“You owe four hundred and fifty grand you piece of shit. What else do you have?”
“Take my house. It’s worth one point eight million. You can have everything. Anything. Just let me go,” he cries wildly.
That’s the thing about gamblers. Even when they’re in danger of taking their last fucking breath they’ll try to con you.
“Is that all you have?”
“I swear, Mr. Smirnov, that’s everything I own. I only owe less than half a million, but you can have it all. Everything I own.”
I walk across the room and stand with my back to him. For a few moments, I let the silence ride while I turn inwards. Why Nikolai you’ve won. You’ve played the game, you never flinched or gave up, and you won again. I smile. Yeah, I won. I wipe the smile off my face, turn around and walk back to him.
“Well, Nigel, in that case, you are completely fucked. We both know the bank owns everything you have offered me. Break his hands, boys,” I snarl.
“No, no,” he sobs. “I beg you don’t hurt me. Please.”
“I don’t understand,” he wails. “If you know I have nothing why do you keep asking for what I haven’t got? What do you really want?”
I grab a fistful of his sweaty hair and raise his head. His eyes search mine, hoping for a glimmer of vulnerability. He sees none. Only icy cold eyes. He knows this is one debt he must pay. I smile coldly.
“I want your wife, Nigel.”
Chapter Three
Star
It’s still dark when I wake up. The first thing I do is glance at my mobile phone. No messages from the hospital during the night. Good. No news is good news.
Relieved, I slowly turn my head and look at Nigel. He is sleeping on his side and facing my direction. A lock of his dark hair has fallen over his forehead, and the little lines of stress around his eyes and mouth are less noticeable, making his boyishly handsome face look almost sulky. The sight makes me smile.
No matter how bad things are with Dad at the moment, all I have to do is look at Nigel’s face to make me realize just how incredibly lucky I am. I have everything I have ever dreamed of. The perfect husband. The ability to spend my days doing the thing I love; writing. Never having to worry about financial problems. Living in my beautiful house tucked away in a leafy area of fashionable Fulham. I sometimes even think I live in a little slice of heaven.
And …
Next year, I will be twenty-three, and that is the age Nigel and I have earmarked to start our family. Nigel wants six children. Obviously, we won’t have that many. I think I’ll be happy with four, or even three for that matter. Gently, I brush the lock of hair off his forehead. He is a deep sleeper and doesn’t stir. I hope all my children have his gloriously dark hair. Especially the boys.
A little flutter sets up in my stomach at that thought.
After all these years, six to be precise, my love for him has settled into a delicious warmth inside my chest. Of course, I don’t pretend to understand the hectic world Nigel inhabits when he gets into his suit and walks out of our front door.
In fact, if I can help it, I don’t want to know that world. Once when we were first married, I travelled into the city to meet him at a swanky bar. At first, he seemed to be the Nigel I knew. Then, without any warning, right before my astonished eyes, he morphed. He was unrecognizable. Veins bulged in his neck, his face became red, and his eyes filled with murderous rage. The most foul language imaginable began to pour out of his mouth. He even used the C word. Absolutely horrified, I watched him mercilessly rip into a poor barrista. All that fury and venom because the man had let too much water run into his coffee!
I couldn’t say a word. I was too shocked. I had never seen that side of him before. All I could do was stare blankly while he explained to me that to succeed in the city one has to be willing to unleash the ugliest, cruelest and most intolerant version of oneself, and watch it run wild.
I felt horrible.
I told him that I didn’t care if he didn’t bring home as much money as he did. I didn’t want him to have to do that. I offered to get a job and help with the household finances if he wanted to take a different career path than the high-pressured world of being a broker.
He laughed and said he wouldn’t give up what he did for the world. That it was actually a liberating thing to be wild and cruel and ferocious. I can even remember his exact words.
“Especially, when you haven’t slept all night, and you have ten callers lined up, and you know every one of those fuckers wants to call you a four-letter word.”
No, I don’t understand his world at all, but I love him dearly so I try and do anything I can to make his life better.
I reach up and gently kiss his naked shoulder.
He is so tired he doesn’t respond, but I have a vague stirring between my legs, probably because of what he did last night. He had to work late and by the time he came home I was already asleep.
He woke me up with butterfly kisses all over my body, and then he made love to me. Mad, passionate love. It’s been a very long time since he was that hungry for me. He couldn’t get enough.
When it was over and I had come hard, he held my face gently between his palms and whispered that I was the most important thing in his life. That he would die for me. It reminded me of how it was at the beginning when we were in the first flush of love.
He was thirty-four and I had just turned sixteen when we met. I had gone to a friend’s birthday party and her uncle came along. The uncle was Nigel. He was so crazy for me he would wait outside my school. At first I wasn’t sure, but he was so handsome and so experienced that from the moment he kissed me I was a goner. Since I was so young we had to keep it a secret from my father.
I hated that, but I think the idea of our relationship being taboo turned him on. I feel like a dirty old pervert he used to say as he had me in lifts and the toilets of nightclubs. Then I turned seventeen, and I refused to hide it anymore.
I told my dad.
Oh, my, he was furious. He called Nigel every awful name in the book and said he was going to call the police. I told him if he did that I would run away from home and he and Mum would never see me again. It was Nigel or no one else for me. So, we carried on uneasily. Me sleeping over at Nigel’s at the weekends, and Dad huffing and puffing when I returned home.
When I was eighteen Nigel asked me to marry him. The next day, I brought him home and introduced him to my father. Dad distrusted him on sight and never took to him. It made me unhappy, but what could I do? I loved Nigel. When Dad walked me down the aisle, there were tears in his eyes, and he told me my wedding day was the saddest day of his life.
Dad was wrong. Nigel has been good to me. The real irony is that it’s Nigel’s money that’s keeping Dad alive now. That hospital room he is staying in costs thousands per week.
Chapter Four
Star
Quietly, so I don’t wake Nigel, I slip out of bed. I tie my robe, lift my phone off the bedside table, and go downstairs. In the kitchen I switch on the coffee machine and set the dining table for two before pulling open the heavy curtains.
Outside daylight is beginning to appear and I sigh with pleasure. The garden always looks best at this time of the year when the honeysuckle, freesia, sunflowers and roses are all out. I open the French doors and go out into the cool, fresh air. This is my favorite time of the day. When Nigel is asleep upstairs, the air is filled with the sounds of birds, and my mind can plot out my storyline. My phone rings. I take it out of my pocket and look at the screen.
“Hi, Nan.”
“Good morning, Love,” she greets brightly. Nan is like me. An early bird. Sometimes she’ll get up at five in the morning and start cleaning out the garden shed. It drives my granddad crazy.
“You all right?” I ask.
“Other than my dodgy knees and your granddad’s dodgy mouth, I’m just fine. I swear that man has moved me to thoughts of murder more often than I’ve had cooked dinners.”
I smile as I turn around and go back into the house.
“Are you going to see your father today?” she asks.
“Of course,” I say as I step into the kitchen.
“I’d like to come with you. Will you drop by and pick me up, then?”
I pour some bird seed into a small container “Sure. I’m going before lunch. Is about ten o’clock okay with you?”
“I’ll be ready, Love.”
We chat a little more as I tear some bread into small pieces and add it to the bird seed. Finishing the call, I go out into the garden and toss the mix onto the roof of the shed. I go back inside, and to my surprise I hear Nigel’s footsteps in the bathroom above.
How strange. He never wakes up this early on a Saturday. Nigel works very long hours during the week, and the weekends are the only times he gets to relax a little. In fact, I usually get hours of writing time in before he wakes up.
If he’s awake I know he’ll be down in about fifteen minutes so I start to prepare eggs and toast for two. Neither of us are big on breakfast. Nigel appears in the doorway as I am cracking the eggs. His hair is tousled, and the sight puts a big, sloppy smile on my face.
“Good morning, you gorgeous Sex God you.”
Nigel is not a morning person, but even so his expression is particularly mournful as he returns my greeting. “Morning.”
“Breakfast will be ready in five minutes,” I tell him.
“I’m not hungry, Star.”
My smile slips a notch. Nigel is not a man to skip breakfast. “Fine, sit down, and I’ll get your expresso.”
He forces a smile and, turning around, heads towards the dining room. Now I know for sure: something is very wrong. Abandoning the eggs, I make his expresso the way he likes it, and follow him into the dining room. I place his coffee on the table, and take the seat next to him. He thanks me quietly, but does not look my way.
For a few moments neither of us speaks.
I clasp my hands in my lap and watch him sip his coffee. All of this is so unlike Nigel. He is a man on the go. He wakes, showers, gets dressed and eats breakfast whilst he reads the morning paper or checks his emails. When he’s running late he’ll shout down the stairs for me to make his coffee, down it in one hit, peck me on the cheeks and disappear out the door.
“What’s going on, Nigel? Why are you acting so strangely?” I ask quietly.
He shakes his head the way someone who has lost everything would do.
“What’s the matter? Don’t you feel well?”
“I feel sick to my stomach with what I’ve done.”
My stomach drops. “What have you done, Nigel?”
He slaps his hands on his cheeks and looks at me, his eyes distraught. “I have to tell you something, Star,” he says, his voice cracking.
In a split second two scenarios cross my mind. He’s lost a lot of money at the brokerage, or, oh God, he’s got another woman. I’m strong enough to handle the money thing, but not the other woman.
“What is it?” I ask nervously.
“I’m in trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Big trouble,” he says swallowing a large mouthful of air. “I’ve been such a fool, Star. Such a colossal fucking fool.”
For a moment, the horror of anticipating what he is going to tell me, dumbfounds me. In my mind I hear him saying I cheated on you, Star. It was just a one-night stand. Or worse. I’ve fallen for someone else and I’m leaving you.
I just stare at him, hardly daring to breathe.
He opens his mouth. “I owe money. A lot of money.”
My breath comes out in a rush of sheer relief. Okay. This, I can deal with. I take a few shallow breaths and straighten my spine. This I can definitely handle. “Do your bosses know yet?”
He frowns. “Bosses?”
I stare at him. “At work?”
He shakes his head slightly. “This is not work, Star. This is my personal debt.”
“A personal debt?” I ask. I feel confused and frightened suddenly, as if I am standing on shifting sand. “Why did you need a personal debt, Nigel?”
He doesn’t answer me straight away. Instead, he stretches out a hand to cover mine.
“Nigel?”
He removes his hand, and my skin feels cold and empty. My mind goes blank as I watch him buy time by swallowing the last cold coffee dregs.
“I’m a gambler, Star. I owe four hundred and fifty thousand pounds.”
Chapter Five
Star
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR3Vdo5etCQ
Don’t Speak
His words don’t even register. I shake my head. I can’t have heard right. “What?”
“Oh, darling,” he croons. “Don’t look at me like that. You know I can’t take it.”
“What are you talking about, Nigel?” I ask slowly.
“I’m an addict. I’m addicted to gambling,” he mutters.
“Gambling?” I repeat stupidly.
He nods, a pained expression on his face.
“What? At work?”
“No.” He exhales loudly. “In casinos.”
I stare at him blankly. Nothing makes sense. We’ve been to a casino once. Two years ago. We sat together at a blackjack table. Nigel refused to play, but I did. He looked on with a slightly disapproving expression as I played three rounds and gleefully collected my winnings. Three hundred pounds. “But you don’t even like gambling!”
He runs his fingers through his hair. “I like it too much.”
“Since when?”
He shrugs. “Recently. It started off as just a little fun, small amounts, letting off some stress. You know the intense stress I’m under in the city.”
“Stress?” I echo.
“You have no idea how much stress I have to cope with at work. It wrecks you.”
“What? I begged you to leave your job, but you insisted that you thrived on the high-powered stress. Your exact words were, ‘Thank God stress is not a woman, or I’d have to fuck her.’ So don’t you dare tell me that you started gambling because of the stress.”
“Well, whatever the reason was, I started gambling, okay,” he cries. “It’s not really my fault. I was only gambling small amounts. Everything would have been fine if this stupid guy at work didn’t tell me about a place where we could make a killing. That’s where it all went wrong. I was so sure I’d get it all back. I was so close to winning, Star. You don’t know how close. If only I could have had another chance …”
“I don’t believe this,” I whisper to myself.
“I wanted to tell you.”
I gaze into his eyes. There is a hint of recklessness in them. The ability to put everything on one throw of the dice. I wonder why I never noticed it before. “So why didn’t you?”
“I was afraid. I didn’t want you to love me less. I love you so much, Star.”
“Who do we owe this money to?”
Something flashes in his eyes. “You don’t owe anyone, Star. It’s me and only me, who owes this debt.”
“No, everything that happens to you, happens to us.” My voice sounds louder, more secure. I can already feel my backbone straightening with steely determination to make it right. I’m like my Nan. When bad things happen, I pick myself up, dust myself off, and I’m ready to carry on with the journey. Yes, it’s a setback to my lovely plans, but we’ll work through it. We’ll get professional help for Nigel to beat his addiction. We’ll get back on our feet in time.
“We’ll sell this house. There must be more than enough equity in it by now to cover that debt,” I say.
He drops his eyes guiltily.
“What?”
“There’s no equity in it,” he says quietly.
“How can that be? We’ve had it for five years.”
He looks at me beseechingly. “I remortgaged it.”
“You remortgaged it without telling me?” I gasp.
He drops his eyes again and nods slowly.
“Christ,
Nigel.”
“I know. I know. I fucked up.”
I just cannot believe what I am hearing. “What about our savings account? We still have that. Right?”
“No.” His voice is so quiet it is a whisper.
My hand flies up to cover my mouth. “The apartment you bought for me in Spain?”
He screws his eyes shut. “Sold,” he says in an anguished voice.
“How could you sell it? It was in my name?”
“I forged your signature,” he admits, looking ashamed.
I press my palms to my temples. This can’t be happening. Closing my eyes, I take slow breaths through my mouth. When I open my eyes, I will wake up from this nightmare. In, out. In, out. I lift my eyelids. My husband is staring at me with that I’ve-been-a-naughty-little-puppy-but-please-don’t-scold-me-cause-that’s-what-we-puppies-do expression. I feel sick. I should be angry, but I must be too shocked, because I don’t feel anything.
He reaches out a hand and touches mine, and I feel that first flare of boiling rage. He refused to let me work because he said it was his job to take care of his woman, and look what he has done. I snatch my hand away.
“Jesus, Star. Don’t pull away from me.”
“What the hell did you expect from me after you tell me you’ve been living a life of deceit, and you’ve gambled away every last bit of wealth we had?”
“Maybe if I thought you would have reacted differently I would have told you about my problem sooner.”
My eyes widen. “Are you trying to blame me for your gambling habit?” I explode incredulously.
“Of course not, but if you weren’t such a paragon of virtue it might have been easier to confide in you.”
I gasp at the unfair accusation.
“Do you know how difficult it is to confess an addiction to someone as blameless and perfect as you are? You have no vices, no weaknesses, no bad habits at all. You don’t drink, you don’t swear, you don’t smoke, you don’t gamble, you don’t tell lies, fuck, you don’t even watch porn.”
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