The Choice Read online

  “You don’t want to be talking to me like that,” he says.

  My head turns, and the song stops, leaving a beat before a new one starts, during which time I can hear blood pulsing in my ears.

  And suddenly, it’s not funny anymore. A frisson of fear moves through me. Images pop into my mind. Images of women followed down alleyways, coaxed into passenger seats, dismembered in car boots.

  I move farther away from him, toward the wall, away from Laura. I think of the couple I saw earlier, and how happy they looked, and I wish Reuben were here. He wouldn’t say anything; he wouldn’t have to. He has a presence like that. People seem to behave for him, like naughty children.

  Sadiq follows me, blocking me in. Behind him, Laura’s eyes are narrowing so they are almost entirely closed. And now he is squaring up to me, right in front of me. I walk away from him, dodging around him, but he grabs me, pulls me back, and grinds into the back of me, his hands on either side of my hips—either side of my bum—like we are in a sex scene.

  I stand completely still for a second or two. Shock, is it? Whatever it is, it’s two seconds during which I can feel not only his hands, his breath on the back of my neck, but his erection, too. Hard against the back of my thigh. I can’t help but imagine how it looks. The thought intrudes in my mind like an unwanted internet pop-up, and I wince. I haven’t felt another man’s penis in over seven years. Until now. What would Reuben say? He’d call him a fucking dickhead, that’s what he’d say. The thought comforts me.

  I move slowly away from him, smiling awkwardly because I don’t know what else to do, the shock of being touched against my will like jumping off a pier and into the sea. I can still feel him. The warmth and hardness of him. My teeth start chattering. I don’t say anything. I should, but I don’t. I just want to be gone.

  Laura is taking the drink out of my hand and trying to find a surface to put it on. In the end, she places it on top of the speaker—she can only just reach—and she grabs my coat, and my arm, and we turn to leave.

  He grabs for me again. A catlike swipe. He catches just my finger, as I’m leaving. I try to pull it away from him, but he’s stronger than me. I could shout, but what would I say? A man grabbing a woman’s hand in a bar hardly feels like a crime, though maybe it is. Instead, I am complicit, almost holding his hand. Nobody knows it is against my will. Nobody knows what’s going on in my head. His hand is momentarily like a manacle around mine.

  He squeezes hard, enclosing my hand in the whole of his palm. He releases, and squeezes again, a kind of sexual threat. And then he lets go of me entirely.

  Outside, the winter air puffing out of my mouth like chalk dust, I can still feel his body against mine. I am imagining it, but my thigh feels wet. I reach a hand down to check. It isn’t.

  * * *

  —

  Laura hands me my coat. “Jesus,” she says. “I’ve not had to leave a bar because of a nutter for a while. Are we twenty again?”

  She’s making light of it, and I’m thankful for that. I can still feel him between my legs, that pressure, the feeling of fullness. Was that a sexual assault? I guess it was. But maybe I am somehow to blame. I shudder, wrapping my coat around me to try to keep out the rain.

  “You all right?” Laura asks.

  I nod, not lifting my head again, looking at my cream-ribboned shoes. I don’t want to discuss it. Like the congestion-zone charge I ignored until it was too late and we had to pay double and Reuben got cross, I sweep it away into a back room in my mind.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’m grand. It’s not a Friday night without a nutter.”

  “Okay,” she says, still looking warily at me. “I had a bad feeling about tonight.”

  It’s a very Laura thing to say, and it’s another reason she and Reuben don’t get on: her mysticism, his vehement logic.

  She tugs at a scarf that’s wrapped around the handle of her bag and puts it on. Over the road, two restaurants have their Christmas lights out; champagne-colored fairy lights are wound around potted trees.

  “So that’s Little Venice,” I say.

  We like to explore the hidden parts of London. We always go somewhere new. Our rent is too high to endlessly go to the same places: it feels like we are making our money back, somehow.

  “Maybe we won’t do it again,” she says.

  I check my watch. It’s too late to go on anywhere else. I’m enticed by the thought of Reuben at home in our living room. He’ll be wearing soft clothes. He’ll have the lights dimmed. The television on low. A glass of red on the arm of the sofa, the stem held between his elegant fingers. He likes wine, will even drink it alone. I drink Ribena when I am alone.

  “Which way are you going?” Laura says to me. She points with a thumb behind her.

  “Warwick Avenue,” I say. “That’s the easiest.” I see a dark figure dart behind her, in the awning of the bar we’ve just left, but it disappears before I can get a proper look. Maybe it’s the couple, moving as one, off home, I think. I look over my shoulder again anyway, just to check. There’s nothing.

  Laura smells of cologne as she reaches to hug me. She’s wearing a maxi skirt and biker boots. “WhatsApp me when you’re back,” she says.

  I nod. WhatsApp is our medium. Tens of messages a day. Newspaper articles. Tiny snapshots of her art. Beers consumed in the middle of the day with Jonty. Screenshots of funny memes. Selfies from me, bored at work. We love it.

  I set off toward the canal, crossing the bridge. It’s wrought iron, blue. It reminds me of the playground at school. My fingers trail over the bars. It’s ghostly out here. There’s nobody around. The rain gets slightly heavier, and a wind chills me.

  That’s when I hear it. Them. The footsteps. Surely I’m imagining it? I stop. But no. There they are. A heavy tread.

  I could turn around. Go back to the bar. But is the bar safe?

  What do you do, I find myself thinking, when you think somebody is following you down a deserted strip of canal? When you could become a statistic, a news piece, a tragedy?

  Nothing. That’s the answer. You carry on. You hope.

  I never thought something like this would happen to me. I suppose that’s what makes me behave as though I’m in a film: I have no idea what else to do. I stop, for a moment, testing him, and his footsteps stop, too.

  I start again, this time faster, and I hear him begin, too. My imagination fires up like a sprinter off the starting blocks, and soon I can’t tell what’s real. Is he right behind me—I can’t look—and about to reach for me? The pounding of his footsteps is consistent, slapping against the wet concrete, but I can’t tell any more than that.

  I will call somebody, I decide.

  I turn left down a side alley I would never usually go down. Just to see what he does. I walk past white houses with balconies. Millionaires’ houses. The occasional bay window is lit up, little orange squares in the night, tasteful Christmas trees glowing amber like fireflies. I would usually peer in, invent lives for them, backstories, but not tonight.

  He has followed me. Five more steps. His footfalls thunder along behind me. I can’t look over my shoulder. I am frozen.

  I start to plan. I could call Laura. Could she get over here quickly? No. I break into a little run. These stupid shoes.

  I could knock on a door. But . . . am I definitely being followed? They’d think me mad. It is strange how much I think of people’s opinions, their perceptions of me, right now, just like I did in the bar when I didn’t cry out when he grabbed my hand. I want these people, these strangers, this collective unconscious, to like me.

  I turn right, off the side street, back to a main road and cross it. I get out my phone, ready to dial. Nine-nine-nine? No, it seems too extreme. I call Reuben instead. He takes an age to answer, which is not uncommon—he hates the telephone, unless it’s me calling—but then his deep hello echoes through me.

>   “You all right?” he says.

  I can picture him now. It’s a comfort. He’ll be reclining against the sofa. His hair will look auburn, not ginger, in our dimly lit living room. He will be frowning, his eyes a dark, foresty green.

  “Reuben,” I say.

  “What?” he says. He will be sitting forward now.

  “I’m being followed,” I say in a low voice. I don’t know why I don’t shout it out.

  His eyebrows will draw together. “By who?”

  “This bloke. From the bar.”

  “Where?”

  “Can you just—stay with me? Walk me to the Tube—virtually?” I say.

  “Of course,” he murmurs.

  “Okay,” I say.

  “Okay,” he echoes, but his voice is crackly.

  I pull the phone away from my ear and look at it, the light from it illuminating the clouds of my hot breath. Shit. No signal.

  There’s a set of stairs in front of me, leading down to a bridge. I dart into the corner where the stairs begin, to see if he follows. I put one foot on the first step, frozen, not able to look behind me.

  And now he is behind me, too. And now it’s not my imagination. I know. He is right behind me. His body ready to hold on to my hips again. To push himself into me, against my will.

  I see his red trainer. Oh God. He is here. I am too scared to turn around and look at him properly. I cannot do it.

  “Hello?” I say desperately into the phone.

  Reuben crackles back, and then . . . the three beeps. Call failed.

  I start to sprint down the stairs, and I’m a few steps down them when it happens, as I knew it would. His gloved hand behind me. It lands on the railings like a bird of prey. The gloves are exactly the sort he would wear, I find myself thinking. Designer. Sporty. He looked lithe.

  I hear an intake of breath and know he is about to speak, to threaten me. Perhaps his mouth is right next to my ear, his body poised to grab mine, to thrust again, and so I reach my hand out to grab the railings. They’re cold and wet; they soak my gloves.

  And then I am acting before I know it.

  He comes down by my right-hand side, ready to overtake me on the wide stairs. I turn. His hood’s up, but I can tell it’s him from his gait. I am remembering his body against mine again, and imagining yet more horrors—his sweet breath in my mouth, his penis up against my underwear, against my jeans, a full, damp, painful wetness—I bring my hand down on his, briefly, hard. He lets out a surprised cry. And with my right—my dominant hand—I push his body, firmly, squarely, the hardest I’ve ever pushed anything in my life. I release his hand as he falls—I’m surprised he falls; he’s at least six feet—and he tumbles like a stuntman down the concrete stairs to the towpath. He stops there, on his stomach, at a strange angle. I am breathing hard, and I stand, watching him, astonished. That I have done this. That I am safe. That he is lying there, not moving, and I am here, almost at the top.

  I start to feel a weird, panicky hotness. I reach to undo my coat, wanting to feel the sharp winter air on my sweat-covered chest. My glove is sopping wet as it touches my skin. My forehead is slick with moisture, from perspiration or the fine mist descending from the sky around me, I don’t know. My bowels want to open, and right in the pit of my stomach I feel a hornet’s nest of fear beginning to buzz. Oh God. What have I done?

  One minute ago I was scared for my life, and now I am scared for his.

  My mind scans over the time in the bar. Feckless Joanna. I should have ignored him, told him to piss off, like Laura did. I never do the correct thing. I end up in messes. I avoid things and then they get much worse.

  I close my eyes. Oh, please let me go back to Before. Before we met Sadiq. Before we left. Before he followed me. Before I pushed him.

  But we can’t. I can’t. And now . . . it is After.

  I look down at Sadiq. His left arm is underneath him, twisted strangely. He’s fallen only seven steps, but they’re concrete, and wet. His right arm must have reached out in front of him. It’s landed just to the side of his face. He hasn’t moved at all.

  I should go to help him. Call an ambulance. Confess.

  Or I should run away, in case he’s about to get up again. Sprint home. Pretend I never did it. Go back to Before, even though I know I can’t.

  The streetlights are too bright, refracted a hundred times in each drop of misty rain. I can see moisture on the concrete steps like thousands of beads of sweat. I can feel the cold air seeping into my coat. Sadiq is lying still, and I look down at him and then around me, and think.

  I could run, or I could stay and call him an ambulance.

  Now it is decision time.

  2

  REVEAL

  I stand and stare at Sadiq. I could walk away. Avoid, like I’ve done for my entire life.

  I turn around, my back to him, and take three steps away. And then I stop, looking over my shoulder, sure that he will have risen behind me like a villain in a fable. But he hasn’t. He’s still there. Still lying down. Still not moving.

  Fat raindrops are striking my nose and leaving a trail of smaller ones as though they’ve been split apart.

  I am still looking over my shoulder as I think it: I could leave. Little Venice is deserted. I check, up and down the length of the canal. Nobody.

  And that’s when the sweating gets worse. I puff out my cheeks and raise my eyes heavenward and try to think, but all I’m doing is panicking. It’s as though all the world’s dread and fear and madness have been set free inside my abdomen. My mind is racing but saying nothing, my hands are flexing and making fists—alternating clenched and open, like starfish—and my legs are wobbling.

  I look down at Sadiq. Are those headphones? One earbud has fallen out of his ear, the cord white against the concrete like a worm.

  I wonder what Reuben would do. Perhaps I can call him back and ask him. No. I am certain of what he would say. He always does the right thing. His favorite poem is “If.” His favorite TV show is The West Wing. He is a social worker for an Islamic charity. My mind throws up these headline points in support of its application to make me leave, now, and never tell him, and it won’t stop. Reuben stacks up chairs at the end of the working day, even though it is the cleaners’ job. He was adopted, thirty-two years ago, and has never once held a grudge. I scraped another car’s door once—so lightly as to be almost imperceptible—and reached to rub at the scratch with a tissue, and Reuben was on his feet and writing a detailed note, leaving our numbers, before I could even protest. He chooses, again and again, the right thing—even though it is hardly ever the easy thing.

  For God’s sake, ring 999, he would say, panicked, astonished I was even asking the question.

  Perhaps this moment will forever change how he looks at me—that I even have to ask. He will—finally—see me as I truly am: flawed, selfish, pathetic.

  No. I can’t be like that.

  I venture down two steps. I can hear something. A voice. I stop again, somber for a moment, saying a mournful good-bye to my life as I know it. Am I sure? If I call now, there’ll be a procedure. An ambulance, dispatched immediately. I’ll be in a system. Not Joanna anymore, but . . . somebody else. A number.

  It’s been over a minute. Maybe two. One hundred and twenty seconds of staring.

  Where is that noise coming from? I am sure it is a woman’s voice. I creep two steps closer, and realize: the headphones.

  And even though I have decided what to do, I am procrastinating. Trying to put off the moment when I have to make the phone call, even though I know that makes things harder, not easier. I’ve been procrastinating my entire life, and I’m not stopping now.

  One more minute passes.

  I don’t know what spurs me into action. Perhaps I needed those three minutes to come to terms with how things will be, to move into the After. Perhaps it was to ma
ke sure he wasn’t about to reach for me, grab me. I don’t know, but I pull out my phone, standing almost at the bottom of the stairs, and dial 999. I have never dialed these numbers in my life, though it feels as though I have, from BBC dramas and books and films.

  It doesn’t ring. There’s a strange noise; then an operator answers immediately. I step gingerly down the remaining stairs as I hear a Scottish voice, as if I can only get close to him now that I have her protection.

  “What’s your emergency?” the woman says.

  “I . . . there’s a man who’s been injured,” I say.

  As I stop, above his body, I can hear the noise again. It is a voice. Take a deep breath in for five counts, it is saying. Some sort of hypnotherapy. Meditation, maybe.

  “Okay, my love, how badly injured is he?” she says.

  “I . . . don’t know.”

  “All right—what’s your name?”

  “Joanna Oliva,” I say, though I wonder after uttering it whether I should have used a false one.

  “Okay, Joanna. We’re going to send a first responder,” she says. Her tone is neutral. She doesn’t provide reassurance. She doesn’t explain what a first responder is.

  I wonder what her hopes and dreams are. Maybe she had an emergency once, and now she wants to help others. I close my eyes, imagining I am somewhere else, and on the phone to a friend. Perhaps I am by the sea, on holiday, and calling a friend because I am bored. Or maybe I am idly calling Reuben on the way home to him. He always takes my calls on the way home, and we chat, often right up until I get to our door.

  I give her the address. Well, an address of sorts. “One of the side bridges. The center of Little Venice. The canal.” I can hear her typing.

  “And now I’d like you to assess the man, is that going to be all right?” she lilts.

  I wonder if she was hired because of the soothing quality of her voice. Maybe she does television adverts in her spare time. I cannot stop the thoughts. It strikes me as strange that I am still me, still overly imaginative, even when thrown into these most extraordinary of circumstances.