Where did I go? Did I see anybody? Was I at the canal? What’s my story? Why haven’t I taken the time to work it out? It would have taken five minutes. I am a prize idiot.
I can’t meet his eyes. Those pale, wolfish eyes.
‘We’re running out of leads, Joanna. And you were seen – really very near to the scene. It would be great if you could help us.’
‘Oh, well,’ I gabble. ‘I went another way, actually. I went that way and then I went another way. In the end.’
‘Right?’ Lawson sounds uninterested but his eyes are calm and watchful, looking at me, watching my shaking hand reach for my tea in its polystyrene cup. He is taking it all in.
‘So I was going to go down along the canal path, but …’ I pause. I have to tell them about Sadiq. It’s what I would do if things were different. ‘A man – called Sadiq –’ I add, ‘had been harassing me in the Gondola. So I didn’t want to walk somewhere deserted.’
It could almost be true. My lies make more sense to me than the truth. The truth is muddy and strange.
The only thing is: it’s not the truth.
‘I went the long way. Away from the Gondola and … along the road. And then across the second bridge down,’ I lie. ‘Would you like his – he gave me a …’ I fish around for my purse and find his business card, thinking, Forgive me, Sadiq.
‘What kind of harassment?’
‘Sexual,’ I say. ‘Predatory.’
Lawson turns the tattered business card over in his hands. ‘So bad you went another way?’
‘Yes.’
‘We’ll look for him. Thank you,’ Lawson says. He asks me more about how Sadiq behaved, and I describe it simply. Dispassionately. He asks me how he looked. What he was wearing.
‘So I was avoiding him when I took a different route. Not down the canal – though it looks like I went that way.’
‘Right,’ Lawson says with a nod. And then a pause. He sips his tea. And then he looks at me, and says three words. ‘Which route, exactly?’
‘Which route?’ I say. I bet he’s been on a course about liars. Hundreds of them. And I bet I am behaving absolutely typically.
We all think we are special. Brilliant liars, if our lives depended on it. But we are all the same. Reuben tells me things he’s read (he is always saying I read somewhere …) and one time he told me about the structure of a lie. It was either that there was not enough detail during the lie, or too much. I can’t remember.
‘Right – so,’ Lawson says, and then he reaches into a kind of satchel that he’s placed on the floor and pulls out a piece of paper. He lays it flat on the table. I see after a second that it’s a map. A screenshot of Google Maps.
I try to think, but it’s impossible under his gaze.
‘Show me on here where you went,’ he says. ‘Take your time.’
I pinch the map and slide it nearer to me. I locate the Gondola with my index finger. That’s it, there – yes. Because we could see the canal bridges – just – from the windows.
With my eyes, I trace my real pathway, over the bridge to Warwick Avenue, stopping at the top of the steps. If the CCTV is right outside the club, I must have been seen heading towards the canal. And so, to avoid it, I’m going to have to say I turned almost completely around, left instead of right.
‘So I walked this way,’ I say, tracing a path from the bar to the road, ‘but then I looped over this way.’ I finish a path. I hope it works. It goes down a street and over another bridge, but it gets me to Warwick Avenue tube alright, and at about the same angle, because no doubt there’s CCTV there, too.
Lawson retraces my steps along the map. ‘So if we were to look at the CCTV from here,’ he says, pointing to a spot in the road on the map, ‘and here … we’d find you?’
‘Yes,’ I say, because I have to.
I try to remember the roads, the shape of them, and I look at them on the map. They’re suburban. But there could be CCTV. What do I know? But perhaps he’s just saying it, to get me to say something I don’t mean. Can they do that, police officers? I have no idea.
‘Well, in that case – you’re no use to us,’ he says.
‘I know,’ I say eagerly.
Davies starts to speak, then, opening his mouth even though Lawson’s gaze swivels to him. ‘You saw nothing.’
‘No,’ I say, thinking that if they were really only interested in my evidence as a witness, and not as a suspect, they would have asked this by now.
A feeling of unease creeps into the meeting room and sits between us. Should I call a lawyer, I wonder? It doesn’t make sense, looking at the two men, in my shabby back office room, the disposable teacups. But appearances are deceptive. It doesn’t mean they’re not here to arrest me, depending on what I say.
‘We’ll be in touch if we need anything further, Joanna,’ Lawson says.
Relief blooms through me like hot air from an oven, but I don’t dare relax yet. He could stop, innocently, his hand on the doorknob, and ask to look at what I was wearing that night. My hat. My gloves. My scarf. The tread of my shoes. All just outside, a few feet away in my car.
‘That’s a weird way to go,’ he says as he’s leaving. A parting shot, a warning sign, fired into the night.
We’re walking through the main office. Ed is sitting on a desk chair, waiting for me, doing nothing at all, as is his way.
‘See you later,’ I say, my fingers trembling by my sides, wanting them to stop talking, to leave me alone.
‘You could’ve just gone over the bridge. To the tube. It’s a totally straight line,’ he says. ‘And very well populated. If you were worried.’ Inwardly, I curse the police’s knowledge of London.
‘Yeah,’ I say dumbly.
‘Did you not think to discuss this with us? This harassment? When we’re clearly looking for somebody behaving suspiciously?’
Their threat could not be clearer.
And it’s obvious to Ed, too, who’s looking interestedly over at us.
‘I didn’t think,’ I say.
Lawson nods, once, seeming to understand. And maybe he is trustworthy. Maybe I am being too cynical, too much like Reuben.
This is it, I tell myself. No more. I will work as hard as I can to get rid of that evidence.
Just let them leave. Give me another chance. My shoulders feel rigid with bizarre determination to do the wrong thing as I see the CID out.
They walk to their car just across the street, underneath a spindly tree.
When I get back, Ed is still sitting, doing nothing. Just looking at me. He doesn’t ask what they wanted. He doesn’t ask what happened that Friday night, even though he surely heard. He doesn’t ask if the burglaries were a lie. He says nothing. Simply stares at me, as if waiting for me to say something.
But I don’t. Can’t.
18
Reveal
We have Laura and Jonty over for dinner. Reuben suggested it, over WhatsApp, without asking me; something he’s never done before. He sent it straight to the group we are in, all four of us, and I read his invite like they might. As though Reuben and I are near enough lifelong friends, but nothing more.
When they knock on the door and we let them in, Laura always exclaims how cute our basement flat is, with the plants that make it almost impossible to navigate down the stairs and the herbs that line our kitchen windowsill. We laugh about those plants; the most obvious emblem of my faddishness. She has painted them, before. A beautiful portrait of a child amongst the flowers; a rare, non-feminist portrait of hers.
‘Jonty’s got mismatched shoes on,’ Laura says as soon as she is inside.
Reuben and I look down. He’s wearing two Converse trainers, but they’re different colours. We laugh, and I’m grateful for the distraction; the normality. It’s the first time we’ve all got together since it happened. It might even be the first time I’ve laughed.
‘They may as well be the same shoes,’ Jonty says good-naturedly.
Reuben exhales, a tiny laugh. ‘Th
ey’re different,’ he says. ‘They’re different shoes.’
Laura’s dressed unusually, for her. Gone are her normal clothes; the long, flowing trousers that look more like maxi skirts. She’s wearing dark, skinny jeans that look expensive, a silk, draped top. A blazer. Her hair is different. Less spiked. Less harsh.
I look at the ship window in our kitchen. It’s misty outside and Jonty and Laura have let a chill in with them. I reach to trace a finger down it. It is as though my sand timer is running out twice as quickly as everybody else’s. Or I have half as much sand. I wonder if, afterwards, I will remember all these lovely things about my life, or if I will be forever changed, unable to enjoy things, to dream? I think, too, of Sadiq, ready to make his imminent statement about me that might change my life. I think of Imran, lying motionless somewhere. There’s an awkward silence as I touch the window, which Reuben – unusually – breaks. He is looking at Jonty with a disbelieving expression; one he has regarded me with, over and over.
‘Didn’t they look different as you were tying your laces?’ he says.
Jonty just shrugs and laughs. ‘I was distracted by my beautiful, glittery perfume bottles,’ he says, and Reuben laughs, too.
Laura rolls her eyes. ‘Very intricate work, painting perfume bottles with glitter,’ she says.
‘I thought that was just for Christmas.’
‘Perfume is not just for Christmas,’ Jonty says seriously.
Laura seems distant, and I nudge her elbow. We struggle to find friend-time, when we’re together with the boys. I wish it was acceptable to go on a walk with her, or to have half an hour in separate rooms. There are always things I want to say to her in private.
‘You alright?’ I say quietly.
‘Even the laces are different,’ Reuben is saying. He can’t leave it alone.
‘I don’t tie the laces. Just stuff my feet in,’ Jonty says.
Reuben smiles at him indulgently, like he is a child, then leads him to the fridge to show him the beer.
Laura perches on one of the bar stools at our kitchen counter. I sit on the other, looking at her. She reaches and picks up the retro salt shaker I bought from Tiger last month and pours a tiny pile into her hand. I stare at it. I’m forever looking for omens, these days. I can’t help but stare at the white crystalline pile in her palm.
‘You’re not working any longer,’ she says, sounding strangely formal.
‘Well, no,’ I say, blinking. ‘They wouldn’t let me …’
‘Maybe when the trial’s over?’ she says.
I nod, although I am thinking, Long after that.
She pours the salt on to the countertop. I frown, though I don’t mind. Reuben would.
‘Your stuff has got me thinking. We’re thirty.’
I try not to bristle at that. My crime has got her thinking. The loss of my job. My imminent incarceration. It’s changed things for everybody, not just me.
But of course it has. Whether or not it’s more important to me, it’s still important to her, to Reuben, to Wilf. The human mind is so reliably self-involved. Or, at least, mine is. I can’t imagine the life crisis I would have had if it had been Laura who was being tried for causing grievous bodily harm with intent.
I look at her, shifting the salt into tiny piles, wearing her clothes that look expensive.
‘I had an interview today,’ she says. ‘For a grad scheme.’
‘Why?’ I say. ‘You’re not a grad.’
‘No, but I …’
‘What?’
‘I dunno, Jo. It’s time to stop arsing around, isn’t it? I want a career. I do. Before I want a baby. That’s …’
‘What?’ I say, my voice sounding shrill.
It’s as though everybody who used to be around me is prepping, moving on, while my life’s on hold.
‘Babies,’ I say. ‘I want them too.’
‘Do you?’
‘Of course I do,’ I say, sounding bruised and prickly all at once. ‘But I don’t have the luxury of making it happen.’
‘Well, no,’ Laura says. ‘Not right now.’
We lapse into silence, and then she says, ‘Marketing.’
‘What?’
‘It’s in marketing. At a bank.’
‘Marketing what?’
‘The bank.’
‘Sounds pointless.’
‘It’ll be good for me. To join the real world.’
‘The rat race,’ I say spitefully, even though I do not really mean it.
I am only jealous. Of her direction, but also the luxury of choice. To join a graduate scheme. To not have a planetary problem looming so large that the rest of life merely orbits around it, waiting for the trial, waiting for the outcome. To be able to choose to have a child this year, next year, the year after.
‘It’ll be good for us. Jonty is going to get one, too. We might sell the boat.’
‘Jonty can’t even put a pair of shoes on,’ I say, and it’s meant to be teasing, an emblem of their chaotic lifestyle with their barge that drifts along the Thames, as directionless as they are, and the motley crew of people who stay for a few weeks at a time and then move on. But it comes out as shrill, judgemental, like I am clinging on to a past Laura that she wants to leave behind.
‘Yeah, well. It’s not too late to learn,’ she says, looking at me kindly. Perhaps with pity.
‘Are you painting?’ I say, thinking of her beautiful, photograph-like paintings. They always make a feminist point, a political point. The most recent set are painted tabloid newspapers, with all of the photos of men in suits as women, and with page three as men.
‘No,’ she says.
She’s had her nails done. Straightened her hair. She looks totally different. And so while we’ve been making the same jokes, telling each other the same stories about our jobs, she’s been getting ready, behind the scenes, like a determined understudy. My life is ruined and hers is just beginning. Soon she’ll have all those things; all those proper things. Pensions, cars, a secretary. She would think that was selling out, but I never did. I just couldn’t find the Thing I wanted to do.
‘You stressed – about it all?’ she says, as though it all is merely a pressing deadline or an impending redundancy, not the reality that my life is being shaken up like the salt in the retro shaker in front of us.
‘Yes,’ I say shortly. ‘No. I don’t know.’
Sat opposite each other, talking over the counter, with the rainy dark world outside the round window, I feel like we’re in a café or at a bar. Reuben and Jonty go and sit on the sofa in our tiny living room. I can hear the tread of their shoes on the wooden floor behind us.
Laura dabs at the salt with the pad of her index finger.
‘It’s just – I don’t know. It’s time to grow up, isn’t it?’ she says. She looks excited. ‘It took me ages to realize. Years later than everyone else. But I want a proper career. I want to look forward to work – to use my brain. Which isn’t useless.’
‘No,’ I say, wondering whether she thinks mine is.
I can hear Reuben and Jonty talking. They’re saying something about July. ‘Yeah, sure,’ I hear Reuben say, his tone the exact one he uses when he’s agreeing to something that he’ll later cancel.
Laura’s hands are knotted together. She is always worrying; always analysing. No wonder she wants a career. She is nothing like me, drifting, daydreaming, from one location on the library bus to the next.
‘It’s the sixteenth,’ Jonty is saying behind me.
I tune into their conversation instead. It’s easier to listen to them than to think of my best friend changing her life because of something I have done. Our flat is so small that I can hear every word.
‘Is that a Saturday?’ Reuben says, sounding less reluctant. His tone is strange, and I cock my head, intent now.
‘Mm, yeah,’ Jonty says.
Laura looks lost in thought, dabbing her finger into the salt pile, over and over again, the grains making tiny pockmarks on her skin.
‘It’ll be just me, probably. If it’s July,’ Reuben says.
‘Oh, right,’ Jonty says, sounding taken aback.
I frown.
There’s a pause. Laura and I don’t speak, and neither do Reuben and Jonty.
And then I hear Jonty again. ‘Oh, yeah. Of course,’ he says. ‘Sorry.’
And it’s not the words, or the look I imagine Reuben gave him, which preceded his realization. No. It’s the tone. The tone people only speak in when they’re talking about my crime. My misdemeanour. As though I’ve been put on the sex offenders’ register or gone to Alcoholics Anonymous. Something shameful. And isn’t it?
‘Sorry, mate,’ Jonty adds softly again.
Laura doesn’t say anything then. I keep staring hard at her, knowing she heard my husband talk of my imminent incarceration as though it’s a certainty, but she doesn’t look up. I scrape all of the salt into the palm of my hand, and feel its weight, then throw it, with my right hand, over my left shoulder. For luck. To get rid of the devil, waiting patiently behind me.
‘Jonty was asking about their boat party thing this summer,’ Reuben says conversationally after they have left.
I remember their last summer party. Reuben had sent me a very Reuben-like text, across the boat from me, as a very boring woman talked to me about the alternative voting system. You alright there, or do you need rescuing? it said. Rescue me, I replied, and he came over, and said, ‘Sorry, my wife looks very bored.’
‘Yes,’ I say. I start scrubbing at the work surface, not looking at him.
Reuben is leaning against the kitchen counter and shifts away, looking curiously at what I’m doing. I hardly ever clean.
‘I haven’t RSVP’d for you.’ He says it simply.
He moves to the door frame and leans against it. I can feel his gaze on me. I turn and squeeze water out of the sponge.
‘Okay,’ I say brightly.
I should ask him why not – because I really can’t understand it. At the very least, I should turn around and look at him. Maybe then I would see it in his facial expression: the answer – what he thinks. Is it about prison? Or something else? Not wanting to speak for me when my life is a shambles?
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