Anything You Do Say

by Gillian McAllister

  ‘It’s just hard, is all,’ I say after a few minutes. The sun’s set, and the outside of the boat is lit by the fairy lights alone. ‘It’s not how I expected. I can’t just … slot back in. Everything’s changed. I’ve changed. I’ve got to – start again.’

  ‘Why?’ Her face is knitted with concern.

  ‘I’m thirty-two. I mean – I want a baby. But we need to … we need to get used to each other again. Living together.’

  ‘Just tell him,’ she says in a low voice. ‘He should know that sort of thing.’

  ‘It’s … I don’t know. I don’t have any right to complain,’ I say. ‘I committed a crime. But it’s so knotty. I’ve been robbed of time, and now I feel like I can’t just try to catch up with life, because everything’s different. But I’m thirty-two and if we wait another year …’

  ‘Well. You’ll be a better mum now – after. After this,’ she says.

  I turn and look at her. A thin layer of sweat sits on her upper lip.

  ‘You think so?’ I say.

  ‘Yeah. Totally. You have a plan. You’re – I dunno. Different. You’ll be a good mum,’ she says. ‘You seem … you seem different. More yourself. Less timid.’

  ‘I wasn’t timid.’

  ‘I don’t know. Not timid. But you seemed to be apologizing for yourself. Now you sit up straight. Properly.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ the man with the braces says. He’s turned away from Reuben and Jonty and is looking down at us, his hands on his hips. ‘I do know who you are,’ he says. He’s just remembered something, his gaze on me.

  I feel my cheeks heat up, as though someone’s pressed two hot pads to them, like Wilf used to do with the oven gloves when we were baking. I would shriek with joy in our kitchen while Mum and Dad tried to shush us.

  ‘Sorry?’ Laura says to him.

  ‘I do know who you are, and I don’t mind you being here … but it makes me –’ He stops, looking thoughtfully up at the scenery beyond us, then down again.

  Laura and I stand up. Reuben and Jonty are looking on, confused.

  ‘It makes me uncomfortable to hear you discussing what you did,’ he says, fixing me with his gaze. ‘When we’re all out trying to enjoy ourselves.’

  ‘You mean our private conversation about her life?’ Laura says.

  ‘Leave it,’ I mutter. ‘I’ll just – I’ll just go.’

  ‘Mate,’ Jonty says. Calm, happy, mild Jonty’s face has gone ashen, his brow pulled downwards. ‘Mate, I think it’s about time you took your uncomfortable feelings at my very good friend’s suffering, and got the fuck off my boat,’ he says.

  Reuben gets his phone out and looks down at it, ignoring us.

  Jonty’s walking the man over to the edge of the boat. Laura grabs my arm. Her hand’s warm and damp, and she says, ‘I’m so sorry, Jo. I had no idea he was … I had no idea he would be so rude. So judgemental.’

  My face is burning. But you are, too. Only internally, I think.

  ‘We’re all here,’ Laura says.

  Reuben’s still looking at his phone, and we both glance at him. And suddenly, I realize. Jonty marched the guy off. Laura consoled me. But what did Reuben do? He turned away when I was discussing prison, and he stood by and said absolutely nothing when I was being harangued. How can he justify that? How can he say nothing?

  I look at him, but he’s not looking at me. He’s looking down. At BBC News, probably. Some war. Some tragedy. He’ll care about that. But what about here? What about events in his own life? Me?

  We leave shortly afterwards. The evening isn’t salvageable. We can’t get it back. The boat is still lit up behind us as we walk along the canal towpath. Reuben reaches for my hand and I feel like there are a hundred Joannas walking along here next to me. The Joanna who hurt Imran and called 999. The Joanna who visited the canal the day she went to prison. It’s not the same canal, but it may as well be. I take a deep breath, smelling the air. London smells the same as it always did in the early summer: musky, congested. But, just like after a particularly long holiday, I can truly smell it again.

  I take another deep breath, and then I ask him. Dispassionately, directly, in an adult way, as I’ve been told.

  ‘You didn’t defend me,’ I say quietly.

  Reuben’s hand is still around mine. ‘What?’

  ‘To that man. That man who said I was making him uncomfortable.’

  ‘No,’ Reuben says.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Jonty defended you.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ I say.

  We negotiate the pathway as it narrows. Even though we go in single file, Reuben still has my hand in his. It starts to feel strange, that hand in mine. Like we are clinging on to a useless life raft.

  He’s saying nothing as the path widens again. The air is soupy and warm. A fine layer of sweat covers my skin. The air was always so controlled in prisons. I haven’t sweated for months. It feels nice as it evaporates, like fine, soft cold needles prickling my skin.

  ‘But why didn’t you?’ I say.

  Reuben drops my hand. We are separate now, on the towpath. It looks perfect, this night, walking along with my husband. It’s what I’ve counted down to for two years. And yet it’s not perfect. The lights of the boats glow strangely and the world feels too big and I am utterly alone, it seems to me, with no idea of my next steps.

  ‘I …’ Reuben says.

  And then I see it: a brief closing of his eyes, a straightening of his posture.

  ‘I was embarrassed,’ he says simply. ‘I didn’t know how to handle it.’

  ‘Right. So you … didn’t,’ I say.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘What is all this – all this navel gazing?’ Reuben says. ‘I lost you for two years. I watched all the fucking TV shows you could ever imagine in those seven hundred nights. You know? Why do we have to fuck it all up with this analysis?’ He grabs my hand again and squeezes it slightly too tightly.

  ‘But you’re so – you’re so liberal,’ I say, spitting it out like an accusation, as though I have always resented his liberalism, which isn’t true. ‘You’re all for rehabilitation. And innocent until proven guilty. And making mistakes. That’s your whole,’ my hand is moving in circles in front of us, like a Catherine wheel, ‘ethos.’

  ‘Yes,’ Reuben says.

  ‘Seems like you’re not liberal when it’s on your own doorstep. When I’m on your doorstep.’

  His jaw clenches at that, but he says nothing further. The conversation is closed, banging like a prison door in the night.

  It’s time. We both know it. Our only intimacy for over two years has been across a table. Limited touching. Eye contact only. I’ve showered communally with other women, slept under the sometimes watchful gaze of security guards, but now here I am, with my husband, in this most usual and intimate arena: our dim bedroom. He takes his shirt off and I see the body I haven’t seen for years, not properly, not like this, lit up by the lamp, reflected again in the window.

  He looks at me, a serious, suggestive look, then walks over, brushing my hair back from my face. I shiver at that touch, that sensual, sad touch. There were a thousand Joannas out tonight, and now a thousand Reubens are touching me. The Reuben who sat on the stairs with me at an Oxford party almost a decade ago. The Reuben who proposed to me, who married me, who stayed with me during my incarceration. And here he remains, still wanting to skim those elegant fingertips over my forehead.

  ‘Number three thousand-odd, I reckon,’ he says softly, his breath tickling my nose.

  ‘Are we?’ I say. ‘We missed a few.’

  ‘I kept track. I made a list,’ he says, gesturing behind him, but not moving. I’ve no doubt there is a list, somewhere. He wouldn’t lie to me.

  ‘Can I see it?’ I say back.

  ‘Later,’ he says pointedly.

  And then we are kissing, and then he is inside me, on the bed, the same old way we used to do it: seamlessly, as though we were meant
to.

  And then, as he comes, he says it. ‘I’m sorry.’

  I think I mishear, at first, but I haven’t; I know I haven’t.

  Afterwards, lying on his side, facing me, stroking my hip, he doesn’t acknowledge it, and so neither do I.

  He stands and flicks the lamp off. We always used to sleep, right away, after sex, neither of us needing to read.

  But as he’s standing there, in total darkness, his body ghoulishly lit from the street lamp outside, I look at him. He seems to be hesitating, wanting to say something to me, but then stops himself. I sit and look properly at him. There’s an expression on his face, for just a moment. Agony, I would have said, if I didn’t know better. He looks agonized. After a moment, it is gone.

  He turns and leaves the bedroom. He goes and washes. I hear the tap running. He is washing me off himself.

  I’m watching Reuben play, for the first time, at a jazz club nearby. He wears a suit, to play in, with trainers, and everyone seems to know him. They don’t seem to know who I am, and I wonder what he’s told them.

  We have descended some wooden stairs into the basement where the lights are low and purplish. It smells of stale alcohol and sweat. I miss the cigarette smells. Not only from when they used to be allowed in public buildings, but also from the prison. Everyone smoked in the yard where our clothes were hung out and blew in the wind, and so everyone’s clothes smelt faintly of cigarettes. I got used to it. It’s one of the many smells that mingle to form home for me.

  Reuben’s playing style has totally changed. It’s become more theatrical. He bends backwards, his back arching, and then he almost falls over the keys, his head bent low.

  I half watch him, wondering who he is. I’ve had a total of six hours a week with him for two years, at communal tables pushed so close together they might as well have been linked, like at a bingo hall or at Wagamama’s. The chairs in the visitors’ centre were hard, folded metal. They made Reuben uncomfortable as he sat there for the duration of his visit. We often made small talk. He was never a great talker, and he couldn’t easily touch me. And so we talked of stupid things, things neither of us cared about. The weather. How I was finally learning to cook – his mouth twisted into an indulgent smile, at that. I couldn’t get him talking, not the way I used to. He was too shy. And we couldn’t just be with each other, the way our relationship demanded. Just sitting together in the living room, occasionally remarking on the news. Taking a lasagne out of the oven, the steam misting up the room as Reuben got a plate out and asked me how my meeting had been. We had none of that. Our relationship had been strip-searched, like me, and I didn’t know whether or not it had survived.

  As I watch him now, I wonder if Imran ever does things like this. Goes out to see jazz. Exists in the world. Enjoys things. I think of him often. I wrote to him, again and again, after his first letter, but he never responded.

  Reuben joins me after his set piece. He weaves his way across the room. I can see him easily – he’s so tall – but he moves differently than Before, as though he is some sort of celebrity now.

  He’s holding a glass of something dark to his chest. It’s barely more than a shot. He’s leaning over me strangely and I realize with a start that he’s drunk. He’s never usually drunk, can drink a bottle of red and be seemingly unaffected.

  ‘The thing is,’ he says, slurring strangely, not looking at me, his hair dark in the dim lighting, ‘I don’t even know why you’re here.’

  ‘I wanted to see you play,’ I say, twisting my wedding bracelet around my wrist.

  They wouldn’t let me wear it in prison. A gem-less ring or nothing, they said. It lived in a locker for two years. It came out as shiny as it went in. It had nothing to dull it; no life.

  ‘Oh, did you?’ Reuben says, with a faint smile. There is something dangerous about his tone. Mocking.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, looking up at him.

  His eyes finally meet mine. They’re black.

  ‘I don’t know why you’d want to hang around with me at all,’ he says.

  At first I think he’s talking about the constant WhatsApp notifications I receive. He always frowns when I receive them, until I feel like a naughty child, reduced to tapping out replies to people in the toilet.

  ‘What?’ I say.

  ‘I don’t know why you’d want to hang around with me at all,’ he says, louder this time, right in my ear.

  When I pull my head back, I see there are tears in his eyes.

  ‘I might preach about doing the right thing, but do I?’ he says.

  ‘I don’t know … I don’t understand what you mean.’

  He leans close to me, so our faces are level. His breath smells sweetly, of alcohol, just like Sadiq’s did. I jerk my head back.

  ‘It’s all my fault,’ Reuben says. ‘That’s why I hid our relationship on Facebook.’

  ‘What? What is?’

  ‘Your incarceration.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ I say.

  I go to turn away, ready to leave, but he pulls gently on my wrist.

  ‘I told the barrister,’ he says.

  And it’s those four words that change everything.

  ‘You told the barrister what?’

  ‘When your barrister took my proof. He asked me about the call records. How long Imran lay in the puddle for. And I crumbled – stammered, Jo,’ he says softly. ‘And then, after I’d crumbled, I told him everything. Your lie.’

  He’s speaking so softly I can only just hear him. Somebody else has taken the stage, is playing a moody tune. It’s a woman and her voice fills the club.

  ‘What? Why?’ I say.

  I look at him, remembering that morning. The air was chilled in the courthouse and my limbs felt as though they were full of ants. I remember that. I remember it all. Reuben going to chat to the barrister, Duncan. Both of them coming back, faces sombre. I thought myself merely paranoid. Shortly after that, I was offered a plea bargain, and I took it.

  ‘I took a plea,’ I say.

  ‘Because of me.’

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘They offered a plea. But Sarah advised taking it … because of me. Because I made your risk too high. I was your only witness and I just – I couldn’t lie to your barrister. Not wouldn’t. Couldn’t. I was … he asked me directly. And I tried to lie. But it was obvious. He said I’d be cross-examined on it. Because of the medical experts fighting over whether there was hypoxia. So, I told the truth. That you lied. It was me,’ he says. ‘I shopped you.’

  His voice breaks on the last line, and then he’s crying, standing alone. My husband. My betrayer. He has held my hand and stabbed me in the back, all at once.

  I stare at him, too shocked to say anything.

  That first night, in the designated First Night Cell, where I was put on suicide watch because I was so shocked and alone. The fleece pillow I cried into that dried unnaturally quickly. The nights I counted down. Each strip search. Each random drugs test when I had to wee in a pot. Looking forward to being on cooking duty because it would earn me money to watch the television and give me something to do. Feeling complete and utter panic the first day in the yard as I knew nobody, like we were in Azkaban and they’d had their souls sucked out of them. The two years. Experiencing time stretched thin like wire. Having nothing at all to look forward to. Out, now, my life in tatters.

  And it could have been avoided. Perhaps. In part. Not made worse. If the barrister hadn’t known about my lie … if Reuben hadn’t told him. We might have gone to trial. I might have got away with it.

  I stare at him, still shocked. He’s leering strangely at me.

  ‘Why didn’t they tell the prosecution?’ I ask.

  ‘They don’t have to. But they got you to take a plea. They wouldn’t put a liar on trial. Either of us,’ he says.

  ‘Why didn’t they tell me?’

  He shrugs, just looking at me. ‘Why would they?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘So it’s fair t
o say I caused all this,’ he says, gesturing at me.

  ‘All what?’ I say, my voice only just above a whisper.

  ‘This detritus,’ he says, his voice going back to his London roots, the way it does when he lobbies, when he gives soundbites to the news or speeches about Islamic prejudice.

  ‘Detritus.’

  ‘The detritus of our marriage.’ His eyes are still on me, the drink still held to him, curled up against his chest. ‘After I poisoned it.’

  ‘You didn’t poison it,’ I say automatically.

  ‘We both did.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  Reuben leans against the wall in that way that he sometimes does, resting his weight against it, his head tilted. ‘I can’t bloody do this any more, Jo.’

  ‘Can’t do what?’

  ‘I just … I waited, and waited, and waited for you.’

  ‘I know, I …’

  ‘House of Cards. Game of Thrones twice. Homeland,’ he says, talking over me.

  I frown up at him, baffled.

  ‘The Good Wife. Breaking Bad. Sherlock. Mad Men.’

  ‘I …’ I stammer. I don’t know what to say to this ranting man in front of me.

  ‘All these things watched in the hours and hours without you. I’m so fucking tired of watching television on my own.’

  ‘But I’m back now,’ I say, spreading my arms wide.

  My drink sloshes. It’s just a Coke. My hand’s wet from the spillage and I glance at it, breaking Reuben’s gaze. I feel my skin getting sticky as it begins to dry.

  ‘You’re back, yeah,’ he says, looking down at me, his expression suddenly tender.

  No, not tender. Something else. I step closer to him, and his body accommodates mine, as it always has. And then I’m in his embrace and his breath is alcoholic as he ducks his head to mine, and his body is warm and solid.

  ‘You’re back, Jo, but I grieved for you. I miss you.’

  ‘You miss me?’ I say. ‘But I’m here.’

  ‘I still feel like I miss you. Or that you’re gone.’

  I look away.

  ‘I grieved for you. Yeah,’ he says.

  He’s talking the most I’ve known him talk in recent times. His words are tripping over each other like clumsy children marching in line on a school trip.