The Choice Read online

  “I can’t believe he’s so badly injured,” Reuben says now. His voice is low. Gravelly.

  “I . . . I know,” I say.

  “He’ll give evidence. If he recovers enough,” Reuben says. “So we’ll see . . . we’ll see him. In court. The man you—”

  “I know,” I say quietly. “I know.”

  “I feel like a dickhead for sounding off. I sounded like a victim blamer or something,” he says.

  “You didn’t,” I say. “It all seems . . . so unfair. So shit.”

  “Yes. If you hadn’t been there . . . it’s not like you were waiting to hurt someone.”

  I can see him grappling with it. My crime. The law. Everything.

  “I mean, you hardly did anything wrong. Did you?” he says, and when he turns to me, his eyes look desperate, lined and older-looking than before.

  I squeeze his hand, not knowing what to say. Of course I did, I want to tell him, sadly.

  “You made a mistake. But then you did everything you could to fix it,” he says. “I just . . . I just don’t know why they’re going after you like this.”

  I can’t think about it. People may be sympathetic, but it is hardly commonplace. A man is disabled because of me. I swallow. If I had left two minutes later. Two minutes earlier. If he had been wearing different trainers. If only Sadiq hadn’t frightened me—surely some of this is partly his fault?—then none of it would have happened. If I had been brave enough to turn my head, just a few degrees. I would have seen.

  God, I am so stupid. I have ruined my life. I have ruined Imran’s life. I have ruined Reuben’s life. The only person winning is Sarah.

  “I wish things had been different,” I say, my voice low.

  “Me, too,” he says. “I wish we’d stayed on the line. That we hadn’t got cut off.”

  “I really thought . . . I really thought it was curtains. I thought he was going to—to . . . to get me,” I say, and my voice breaks. Because, underneath it all, of course, I am a victim, too. Imran is worse off than me, but I am a victim of something.

  “I know,” he says.

  I think of the lie I told. The tiny lie that felt meaningless. I got him out of the water straight away. They fight, the instinct for self-preservation and the instinct to tell the truth, like stags with locked horns, both sitting on my chest, their antlers stabbing my heart. And suddenly I am telling him, my husband, and maybe he can help. Maybe he can share the weight.

  “God,” I say, wishing—foolishly—to downplay it. To mislead. “I wish I had got him out of the puddle immediately.”

  It’s as though a silent bomb has gone off in the car. Everything looks the same. The gear stick. The Yankee Candle hanging air freshener left over from the previous Christmas, now faded to a light pink. The rain running down the windows, the drops with trailing tails. And yet everything has changed. The air crackles with it, like that moment between lightning and thunder, like the moment between the two final chords of a piano concerto.

  “What?” Reuben says softly, slowly, a note of danger in his voice.

  I turn and look at him. His stubble has become a full beard, the strands a dull auburn in the fading winter light, stark against his white shirt. Of course, he’s not misled.

  “What?” he says again.

  “I didn’t get him out of that puddle as soon as I said. I was . . . I was so scared. I wasn’t doing anything.”

  “How long? So those call records—so your account of it? It’s wrong? My evidence is wrong?”

  I ignore his other questions. “Minutes. I almost called you again. I almost . . . I almost walked away.”

  Reuben makes a sudden movement, toward the gear stick, his left hand reaching to grab it. He grips it like it’s an enemy’s hand.

  “You almost left?”

  “I was so afraid. I thought he was going to kill me. And then I was so afraid . . . of what I’d done. I was in shock. You’ve no idea. You’ve no idea how something like that—it changes things.”

  “I’ve some idea,” he says.

  It has the desired effect: It reminds me that this isn’t happening only to me. That it isn’t my life alone that’s changed forever.

  “Yes. I was just . . . I don’t even properly remember,” I say, although I do. I remember absolutely everything: The descending mist. The bright, lemon yellow of the streetlights. The man I thought to be Sadiq lying at the bottom of the stairs, his limbs bent at strange angles. How wet my clothes got. My hair clinging to my neck like snakes. How I was paralyzed. With fear of him, of course. But also with shock. At myself.

  “Can’t you see?” I say. “I was terrified. I was dithering.”

  Reuben says nothing.

  And so I add, “Nobody knows.”

  I shouldn’t have told him that way. I should have been straight with him. Looked him in the eye. A full and frank confession. I could have told him I was ashamed of it. Paved the way. Not this. This selfish, stupid, offhand confession. I went in the back door instead of the front way; I surprised him, like a burglar in the middle of the night, and now he’s surprising me back.

  “Wouldn’t you ever consider leaving? Wouldn’t you dither for just a second?” I say.

  His gaze swivels to me. That green gaze.

  “Did you know?” he says. “About the puddle? That he couldn’t breathe?”

  “No. No.”

  He nods.

  “But wouldn’t you ever consider leaving?” I push, pressing him, ransacking his mind for a grain of forgiveness, of understanding. But it’s not there. I am opening drawers and cupboards that I have already looked in, searching for something I am never going to find.

  He doesn’t answer me. He puts the keys in the ignition. The car into gear. Checks each mirror. Methodically. I wait. I wait to hear, but nothing comes. Only the sound of the rain, like a timer, ticking down.

  “No,” he says, after a few moments have elapsed. “I’m sorry, but—no. That’s a life. There. In the puddle. While you waited. While you stood and did nothing.”

  17

  CONCEAL

  Reuben gave me an extravagant gift for Christmas: a weighty, thick butter-colored candle scented with cloves, which I burned all through December and into the New Year, not enjoying a second of it, merely staring at the flames and feeling guilty.

  It is January now, and it is just as I walk into work, feeling the cold across my ribs, considering whether I can get a set of keys to the offices so I can get in and hide the clothes, that I see them.

  The police.

  They are here.

  Waiting for me.

  I should be surprised, after all these weeks, but I can hardly muster it.

  “Men here for you,” Ed says mildly as he starts organizing things on the bus. I walk past him and head toward the offices.

  He’s in the driver’s seat, with the door open, when they say to me, “We hope you don’t mind us coming here—we haven’t been able to track you down at home. We did leave a note. We need to talk to you about an event that occurred on a Friday in December.”

  As I walk with them, into the office, I see Ed’s head is inclined just to the right, slightly cocked, as though he is listening intently.

  * * *

  —

  Detective Inspector Lawson, and this is Detective Sergeant Davies,” they say, when we are sitting inside a shabby meeting room.

  I go and make us tea from the machine, my hands shaking the entire time. I get the impression Lawson is in charge. I wonder if they’re friends, if they find the boss-subordinate relationship tough. Maybe Lawson is a stickler at work but nice in the pub, and Davies finds it confusing . . . Davies’s hopes are for progression. Lawson’s are to lead, to be taken seriously, but also to be liked, maybe. They’re peering at me strangely, and I place the cups of tea on the table, my left hand aching with the effort.


  They’re in suits, like lawyers, or the Men in Black.

  “Sprained your wrist?” Lawson says.

  “Fell over,” I say. “In the Sainsbury’s car park. So embarrassing.”

  I don’t know where the lie comes from, but it sounds plausible. He nods as I meet his eyes.

  “We just want to have a quick chat with you about an incident, as I said, in December,” Lawson says slickly.

  I clock the language immediately. Quick chat. Just. He’s minimizing it. I meet his eyes. They’re so pale as to be almost silvery, with just a hint of blue.

  “We’re from the CID,” Lawson says. “Criminal Investigation Department. A man’s body was discovered after an assault one Friday night—you might’ve seen on the news . . . ?”

  I nod quickly.

  So this is it.

  It’s over.

  It’s almost laughable, my attempt at getting away with it. I have lasted mere weeks. Of course.

  I breathe deeply.

  Lawson turns to me, his body language relaxed, open, his elbows resting on his knees. He stares straight into my eyes.

  And that’s when I think of them. The gloves. The gloves I wore that night—surely with Imran’s DNA on them—are in my car, just over there. They loom in front of me, in my mind, like they are dangling in front of us. I am so glad Lawson can’t know. That I will still look normal to him. Just the face of a nervous woman.

  “We understand you were in the Little Venice area on that Friday night—Joanna. Your friend gave us your work address when you weren’t in.”

  “Oh,” I say. “She said you called round there.” But, inside, my mind is racing. She didn’t tell me she’d given my work address. But of course—why would she? She is so sure of my innocence, too.

  I try to arrange my face into an impassive smile. What would I know if I hadn’t been there? I would have seen the news, but that’s all. I would remember the date, where I was, because I was nearby—and Sadiq, of course—but nothing more.

  “Yes. Yes, we did. And to yours. You got our note?”

  “Sorry, been so busy, what with Christmas . . .” I lie.

  “When did you leave the bar you were at—the Gondola?”

  “About half past eleven.”

  Lawson looks at Davies, who nods. “Yes,” he says.

  “You are on CCTV,” Lawson says. “Outside the bar. You and Laura. You part, and you walk in the direction of the canal on the CCTV we have seen.”

  It’s like a grenade has gone off, and now the air hums with silence. My ears shiver with it. Davies is looking at me. Lawson is waiting for me to speak. I didn’t think it through. Another way I’m still the same. I’m not a criminal mastermind. I am still scatty, stupid Joanna.

  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 toward 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 all right, 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 c
ar.

  “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.