‘It was legitimate,’ I say simply, reaching to take my brother’s hand across the table, no prison guards watching.
He grasps it gratefully. ‘It didn’t feel it,’ he says. ‘I’d known her for less than sixty days. We met on a night out – she was brand new to me. I didn’t know of her at all until that night – and then we were an item, but I didn’t tell anyone. It was the end of winter when we first met. Just after you visited.’ He gestures out of the plate-glass window, down to Covent Garden below, then sips his beer. ‘She died after Easter. Do you remember? The one where I didn’t come home?’
I nod again. ‘Yeah.’
We’d wondered what he was doing, the Easter of his second year. He didn’t come home, said he was working in a bar in Cambridge. But then, that summer, he arrived home as usual, as though he’d never left.
‘She died on the Easter Monday.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ I say. ‘That that happened to you.’
I meet his eyes and he nods, once.
‘You can buy a sack of organic potatoes from here and take them home,’ Wilf says, reaching across and pointing to an item in a side box on the menu.
‘No thanks,’ I say, with a faint smile.
He smiles too. ‘I wanted to tell you,’ he says, ‘but instead I was … I don’t know. Barbed. With you.’
‘We were jealous of each other.’
‘I was certainly jealous of you,’ he says. ‘You seemed to have it all.’
‘What? You have – you got a first. From Cambridge. And you have four London properties. And your job …’
He looks at me, not saying anything, his round eyes just staring. Suddenly, I can hear myself. What would I rather have? Reuben and the people in my life – or money and a degree? It’s easy. I’ve never looked at it that way before.
‘God,’ I say. ‘I had no idea.’
‘I know. Why would you?’ he says. ‘But it well and truly messed me up. And Minnie is now … the first woman, since.’
‘At all?’
‘No,’ he says, making a sort of equivocal gesture. ‘There have been girls. But they never stayed over. I just – I don’t know. I just thought … I just thought they’d die, I suppose. How messed up is that? If they stayed with me. It’s like an incorrect thought went into my mind – that I caused it, somehow. And even though I know it’s not true, I couldn’t … I couldn’t get it out of my head.’
I am nodding vigorously again. Everything he’s saying is true.
It’s so easy for false thoughts to pass through the net of your mind, not being caught, and to become truths.
‘Notwithstanding your crime, don’t you think that’s … a harsh assessment of yourself?’ Alan had said once, when I told him I had never studied enough, always procrastinated, was stupid, career-less. And look what had happened: that crime. I’d blinked as he said it. Harsh? No. The Old Bailey had sentenced me to two years in prison. What could be harsher than that?
‘But what is the benefit, Joanna,’ he had said, ‘of beating yourself up, now, about it? Who wins?’
I had answered, simply, ‘Atonement.’
Alan had shrugged, as if to say, Who cares about that?
I keep thinking about that conversation, now. It’s strange to realize you might have been wrong for your entire life.
‘Seen Mum and Dad?’ Wilf asks, spearing an onion ring.
I shake my head.
He gives me a curved half-smile, at that.
But he doesn’t know. They came separately, Mum and Dad. Every single week, just like Wilf. It was better that they were separate. Like I’d split up a tribe, or something. It was healthier. After a few months, Dad reached over the table, and tentatively touched my hands, even though we weren’t supposed to. ‘It doesn’t matter, you know, Jo,’ he had said. I had nodded tearfully, wishing the moment could be extended forever, that I didn’t have to return to my cell, alone again until the next visiting slot. ‘We don’t care.’ That was the closest either of them came to apologizing.
But it didn’t matter. I am a valid person, whether or not I got a degree. Whether or not my parents are proud of me. Whether or not my brother likes me. I tilt my chin up, by myself, now.
Wilf nods, picking up his beer again and ripping the label off. Then he puts it down and reaches for me, and grips my hand with his. His hand is cold and wet from the condensation. ‘I’m glad you’re meeting Minnie,’ he says. ‘Before anyone.’
‘Me, too,’ I say. ‘Me, too.’
37
Conceal
I write the final line of the final scene and break for coffee. It’s funny, but despite everything, my mind has become strangely quiet, stilled. I have no smartphone. No Instagram, any more. No posts on Facebook. People know where I am, of course. I’m not hiding. I am merely … sequestered away.
I sit back and look at the final line. I change one word, then sit back again. That’s it.
It’s done. One hundred thousand words. I would never have thought I was capable of it. But I’ve done one thousand words per day, every day, after work. No matter the time. No matter my plans (which aren’t many). It was never easy, exactly. But I didn’t give up. I just kept building the bricks, one by one.
I wrote a book called Deep Down in the Dennys when I was eight. Wilf proofread it, and then we ‘published’ it, running ten copies off on our new home laser printer and selling them at the school for five pence each. I wonder if he remembers.
On impulse, I navigate to Facebook and type his name in. It was a name as familiar to me as my own, one I have surely seen written almost as often. Wilfred. He used to hate it.
He’s changed his profile picture. I open that and stare at it. His long nose. He’s wearing Aviators, and in them I can see his arm reflected. It’s a selfie. All of his other pictures are just him, too. At the top of mountains. Running marathons. On a boat on the high seas. All selfies.
He hasn’t met anybody, then. I wouldn’t expect him to. He’s too cagey, remote.
There’s nothing else to see, so I click off the page, feeling alone, suddenly, in my bedroom. It feels like a past life.
The novel’s stored safely on my laptop. I’ll give it a read over, then send it off soon. I have a list of agents Blutacked to the wall and I take it off, now. Now that I’m ready.
A small suitcase is packed, and the laptop goes in first. I’m thankful, in a funny sort of way, for these two years of freedom. It’s been a completely pure, undiluted form of freedom. I’ve been able to do absolutely whatever I wanted. I’ve got the book down. I’ve watched whatever I’ve wanted. I’ve worked where I wanted to, in mobile libraries, of course, surrounded by books and their musty scents and the gentle rocking of the bus when there are too many people on board. It might not be what I want to do with my life, but it has been good.
And now it’s time.
Before I leave, I get the shoebox out. I allowed myself one box.
I sort through it, pulling out the items like they are relics. And I suppose they are: artefacts of my previous life. They’re preserved, not even dusty, as I hold them in my hands. The wedding bracelet. The list I wrote the day I got here. It contains everything I could ever remember Reuben and I saying we loved about the other. There are only twenty or so items on it. It was the best I could do, after the accident. I wrote it before they faded even further from my memory. Reading it now produces a warm feeling in the depths of my stomach, like having a hot chocolate with brandy in, at Christmastime.
I close my eyes, trying to taste the tang of Before. That lovely life with that lovely man. That carefree life. It never felt carefree. But, of course, it was.
There are other things in the box, too. A newspaper clipping about a protest against the closure of the library, with Reuben front and centre holding a placard saying Knowledge is power. I loved him for that protest. That protest meant he understood my job, as well as the wider politics. But it frustrated me, too. I didn’t want to go. Usually he’d leave it, but he ju
st couldn’t understand why it wasn’t top of my list, standing in the cold with a placard. That clipping – it stands for all of it. That belligerent side of him. The one I loved, too. His flaws. I loved both sides of him like a mother should love her children: equally.
Absent from the box are the things that are impossible to capture. The way he looked at me across rooms. The dirty texts he’d occasionally send, which shocked and titillated me. The way he’d organize himself around me, tolerating my chaos, amused by it, even.
There’s a skylight, in my loft room, and I open it and peer out, looking at the tops of the buildings, taking in some summer air. There’s been a heatwave for the last few weeks, and it’s sticky and airless up here. I like to look at the rooftops in Birmingham. I never could in London. I was isolated, tucked away into a flat right in the bowels of the city. Reuben would hate it here. Would hate the things I like: the proper recycling bins. The driveway. That my neighbour occasionally invites me to her barbecues, even though she knows I am a recluse. That I can hang my washing outside. Reuben would be appalled by this banal suburbia, away from the city lights and twenty-four-hour shops. I almost smile to think about it.
As I look out at the darkening air above the rooftops, I wonder if he’s still in Zone Two. Still living in rented accommodation, still within walking distance of a hundred pubs, a thousand exhibitions, the river. Our river. No. Let’s not think of him.
My hand is on a clutch of papers from the box. It aches less today, my bad hand.
The name of my lawyer – Weston Michaels – is franked across the back of the letter. It was painless. I thought it would be. Not that I had ever given divorcing Reuben any thought, of course, but it was. He was his reasonable, dispassionate self. As consistent as a stick of fairground rock with his traits running evenly all the way through him.
I enclose your decree absolute, the letter says. No mention of ‘I am pleased to’. I liked that about my lawyer. He knew there was nothing pleasing about any of it.
I separate out the pieces of paper, and there it is. I haven’t looked at it for months, but there it is. Stamped with a County Court logo, in blood red.
I trace a fingertip over the names. Joanna Oliva, the Petitioner. Reuben Oliva, the Respondent.
I could change my name now. Meet someone new. I try to imagine Reuben’s antithesis. What kind of man would that be? He wouldn’t vote. Wouldn’t read books. He’d like the simple things in life. Two weeks in the Costa del Sol every August. He’d not worry about the treatment the cheap beef in his McDonald’s had been subjected to. He’d be sunny, warm. He’d like Saturday morning sex and football matches. Maybe he’d gamble, or download movies, or do something else mildly illegal, such as putting in a whiplash claim when he didn’t have any injuries. I shudder. He’s not for me, that man.
I wonder if Reuben received exactly the same document. Probably. He never said. Not a word of contact after I said I wanted a divorce. Classic, dignified Reuben.
I trace his name. That beautiful name. Reuben Oliva. It tripped off my tongue. I was so happy to take it.
I can’t help but wonder what he’s doing now. Worst of all, maybe, I wonder what might’ve been. If he knew. If he might have accepted it. Protected me. Forgiven me.
No. The reasons I love him are the reasons I could never have told him.
Loved.
Love.
I dream of Reuben, and, in the middle of the night, I get up and go into my tiny garden and look up at the sky and the stars and the moon. They’re so clear here. It would be nice, relaxing in the warm night air, if I wasn’t breathless and tired. My body slows down more at night than it used to. It takes me an age to wake properly in the mornings.
What’s he doing? I wonder. How is he? I wonder if he dreams of me, if he’s thinking of me right now, wherever he is, whatever he’s doing. Maybe he’s reading something heavy. Something meaningful. Something good. Watching BBC News, unable to sleep in the heat. Playing the piano. Slagging off politicians on the Internet. Something like that. Something good.
38
Reveal
Laura and Jonty are having a party on their boat. A farewell party, she called it in the text. As Reuben and I arrive, the side is strung with fairy lights. The boxes have gone. The random items from the top have gone, too. It’s a shell. A husk. It has lost its smell, I realize, as we step inside. Everyone is gathered at the other end, and Reuben and I are alone in the last of the sunlight for a moment. He pours a plastic cup of red wine for himself, then looks at me, his eyebrows raised.
I nod. He pours the wine and I sip it. I find I like the taste of the heavy red. I never used to.
Laura arrives at my elbow. She’s wearing different clothes. Almost office wear. Cropped, patterned trousers. A black vest top. Her hair’s been straightened.
‘Your second outing,’ Laura says. ‘How does it feel?’
It occurs to me, as she asks, that Reuben hasn’t, and I dart an uncomfortable glance at him, as though I shouldn’t be discussing it.
‘Weird,’ I say.
She doesn’t laugh, though Reuben does, a small exhale of air through his nose. She merely appraises me, her head tilted to one side.
The spring heatwave continues, and outside the air is warm and sticky. Reuben sips his wine, looking up at me. His eyes are squinting at the last rays of the sun. His eyelashes ginger. I used to love looking at those eyelashes in the early days, when we’d spend entire days in bed together. I used to stare at them while he slept, terrified he’d wake up and think me a psychopath.
‘She’s catching up, aren’t you?’ Reuben says.
I nod. He’s told me all about what I’ve missed. A referendum. Three plane crashes. Two local council elections. A vote for air strikes on Syria. Two Beyoncé albums. Reuben was the best person to tell me – but it’s like being given a synopsis of a movie. I don’t know. I wasn’t there.
‘So what’s changed?’ Laura says. ‘I’m interested in an alien’s perspective,’ she adds, with a grin.
The joke’s not funny, though. I wouldn’t be so alienated if you had visited, I think.
Jonty joins us, holding a glass up to me.
‘Nothing and everything,’ I say.
Reuben has stepped a few feet away from me, just outside of the circle. He’s looking over the side of the boat, at something down in the canal.
I look up, at the pale moon and the first stars.
Laura’s gaze strays to him momentarily. She’s wearing a choker, terracotta lipstick.
‘Are chokers in fashion now?’ I say, trying to keep my tone light.
Laura laughs. ‘Yep,’ she says. ‘They are.’
One of Jonty’s friends is standing nearby, holding a beer in a Mason jar. He’s got a beard and is wearing braces. ‘Be sad to see you leave the boat,’ he says.
‘Corporate life beckons,’ says Jonty.
‘I think I should get a job,’ I say to Laura.
She beckons me over, frowning, and we sit together on the edge of the boat. It’s bobbing gently. It feels like me, that boat. Untethered.
‘What’re you going to do?’ she says.
‘All recruiters want references. And – bloody hell. I have a record. I’m out on licence.’ It still sounds distasteful as I say it, even though I’m used to it, have had enough therapy to accept it.
‘Don’t they – help?’ she says.
‘Yeah, my probation offic–’
‘God.’
It’s the tone that gets me. The harsh cut-off, my sentence sliced cleanly as if by a guillotine. She doesn’t want me to discuss it. I am a pariah, like somebody who insists on discussing the death penalty or their sex life at a party.
‘I want to be a counsellor – I think,’ I say. Move on, Joanna. Just move the conversation on. ‘I think I’d be good at it. I don’t know.’
I say it quietly to her, while Reuben, Jonty and the stranger stand a few feet away from us. She’s the first person I’ve told, other than my own couns
ellor. I shrug awkwardly. I look down to the end of the boat again and out at the canal. ‘It’s boiling,’ I say. ‘Is this global warming?’
Laura smiles, shifting closer to me, bumping her knee against mine. ‘I think you’ll be a great counsellor,’ she says. ‘You’re – you know. Sympathetic, but not off the wall like me.’
‘Do you still do your hippy stuff, even though you’re a corporate suit now?’ I say.
‘Yeah – of course. I read your cards the night before your trial. I never told you.’ She brushes her hair off her shoulders.
And I see that she’s not changed. She’s just … grown up. We’ve all had to. Whether we liked it or not. Because of me. Because of lots of things.
‘It said you’d be betrayed,’ she says. ‘I got the ten of swords.’
‘Betrayed,’ I say. ‘Huh. The State betrayed me – maybe.’
‘Maybe,’ she says, though she looks as though she knows something else.
I want to press her on it, but don’t. I’m too afraid to.
‘It’s all totally messed up,’ I say. ‘Every night, while I was inside, I ticked off another day. But now it feels … well, it doesn’t go away. I was a criminal. Now I’m an ex-criminal. Nothing’s changed, really. I’m free but … not.’
‘You are free,’ she says emphatically.
‘Not from the past, though. My record. I don’t even know where to start. It’s – I can’t describe it to you,’ I say. ‘Once you leave society you’re sort of – rudderless. It’s not a case of just walking to the nearest recruitment office. They’re not interested in me. I’ve committed one of the worst violent offences. Every criminal’s got an answer. I’d just sound like the rest of them if I said I wasn’t really violent.’ I stop speaking, then try to start again. Even you, I want to add. Even you lost interest.
‘But you’re not,’ she says.
She is being so nice. I can’t say it. I can’t accuse her.
I shrug. ‘I was convicted.’
‘Yeah, but –’
I hold up a hand and she goes silent. I’ve worked hard at accepting what I did. How wrong it was; my remorse is now a part of me, too.
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