Anything You Do Say

by Gillian McAllister

  I haven’t been able to find out the inquest verdict, despite trying to catch the news every night for weeks without attracting Reuben’s attention. Who knows what it said? Unlawful killing, I bet. Unlawful killing by Joanna Oliva.

  Nothing more has happened about the keys. But it’s just a matter of time. I know it. They’re still in my handbag. Anybody could find them at any time. I’m too scared to put them back. Frozen in procrastination, as ever. The police haven’t been again, either. But they will. I am sure of it.

  ‘Adult fiction?’ Ed says, typing into the computer.

  ‘Five hundred and two,’ I say. My hand aches after moving the books around so much.

  ‘Ah,’ Ed says, and something in his tone of voice makes me look up.

  And there he is. Reuben. At the door, holding a bunch of spring tulips. They’re yellow, incongruous against the tired, shabby surroundings.

  ‘What’re you …?’ I say.

  He shrugs, a small, self-conscious shrug. He’s wearing a T-shirt, his freckled arms out, and I see his stomach muscles tense under the material, the way they do when he is shy, feeling exposed, and my heart twangs for him.

  He gestures uselessly with the flowers. ‘I bought you these,’ he says quietly. ‘I thought we could … go somewhere. In the weather.’

  It’s been six months since that night. The world’s turned from long nights to long days, sailed around the sun half an orbit, and yet hardly anything at all has changed. I look at the flowers, and that’s the part that breaks my heart. Reuben has never once bought me flowers. And here he is, with a bunch of them, forced to act so utterly out of character to try and bridge the gap I’ve formed, to try and journey back to me. I imagine him picking them out. He’d have chosen carefully, slowly. His palm out as he thought, scanning over the flowers. Perhaps he picked the most expensive bunch, or the prettiest. He’d bring them to my work, he thought. Surely he would be able to find a way back to me, with flowers? A few tears leak out of the corners of my eyes and I shake my head again and try to stop them, even though tears are nothing to me now.

  ‘Oh, I …’ I say.

  ‘Anyway, here they are,’ Reuben says awkwardly. And then he speaks again. And maybe it’s because he’s trying to cover up the tense silence. Or maybe he welcomes the change of subject. ‘Hey, maybe your coat’s here? Have you seen Jo’s coat?’ and he turns to Ed. ‘She lost it in the winter …’

  Of course he’d ask, I find myself thinking. He hasn’t seen Ed for ages, but of course he’d remember to ask. He probably noted it somewhere, for the next time he came.

  I feel my face heat up. Oh, no. This isn’t happening. My coat is just over there. Reuben will recognize it immediately. I have been so concerned about the CCTV, and the stupid keys, I forgot the main thing: that hiding my own evidence in my place of work was unbelievably, unspeakably stupid.

  ‘Jo’s coat?’ Ed says. ‘No?’

  ‘She lost it.’

  ‘Oh, let me check the cupboard,’ Ed is saying.

  The world is becoming quiet and dim around me. I need to disappear inside my mind, somehow. I cannot witness this fallout.

  ‘It won’t be here,’ I croak.

  ‘You don’t know where you lost it,’ Reuben says. ‘That’s the point.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have left anywhere without it in winter,’ I snap.

  ‘Well, it’s not at home.’

  Ed holds a hand up, like we are bickering children, and locates his key on his belt.

  It’s okay, I tell myself. It’s okay. I can pretend not to know why it’s in there.

  But the shoes.

  Reuben will recognize the shoes. No work colleague would have, but Reuben will. They are completely distinctive. Worn once. He will not hesitate to exclaim that they are all mine.

  And Ed knows about the keys. That time some careless burglar left one lock undone. Me.

  And Ed, I realize, with a painful swallow, knows, too, about the police. That they asked me about that night. That I have questioned Ayesha on the bus.

  It will all unravel. Right here. Right here, in front of me. There is no way around it.

  And, finally, it is no longer panic I feel. It is something else. Something worse. A spidery, shivery, certain dread, like seeing a knife swing towards me, like watching somebody cock a gun, and aim it at me.

  I strong-arm in, trying to steer the conversation away. I point at the flowers, gesturing to Reuben’s general presence in our office. ‘I thought we were seeing Wilf,’ I say weakly. A pathetic attempt at distraction. We were supposed to be meeting him at the opening of some bar he’d invited us to.

  ‘I’ve cancelled,’ Reuben says.

  Another un-Reuben thing to do. He would never usually take control of me in this way. He must be serious.

  ‘Oh – but how is Wilf?’ Ed says, stopping, the key in his hand.

  I blink, wondering, for just a second, why he is asking. He never usually enquires about Wilf. And then I see his expression. Clear concern, the eyebrows knitted, behind his thick glasses.

  The blood runs from my face. I’m surprised nobody else can see it; that it’s not cascading right down my neck in red rivulets. Wilf. That lie I told.

  Ed’s still holding the key, standing by the cupboard. He is going to go into the cupboard, and find my things. And then he is going to tell Reuben that Wilf’s girlfriend is dead; that I told a stranger this. And either one of these facts, or maybe both of them, will hand me over. It will expose me. They will figure it out.

  It’s strange how wide the range of bad emotions is.

  Happiness seems somehow saturated. The feeling of stepping off a plane in a foreign country is the same as leaving work on a Friday and waiting for a takeaway. The feeling of getting into Oxford is the same as taking a bite of a fresh mango on a summer morning. Marrying Reuben was the same as curling up with a great book on a wintry Sunday. Happiness, it seems to me, is either on or off.

  And yet, the bad emotions. Their wingspan seems enormous, like an albatross’s. The wretched, stomach-churning ache of guilt. The thud of shame. The slow, hot, wet-eyed creep of disappointment. A deep, throbbing sadness. Missing somebody so much that the world feels utterly altered. The empty, dreadful feeling of loneliness. I’m so alone with it; with it all. I fantasize in the shower about telling somebody. It’s the only time I let myself dream about doing it. Laura. Reuben. Ed. Wilf. Even my parents.

  And now this: back to panic. Wanting – above all else – to be able to keep my terrible secret. The contradictions of it don’t make any sense to me.

  ‘He’s fine,’ Reuben says, a frown casting a sheen across his features like a lamp switched on in the next room; the effect is subtle.

  ‘Is he really?’ Ed says.

  And all the while, I’m watching it, like a natural disaster unfolding in front of me. Oh, that lie. How stupid it was. How needless. I could have said anything. That I was visiting a long-dead relative at the mosque. That I was seeking spirituality. Why did I have to mention my brother?

  Ed looks from Reuben to me. It’s a casual look, but it’s significant to me. He puts the key into the lock of the cupboard and turns it.

  I’ve been so careful around other people. Reuben. Laura. But not Ed. His presence is so benign, almost like a priest or a therapist. Impartial. But work is where we reveal ourselves. Our day-to-day selves. You can’t hide things from your colleagues.

  I think of all the things he’s seen. Me asking Ayesha about the investigation. The police. Oh God, the police. The lie about Wilf. The change in me. Surely, he’s noticed.

  ‘Yes – he’s fine? I think?’ Reuben says, looking at me. He’s still clutching the flowers, but his arm has dropped down to his side, defeated. The tulips hang upside down.

  ‘When did it happen – again?’ Ed says. ‘December? January?’

  ‘When did what happen?’ Reuben says. His gaze swivels to me. It’s open, expectant; only slightly questioning.

  ‘Let’s see in here,�
� Ed says, pulling the door to him. He looks at Reuben, pausing again. ‘His girlfriend?’ Ed queries, a flash of teeth showing as he smiles and frowns, simultaneously, in disbelief.

  ‘What girlfriend?’ Reuben says.

  Ed grabs the basket at the bottom of the cupboard and begins to rifle through it.

  It’s playing out in front of me like a horror film, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

  ‘His girlfriend who died.’

  ‘Who died?’ Reuben says, looking at Ed. ‘Jo?’ Reuben says to me.

  I glance up, and Ed is staring at me, his eyes narrowed thoughtfully. Those dark, calm eyes. As I meet his gaze, for a moment everything stops.

  His hand grasps my coat and begins to pull it out.

  Reuben says, ‘That’s it, and those are your shoes!’ and stares at me.

  And then Ed raises his eyebrows, just enough. He is telling me something. He is telling me that he knows. No. Not quite that. He is telling me that perhaps he could know. He suspects. He might not know what yet – it is the same as the imagined sirens, the hundreds of times I have lain awake in bed, certain a policeman is raising his hand to ring the doorbell – but he suspects something.

  Adrenaline zaps up my arms and down.

  Without thinking, I open the door to the office and walk out into the night.

  I don’t look behind me.

  I don’t turn around.

  I’ve got to leave. That’s all I’m thinking. Somebody knows, and I have to leave.

  30

  Reveal

  We have to go in the front door of the Old Bailey, on Old Bailey Street. There’s no other way, Sarah tells me, not unless I’m vulnerable or must remain anonymous. The doors, compared to the building, are surprisingly un-grand, and we push through a dark turnstile and into the foyer.

  It’s still early, and it’s quiet around us. Reuben hovers by my side. He looks how I think I should feel; he has trembling hands, a sweaty forehead. His stomach is probably churning. I am nothing, here next to Sarah. I am so at the centre of things that I have become the eye of the storm, sitting calmly in the nucleus. As though, if I don’t think about it, if I disassociate myself enough, whatever happens in that courtroom won’t actually be happening to me.

  I have unthinkingly felt the weight of the justice system everywhere since that night: in my daily reports to the police station; in the smell of the prison-issue T-shirt because my chiffon top was taken to forensics; in the lawyer’s office with her Latin phrases. But, here, I feel it more than ever. In the grand, marble architecture, in the sweep of the robes across the courtroom, like something out of Harry Potter; the wigs and the crests and the security guards and the reporters hanging around, trying to get a story.

  ‘There aren’t any rooms here,’ Sarah says. She raises an eyebrow.

  We sit down at a marble table and chairs, right in the centre of the foyer, outside Courtroom Two, and wait.

  A man approaches us. He has rimless glasses on, brown eyes, bushy eyebrows, a mop of curls poking out from under his wig, a five o’clock shadow – even though it’s before eight in the morning.

  ‘I’m Duncan,’ he says, extending a hand to shake mine. It protrudes unexpectedly from his robes. ‘Your barrister.’

  It seems absurd to me that I’m only just meeting him, but I’m assured this is how it works.

  Reuben is drumming his fingers on the table. It makes a deadened, muffled sound on the marble. They’re like a relic from the past, those hands, even though I’ve been living with them, even though nothing has ostensibly changed between us. But I remember them how they used to be. Before everything changed. The way they played the piano to soothe me, reluctantly; he never liked being talented. The way they would reach, extending towards me, at night. Nostalgia; the worst emotion to feel about a husband.

  ‘Can I have a word – about the scans?’ the barrister says to Sarah.

  She nods, not saying anything. She’s in control, feeling no need to appease him.

  He’s brought a case of documents with him. I am not surprised that they are evidently going to discuss my case away from me. It’s the way of it. The whole thing is much bigger than me now. They’re only a few feet away, outside the courtroom door, their heads bent together. He crosses his feet at the ankles and I see a flash of lime-green socks as he scratches one ankle with the toe of the other shoe.

  ‘I’ll get us some coffees,’ Reuben says.

  That doesn’t surprise me, either. He’s bought a thousand coffees during the run-up to this trial. Both when he was involved, and Sarah was questioning him in advance of him being cross-examined, and when he wasn’t. It seems to be something of a role he’s taken on.

  The lawyers arrive back, their faces expressionless, and I look up at them like a child.

  ‘Oh, yes, be good if we could have five minutes, too,’ Duncan says to Reuben as he returns with drinks. His voice is so posh that the words run on together. ‘Take a proof.’

  It’s so strange to me that my life has become textualized in this way. The inconsequential phone call I made that night saying I was frightened, that maybe I was being followed. The receiver of that call has become a witness. The events turned into language to be argued over in court, broken down into witness statements and statements of fact and key bits of evidence; the call logs, the corroboration from Laura that Sadiq was in the bar, harassing us. She’s not needed until later in the week. Reuben’s not, either. But perhaps this is the best time to go through things with him; while we are calm, not mid-trial.

  Reuben is nodding eagerly at the barrister. He thinks he can sort it. If he testifies well enough, he can change things for the better. As ever. ‘You alright? On your own?’ he says to me over his shoulder.

  They walk, only a few feet away again, and I’m left looking at the surroundings. The staircase is made of mock swords instead of balusters. Every other railing points downwards, ending in a sharp tip.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, glad of the alone-time.

  When you’re in a process as big as this, hardly anybody ever leaves you alone. I’m glad of it, stepping down from main actor to understudy, alone offstage, in the wings. I close my eyes, pretending the foyer is less shabby. It’s an anteroom, perhaps. In the White House. I’ve done something with my life, and I’m waiting for the President. Yes. Perhaps I am his trusted adviser. We’ll eat risotto, the President and I.

  I keep my eyes closed, a small smile on my face as I imagine.

  31

  Conceal

  When I eventually arrive home, Reuben is watering the plants on our steps. He uses a watering can, carefully pouring just the right amount into each pot. I should be explaining myself to him, but I’m not. I’ve practically run here, after walking around for hours. Running from Ed. From the police who are surely coming.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he says, though it doesn’t sound like a question. ‘What was all that? Ed told me when you left … about Wilf.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said it wasn’t true.’

  Oh shit. If Ed didn’t know before …

  ‘It was a stupid lie,’ I mutter, my face flaming.

  Reuben’s green eyes widen in shock. ‘Why would you say that?’ he says, and, to my horror, he sounds sympathetic.

  He loves me so very much that he’s willing to hear me out about such a fucked-up, dysfunctional lie.

  I look through the kitchen window. The tulips are in a vase on the windowsill.

  I watch him for a moment. He stops looking at me and waters another plant. Some of the water comes out of the head of the can unevenly and sprinkles on to the concrete steps.

  Unlike the plants that Reuben tends to, which are just budding in the summertime, we are dying, Reuben and I. The symptoms of our demise are everywhere: that we haven’t crossed a single film off the blackboard for months. That we used to sleep naked, but now I sleep in a T-shirt and pants, unable to cross the line in the middle of the bed, physically or emotionally
. That I answer Reuben in one-word sentences, so much so that he no longer bothers asking me any questions.

  And so here we are. I’m on the steps, my jacket slung over my arm. He’s just straightening up.

  Unbidden, an image of the police pops into my head. Ed will have called them. Won’t he? It seems certain, inevitable, to me, but paranoia has obscured my vision, like the dye they used to put in my eyes at the optician’s when I was younger. That blond policeman, and his smaller, dark friend. Their tread along Hammersmith Broadway. Turning right at Byron Burger. Then left. On to my street. I’ve got to get away. I can’t be here to see Reuben’s face transform the moment he realizes what I have done.

  But before that, I think sadly, looking at Reuben, I need to offer something up. A sacrifice. A ritual. A last-ditch attempt.

  And this isn’t fair, anyway. This pseudo-relationship that confuses and irritates Reuben. He should be free to find somebody else. He shouldn’t be burdened, either, by a confession, by having to cover up my crime with me.

  ‘Why’d you throw your stuff away?’ he says, as if reading my mind.

  He doesn’t look suspicious. He just looks sad. Reuben may not know, but Ed must.

  ‘I didn’t want your coat any more,’ I say, swallowing back my tears as I lie to my husband.

  I look down. He’s got no socks on. The air is warm and soft. He winces as my words hit him.

  I will miss those feet. And those freckled hands. That brow.

  ‘I can’t live like this,’ I say to him. ‘I’m sorry but I’m not happy. I’m just not happy with you – any more. I haven’t been for ages.’