The Second Life of Nathan Jones

by David Atkinson

  Today I had to do it myself and spent ten minutes plucking most of them out, only to pencil them back in again five minutes later, in the ultimate act of futility.

  I removed most of my piercings. I left the one in my left nostril, as having a hole in my nose wouldn’t be cool. I also extracted my dark earrings and inserted some cheap silver ones in the shape of little butterflies.

  I then carefully applied blusher, mascara (no falsies this time), lip-liner and my RockChick Scarlet, deciding today counted as a special occasion.

  I brushed my hair a few more times – it felt dry, but I was used to that. I got dressed in my new outfit, slipped on the chunky jewellery and peered at myself in the mirror.

  I honestly didn’t recognise the alien vision staring back at me. I think I must have been replaced by a robot and hadn’t noticed. I was now KAT-BOT and I had to admit my own bot looked hot in this dress.

  I’d never been a vain girl, in fact I never knew that I had any kind of sex-appeal (okay, I must have had something, or nobody would ever have come near me) but it felt incredibly weird, as if I’d, somehow, managed to crawl inside someone else’s skin.

  Despite the pleasant fright I’d given myself I still felt like a fraud. The person staring out at me from the mirror was an imposter designed with the single purpose of trying to woo back the man who’d screwed up my life. The ironic thing was I’d been doing a pretty good job screwing it up myself before he’d come along and added his contribution.

  I shook my head and turned away. Wine; I needed some wine. I glanced at the clock, wondering if it had stopped as it only said 4.30 p.m. It felt much later than that. Screw it. I opened some Pinot Grigio anyway and returned to toast my new image in the mirror. ‘Dirty blondes have more fun.’ I laughed, raising the glass to myself.

  Two glasses later it dawned on me that I could no longer take my car. ‘Shit.’ Oh, well, public transport it would have to be. I had one more glass and slipped on the white cashmere cardigan I’d bought to go with the dress and headed out, slightly tipsy, into the humid evening.

  The sky had darkened a little, but rain didn’t look likely, though with my luck I’d end up drenched and bedraggled before I even got to the bus stop.

  Due to roadworks and diverted buses I had to go into town and change to get back out to Holyrood. I ended up walking a little way along the very busy Princess Street and got more stares than I normally did, which I found strange. Were they looking at me because I’d got my make-up all wrong or something else? I clocked that it was mainly men staring at me so quickly dismissed the make-up idea. Perhaps I’d tucked my dress into my knickers, but a quick check reassured me I hadn’t done that either.

  I now had a little insight as to how Hayley must feel all the time – eyes on stalks.

  I took the bus to within a street of Nathan’s apartment, and walked slowly towards it.. The closer I got, the more I began to realise the major flaws in my plan. Firstly, I didn’t even know if he’d be in and, secondly, if Laura answered the buzzer she might not open the door to me. Also, I didn’t want to talk to Nathan with her standing supervising.

  I paused, crossed the road and stood in the bus shelter opposite his door, staring through the scratched and graffiti-scored plastic. I remained there for ten minutes, with one eye on the entrance and one eye down the road watching out for rapists and robbers, trying to work out what to do next. What the hell had I been thinking, coming down here alone and on foot? Stupid Pinot Grigio.

  Then the first drops of rain splattered down onto the shelter roof. Brilliant, just what I needed. Soon the mini-monsoon had turned the street into a stream and my patent pumps were soaked. I huddled into the corner to try and escape the worst of the splashes and noticed a hooded figure rush out of the flat, clamber into Nathan’s car, start the engine and drive off.

  I’d only glimpsed it, but it looked female, especially the legs – they’d had tights or leggings wrapped around them and boots on so, unless Laura had completely emasculated her husband, she’d left.

  I took the opportunity to rush across the road with my cashmere cardigan over my head, discovering why they didn’t make cashmere umbrellas, and pressed his buzzer frantically.

  Eventually his tinny voice said, ‘Hello.’

  ‘Nathan, it’s Kat. I’ve come for my key.’

  ‘Kat, what …? I’ve been trying to reach you, to … well, explain.’

  ‘Nathan, can you open the bloody door? It’s pissing down out here.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, sorry.’

  As I squelched up his stairs it reminded me of my first visit here, loaded with Sainsbury’s bags, but the baggage I carried this time was much more substantial. As I turned the corner of the stairs Nathan opened his door and I watched him visibly start at the sight of me. Hopefully a good sign and not one of total repugnance.

  I stopped at the door and locked eyes with him. The stupid Notting Hill line burst into my head and I made it burst right out again tout suite.

  I waited for him to speak first.

  ‘You look amazing, I can’t believe that’s you. You’re, well …’

  ‘Normal?’

  ‘Totally gorgeous. Why the change?’

  God, men were so dense sometimes but, rather than point out the obvious, I lied as any self-respecting girl would do. ‘I felt like a new look.’

  He stepped back, and I manoeuvred round him, trying not to notice his scent or the fizz of electricity between us. He closed the door.

  I stood awkwardly holding my cardigan away from my body. We both watched as it dripped rainwater onto his carpet. ‘Sorry, I seem to make a habit of dripping on your flooring.’

  ‘It’s fine.’

  We locked eyes. More sparks. Who was I kidding? My body felt like a raging furnace, heat rushed to my face and I could feel my bits twitching like crazy just standing looking at him.

  I broke eye contact and peered past him. ‘Where are the girls?’

  ‘With their gran. She took them to the cinema, then for something to eat. They’ll be back soon. Laura just nipped out, she—’

  ‘Yeah, I saw her leave.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Where’s she gone?’

  ‘She needed something for her outfit. She won’t be long. She’s got a party tonight.’

  As much as I didn’t want to discuss Laura, I automatically asked, ‘Aren’t you going?’ I had the thought in my head that maybe I could sneak back later after she’d left.

  ‘No, it’s a works do. I’d only be in the way of her schmoozing, plus I’d be bored stiff. She recently got promoted and …’

  Well, yippy-doo-dah for Laura, I thought.

  ‘… it means she’s moving back up here, so she feels she has to go to these things now. Another reason I don’t want to go is because it’s a—’

  ‘Wait, she’s moving back to Scotland?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  The penny dropped. So that was why she wanted everything back to normal, or at least whatever she considered normal to be. The news made my heart drop and I felt slightly sick again and worried for a moment whether I’d heave up my Pinot Grigio onto Nathan’s carpet; thankfully, it passed.

  ‘Oh, right. Well, I’d better be going.’ No point in hanging around now.

  I registered the disappointment on his face and at that point suddenly felt sorry for him. God knew why after the way he’d treated me, but I couldn’t get angry with him, not right now, anyway. I remembered James saying to me when we were in the Highlands, ‘Anyone devious enough to get old ‘silver spoon’ Donaldson flustered must be doing something right.’ Laura would have got Nathan wrapped around her little finger or maybe wrapped around something else, but I didn’t want to think of that right now.

  Nathan broke the silence. ‘Oh, your key, just a minute.’

  He disappeared into the kitchen and quickly returned, holding my key with the black bleeding-skull keyring in his hand. Halfway down the hall, he stopped with a look of horror on his face. It didn’t
register at first, but I suddenly realised his eyes weren’t on me but on something behind me. I reluctantly turned, and it felt as if time had slowed down, like the time we’d crashed the motorhome. The front door had swung open and Laura had stopped on the threshold with a bemused look on her face.

  At that very moment all my sympathy for Nathan vanished, and, in its place, I felt anger, anguish and an overwhelming sense of disappointment. Standing before me wasn’t the well-groomed, immaculate Laura Jones from my memory and various TV appearances. Somehow Nathan had managed to persuade her to participate in some twisted fantasy. Perhaps this was the price she’d paid to get back into his life. Laura had gone Goth; in fact, no, she hadn’t, she’d gone Vamp.

  My emotionally charged brain instantly took in all the details. She’d applied a pale foundation with small dark star transfers falling over her left cheekbone down to the nape of her neck. Black eyeshadow had been heavily applied, she had a nose piercing (identical to mine) red streaks in her hair, and a black studded dog collar encircled her long neck. I couldn’t see what clothes she’d gone for as they were hidden under her long coat, but I took in the collar of a cape peeping out from the top of the coat, black patent leather knee-length boots, and false nails that extended out at least an inch from her fingertips, painted blood red. She’d really gone for it. All her ensemble lacked were fangs and I’m sure Nathan had them handy in his pocket, so she could chew down his neck, or whatever else, later.

  I lunged back to Nathan, snatched my key from his hand, and, with tears pouring from my eyes, barged past Laura and let go of my feelings with a wail that echoed off the walls. I almost fell down the two flights of stairs in my rush to escape the building. I swore I could feel it closing in around me.

  I heard Nathan shout, ‘Kat, you don’t understand …’

  I also heard Laura say, ‘That’s the punk? Wow, she scrubs up well, doesn’t she?’

  I burst out of the front door into the continuing monsoon and ran along the street. Tears gushed from my eyes; the combination of them and the streaming rain meant I could hardly see where I was going, which didn’t matter much as I didn’t care. I just had to put some distance between me and that … what could I call him?

  Then it came to me: SMACKTARD.

  Smacktard? my inner voice asked. What’s a smacktard?

  I couldn’t believe I’d started an argument with myself about this.

  ‘SMACKTARD, (all capital letters, thank you very much, if you don’t mind). Do you not remember playing that old battlefield game on the computer? The one where these total idiots wander randomly into your gun sights on the battlefield, utter the immortal word ‘DUH’ and get blown away? They were called SMACKTARDs. And it describes what I’d like to do: give him a big smack.’

  Why didn’t you?

  ‘His wife was there.’

  You could have smacked her as well.

  ‘They’re not normal.’

  We’re not normal either.

  ‘We are not a we – we are a me, in case you hadn’t noticed. And normal people don’t get their wives to dress like their girlfriends to get over them.’

  Right.

  I didn’t like the tone of that ‘right’.

  Sorry.

  ‘Better. You should be on my side. We can think up another name, if you like?’

  No, no, Smacktard is fine.

  I sprinted down the road, oblivious to the rain, shouting, ‘SMACKTARD, SMACKTARD, SMACKTARD,’ at the top of my voice.

  At a nearby bus stop an old lady, who bore more than a passing resemblance to the Queen, right down to the long blue coat, cowered away from me as I screamed past. I slowed down for a moment.

  ‘What if she was the Queen? I mean, Holyrood Palace could only be, what, a mile or so away?’

  That’s stupid; what would the Queen be doing standing at an Edinburgh bus stop in the pouring rain?

  ‘Do you not remember that film about the Queen and how’d she’d gone walkabout during the VE Day celebrations at the end of the Second World War?’

  Yeah, but she’d been young then. She wouldn’t do that now.

  ‘Unless she’s lost her marbles or one of the corgis.’

  No, it wouldn’t be the Queen, but if it did happen to be her she wouldn’t venture out alone again in a hurry. Not with lunatics like you running along the street shouting strange obscenities.

  My inner voice fell silent as I ran into Holyrood Park. The rain seemed to have got heavier, if such a thing were possible, accompanied now by a strong wind that lashed the water off my face and body. Still I ran, I had to get away from him and his wife. He’d made me feel dirty, used and stupid, stupid to the point of humiliation. How they must laugh and take the piss out of me when they rolled around in bed together, Nathan with his wife pretending to be me to spice up their pathetic lives. I wondered if she wore the dog collar in bed. I bet she did, pretending she was the dog known as Kat. ‘What a dog Kat is.’

  As clever as that sounded, I didn’t have time to appreciate it. I was the butt of all their jokes; the man I fell in love with thought I was a joke, a pathetic joke, and the sad thing was he was right because I was a joke. A joke of a person, trying to be something I wasn’t, trying to compete with someone I could never compete with – what was I thinking?

  Lightning split the sky, followed almost immediately by the cacophony of thunder, a million drums echoing across the rocks and cliffs that now towered above me as I ran along the grass verge. I laughed manically; my mind felt as if it had broken loose from whatever held it together. I could feel the threads of my sanity snapping one by one as I ran. I half wished for lightning to strike the rocks above my head to bring them crashing down onto me to end my pain, or to strike me directly, obliterating me completely so that all that was left would be a smudge on the grass, a dark shadow of human dust that would pretty much sum up the impact I’d made on the world. Nobody would miss me, nobody would care. A total and utter waste of space.

  I almost fell as another jagged flash lit up the black clouds. It was dark as night now, the sun having surrendered the sky to the impending apocalypse. I’d made the biggest fool of myself during a storm with Nathan and now even the heavens above were torturing my tormented soul by bringing those memories crashing into my mind like the rolling, rollicking thunder.

  I ran faster and faster; I’d lost my shoes but didn’t give a damn. Stupid, stupid patent pumps. Who wore patent pumps? Who invented such a stupid name for them anyway? Probably a bloke, and I bet his name was Nathan.

  I ran on, across the landscape, with and against the storm, the wind and rain buffeting me along or pushing me back as it twisted and swirled against the primeval background – the extinct super-volcano upon which Edinburgh was built. I yearned for the rain to wash me clean, sluice the filth from inside me so that I could start afresh. I felt infected, infected by a dark sadness that rushed up to my brain and poured from my eyes. I felt drenched with sadness, total and utter despair and self-loathing driving me onward.

  The road ahead of me seemed to be totally deserted – clearly only a crazed maniac would venture out in this. I stopped running, leaned forward, bracing my hands on my knees, and cackled; that was me, a crazed, cackling maniac. I must remember to tell Nathan, so he could incorporate that into his sex games.

  I set off again. I thought less when running and right then I didn’t want to think; I wanted my mind to go blank, completely blank. My thoughts only hurt me, they stabbed at me, gouged at my insides, made me gasp in pain; I wanted to be dead inside, totally and utterly dead so that nothing could hurt me any more. I felt blackness encroaching my vision – surely it couldn’t get any darker – but as the darkness closed in I slowly realised that it had nothing to do with the storm and everything to do with me.

  I fell to my knees and pain flashed through my head like the lightning through the air and then a cramp in my stomach forced me lower. I rolled onto my side and ended up curled foetus-like on the grass verge beside the ro
ad, watching the rain gurgle into the gutter. My mind had reached its limit; it needed to shut down, reset and heal.

  Chapter 33

  I opened my eyes and the gutter had gone, to be replaced by my dad’s worried face peering at me. Maybe the last twenty years had simply been an incredibly vivid dream and now I’d woken up as a chastened and wise ten-year-old, but my dad’s first words dispelled that notion.

  ‘Kat, what’ve you done to your hair?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Your hair.’

  Oh, yeah, I’d dyed it. ‘Err, I felt like a change. How did I get here?’

  ‘A taxi driver spotted you lying in the park in the rain.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Did someone steal your shoes?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You had no shoes on. Your mum’s really freaked out about that. Your feet are all cut and bruised.’

  ‘How did I get here?’ I glanced around; a private side room in a hospital, probably my hospital. I would’ve got priority because I was staff, not fair, I knew.

  ‘Have you been taking drugs? Wacky baccy? Ploppers? Uppers? Downers? Your mother has already examined your arms for needle marks.’

  ‘Needle marks? That’s crazy. What are you on about? I don’t even think “ploppers” are drugs.’

  ‘Aren’t they? See, you’re up on the lingo. Your mother’s convinced you’re a druggie now.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘What do you mean why? Someone finds you unconscious in the park and you’ve gone blonde.’

  Suddenly the memories came flooding back and I gasped out a sob.

  ‘Don’t get upset, Kat. I’m sure it’ll come out in time.’

  What had I missed? Did he know about Nathan and Laura? Had I been talking in my sleep?

  ‘What’ll come out? What have I been saying?’

  ‘You’ve not been saying anything. I’m talking about hair dye.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ I let the tears flow even though I knew it would make my dad squirm. When I used to bawl as a little girl my dad would shout to my mum and say …