And so now we’re watching the films together. A few a week. We just watched number seventy-nine, and I see that the next one is The Exorcist. When we started, Reuben bought a blanket that we always get out now, and snuggle under it. Every now and then, while we’re watching, he will pause the film and say, ‘Are you listening?’ and we’ll laugh when I am not.
A siren goes off in the distance. I can hear it getting closer and closer. Reuben is looking at me. I can’t look back. I can’t speak until I know whether or not it’s for me. It gets louder and louder and I expect it to cut off. There’ll be two strapping policemen getting out, wearing heavy boots and carrying batons. They will ring the doorbell. Any second. Any second now.
Only, the siren continues again, into the distance, getting quieter and quieter, orbiting away from me. It’s not for me. This time.
I gulp and look at the wintry blackness of the window. Is this how it’s going to be now? Will my London – the London Reuben and I love so much – become a kind of waiting room for my … for my what? My capture? I shake my head. I can’t think of it.
‘I’m not really up for The Exorcist,’ I say with what I hope is a gentle laugh.
‘We said we’d do them in order,’ Reuben, a stickler for rules, says. He turns away from me and indicates the board.
He’s standing at the end of our long, narrow kitchen, and the way the light catches him reminds me of our wedding day. Reuben was half in shadow at the end of the aisle. I’d spent so long imagining our wedding day – the planning and organization almost killed me – that when it finally arrived, I spent the entire day pretending it was somebody else’s, and that I was simply a guest, instead. I could enjoy it better that way.
I remember the kiss he gave me. Our first as husband and wife. Perhaps he was just embarrassed to be kissing me in front of a handful of people. Or preoccupied with the life commitment he had just made. Or maybe he thought I pulled away, first. But I remember that kiss. It was dry, formal. Not like his usual kisses. I’ve never asked him why. But I’ve always remembered it.
‘Okay,’ Reuben says, leaving the room with his wine. I hear him go into the bedroom.
I stare at the kitchen counter after he’s gone. Something is folded neatly in half in the letter rack. I pick it up, trying to distract myself from the seismic swirl of thoughts just off stage-left in my brain. It’s an application form. I frown, looking at it. It’s my handwriting. I pull it out, unfolding it. It’s my application for a creative writing course. How could I have forgotten? I hold it up to the light. It’s like a relic from my life Before. It had seemed like the answer, last Tuesday, when I printed it out and filled it in and then forgot to post it. Reuben’s attached a stamp to it, neatly, with a paperclip. It’s exactly the sort of thing he does: hands-off, but helpful.
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.
She’s still speaking. ‘But it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned …’
The funny thing about your life changing in a moment is that you are the same person after the change. I, Joanna Oliva, wife of Reuben Oliva, still wonder how long it took her to memorize the caution and whether or not she felt a frisson of power the first time she said it to somebody. My main thoughts are still what Reuben will think of me, and whether or not he will look at me differently, even though it is trivial against the backdrop of what I have done, like a cancer patient worrying about losing their hair in the face of a life-threatening disease.
‘… something which you later rely on in court …’
The night seems to become colder around me and I draw my coat sleeves down over my hands, even though the action strains and pulls at the wool.
‘… anything you do say may be given in evidence …’
And, with those words, I begin the process of no longer being myself. I’ve gone through the veil, to the underworld. I’m not myself any more. I’m not Joanna. I can’t go home and sit in bed with Reuben and play our end-of-the-night game.
‘Do you understand,’ the woman is saying to me, ‘what I’ve said?’
I nod because I don’t know what else to do. And they load not-Sadiq into the ambulance and close the doors with soft clicks in the night.
‘You’ll come to the station,’ she says. It’s not a request.
‘Of course,’ I say, wanting to please her, momentarily distracted by the glint of her wedding ring.
Reuben and I didn’t choose rings, in the end. He thought they were clichéd, which made me laugh. Laura was impressed. She loved the unconventionality of our wedding.
The policewoman searches me then. She gestures and, just like airport security, pats me down. ‘Do you have anything on you that might cause danger to you or others?’ she asks.
‘No.’
The policewoman tries to lead me by the arm over to their car but I walk willingly, like a well-trained dog keen to please. I get into the back of the car myself. The door handle is slick with rainwater.
She sits next to me in the back seat. I daren’t touch my mobile phone, though I want to. Reuben will be worried.
I close my eyes and pretend I am in a taxi, that some chatty Uber driver is talking to me. The other police officer gets in the driver’s seat and stalls the car before pulling away. I wonder if she took lots of attempts to pass her driving test, like I did.
My brown leather handbag is resting at my feet. I could reach it. Touch it. But perhaps that would be a crime.
‘Which station are we going to?’ I say. I wait a few seconds before looking up at them.
They don’t answer. They don’t speak. We just drive on in silence, the night streaking by.
I feel less and less human for every mile we travel.
It is only a ten-minute journey. The car comes to a shuddery stop and I reach to get out, but it is locked. The woman walks around to my side of the door, opening it like we are at the BAFTAs. She doesn’t look at me, just stands aside like a footman. I look up at the building. Paddington Green Police Station. I’ve never been here. I’d never been to Little Venice before tonight. And now they will be significant to me.
I step out of the car. The police station looks more like a hospital. Wide and flat and sprawling with a tower on its top like a growth. My eyes track it upwards. Floor after floor. What are they? Offices? Cells?
We’re around the back of it, in some sort of secure area. I hear the gates closing behind us.
‘This way,’ the woman says to me.
She doesn’t have a name badge and she doesn’t speak into a radio. She walks next to me, her right hand extended, ready, I guess, in case I make a sudden movement. I look up at the sky instead, taking in the grey expanse of it, before I am inside. I try to send Reuben a message with my mind. He’s always known what I’m thinking better than anybody. Reuben, I say into the night, looking at the low-hanging orange moon, I’m in trouble.
The air is cold against my face as I walk. My heels on the tarmac sound like bangs in the night. I can’t believe I’m still wearing them. What must I look like?
The policewoman pushes a side door open. Immediately I can smell something familiar. I feel nostalgic when I realize that it’s the old people’s home that Mum’s mum was in. Urine mingled with the smell of overcooked stew and dumplings; a sweaty, potatoey, clammy smell.
We enter a brightly lit room. Everything is some shade of blue. The chairs are navy. The desk is teal. The walls are sky blue. I am walked through a scanner, like at an airport. A man is standing there. He’s swarthy. Maybe Spanish. Italian. There’s something catlike about him. Slanted eyes. He smiles at me, which surprises me, and he has pointy incisors.
The machine beeps loudly, three times.
‘Coat off. Why’s she still got her coat?’ a cockney man behind the desk says to the woman who brought me in.
‘Hang on,’ the woman says.
‘And your bracelet,’ the man says to me, rolling his eyes.
My fingers trace over my wedding bracelet. ‘Oh, I … it doesn’t come off,’ I say. My words sound slurred.
‘Got to come off.’
I show it to him, wordle
ssly. It catches the overhead strip lights.
‘It’s got screws,’ he says, seemingly to himself. ‘Too risky.’
He disappears down the corridor and comes back with a screwdriver. One by one, he removes the tiny screws I didn’t even realize were there, and my lifetime bracelet is off, my arm feeling bald and raw underneath it.
The woman swings my handbag on to the high desk which another woman sits behind. My eyes are drawn to the side pocket where I saw her put my phone. I can see it poking out, on a bed of receipts and chewing-gum packets and a notebook.
There’s an annex behind the desk, a small room, and it’s got a whiteboard in it that a man is writing on. It’s divided into grids, with times. The man is writing my name down, which he’s reading off something that has been given to him. He’s in full uniform. White shirt with black shoulder pads with numbers on: 5619. A black tie, embossed with a crest at the bottom.
There’s something behind him, too. I crane my neck to see. Three miniature televisions are suspended from the ceiling on sturdy brackets. Some people must try to pull them off, I presume. Something opens up in my chest. A hollow feeling. Fear, I suppose. The televisions are CCTV. Of the cells. Little people moving around in the greyish-green boxes, like tiny captive holograms. I close my eyes.
‘Let’s try scanning you again,’ the man says. He’s holding my coat.
I walk towards the scanner. Finally, it doesn’t beep any more. As if this triggers something, another woman appears by my side.
‘I’m the Custody Sergeant,’ she says.
I look at the clock. Midnight. Reuben will be frantic. That phone call. And then nothing. I have hardly thought about it since I called the police. Why didn’t I call him again, before it was too late?
I look back at her. She’s blonde, with inch-long mousy roots. She’s in her late thirties, maybe. She’s wearing reddish brown eyeliner which has clumped together in little brick-coloured balls at the roots of her lower lashes. ‘I’m Sergeant Morris. You have the right to a solicitor –’
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