nooks and crannies. Any bars or the toothpaste aisle of a Tesco Express or a phone box decorated with prostitutes’ business cards so the sides are made opaque. I could go. Now. It must be the drink talking; I always did get the beer fear. I shake my head, but my vision blurs as I do so, my surroundings moving like liquid.