Guilty Parties

by Martin Edwards

  Now, he wondered if his body, knowing that it was not only getting old but also had cancer, had impelled him into Nat’s bed. It certainly hadn’t been a conscious decision, a line deliberately crossed for the first time. Proximity, opportunity, and, yes, quite a few drinks – and it had just sort of … happened. The sex had been mind-blowing, and he’d become a walking, talking, breathing (at least for the time being) cliché: a middle-aged married man having an affair with a woman over twenty years younger than he was, and who had introduced him to moisturiser. A couple of months ago, Nat had started asking when he was going to tell Cath so they could get a divorce. Nick couldn’t afford a divorce even if he wanted one, which he was 99 per cent sure that he didn’t. He’d never seriously contemplated Nat’s proposal that he move in with her and start all over again, whereas she’d begun to talk as though it wasn’t a matter of if, but when. Even breaking the bad news hadn’t stopped her. She’d talked about how they’d ‘get through it together’ and ‘beating it’ and ‘positive thinking’, as though it were a test of character.

  At least Cath hadn’t come out with any of that stuff – probably because she thought his character wasn’t up to being tested by anything. This morning, Nat had been coming out with crap about how the stress of his marriage had caused the cancer in the first place. She’d made it sound as if asking Cath for a divorce would cure him. Couldn’t she see he could do without it? After all, he’d played fair with her, hadn’t he? He’d never lied – she’d known he was married from the off. He shoved the phone irritably into the pocket of his robe.

  ‘Didn’t phone the girlfriend, then?’ Spicer flicked his dog end into the gutter.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Left you a few messages though, didn’t she?’

  ‘A couple.’

  ‘You like to live dangerously.’ Spicer paused to give a light to a hefty woman in a towelling robe who was hitched up to a drip on a stand. ‘She didn’t look like a bunny boiler to me.’ He wagged his head judiciously. ‘Not that you can always tell, of course. I had a girl once, a real psycho, she …’ Hanging onto Nick’s arm as they walked back inside, he began a complicated narrative about how some woman had slashed his tyres and waylaid Ashlee and Briana’s mum at the school gates to tell her what a shit the twins’ father was, which had led to a cat fight. ‘Wish I’d seen it, though,’ Spicer added wistfully and then, as they were passing the hospital shop, ‘Couldn’t get us a paper, could you? Left me change upstairs, didn’t I?’

  ‘Look at that.’ Nick didn’t want to look. He didn’t want to look at the rows of cheerful, pastel-coloured cards bookended with buckets of cellophane-wrapped flowers and teddy bears with satin hearts on their chests, or at the headlines. Property prices, fracking, illegal immigrants, more property prices and the one Spicer was pointing at, a tabloid with ‘FOUND DEAD AFTER NINE MONTHS’ on the front in 24-point capital letters beside a headshot of a smiling woman in a party hat captioned ‘Tragic Valerie Wiseman’. ‘Fucking disgrace, that is.’

  As they waited for a dishevelled-looking young guy in scrubs to pay for a Mars bar, Nick stared through the reinforced glass partition at the people milling about in the lobby: young mothers trying to pacify shrieking toddlers with junk food, a bloke with a bandage round his head flailing, drunk, between the rows of seats, a scabby-pated tramp arguing with the receptionist and a monstrously overweight man beached in the corner. If he’d still had private healthcare, Nick would be being tended to by sleek nurses in designer uniforms in a tasteful haven of tranquillity. None of these people, Spicer very much included, would be allowed through the door.

  ‘Poor cow.’ Spicer brandished the paper as they made their slow way to the lifts. ‘It’s not right, her being left like that. Nine fucking months – you’ve got to wonder what the world’s coming to. Where was the social services? Too busy finding homes for all them illegals, that’s where.’

  ‘How old was she?’ asked Nick.

  ‘Sixty-nine.’

  ‘No family?’

  ‘Don’t look like it.’ Spicer scanned the two short columns of type beneath the headline while they waited for the lift, before grubbing over the page with his thumb and forefinger. ‘Says here it was the housing charity people found her when they come to repossess the place. The telly was still on, though, and the heating.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Yeah, well. Would have been back in November, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘But surely, if she hadn’t paid the bills …’

  ‘If it was all direct debit, though,’ said Spicer, ‘then the pension goes in, the bills come out, and she’s not spending it on anything else if she’s dead, is she? So there’d be enough in there. Perhaps she done the rent by cheque or something, and she never answered their letters, so then they’ve sent the bailiffs in.’

  ‘I suppose so. Is that how she died, watching television?’ Nick imagined the flat: junk mail piling up on the mat, the washing up, never to be done, in the sink, the food, long past its sell-by-date, mouldering in the fridge, the television flickering its way through months of news, soap operas and chat shows in front of Valerie Wiseman’s unseeing eyes until … until what? What did happen to your eyes after you were dead? Did they liquefy entirely before decomposing, or harden and shrink in their sockets, or … For God’s sake, he told himself. Stop it.

  ‘Yeah …’ Spicer frowned, scanning the rest of the article. ‘They don’t know what killed her, though. Too far gone an’ that. Nine months, Jesus.’

  ‘Did she have any cats?’

  ‘Cats? Nah.’

  ‘Just, you hear those stories … You’d think someone would have noticed the smell, though.’

  ‘Depends on the neighbours. Their sort–’ Spicer nodded towards the brightly dressed black family emerging from the lift, arguing in some African language or other ‘– they wouldn’t notice nothing. Just think it was normal, wouldn’t they?’

  The pretty Asian nurse who’d arrived just in time to hear this raised her eyebrows before following them into the lift. Inside, Nick, not wanting to be bracketed with Spicer as an ageing racist, put as much distance between the two of them as could be managed in thirty square feet. ‘Even if they did notice,’ Spicer continued, ‘them lot don’t bother to learn English so they couldn’t tell no one, could they?’ The nurse’s face twitched. Nick willed her to look at him, so that he could signal his lack of sympathy for this view, but she was staring at the floor. Briana, for fuck’s sake. Spicer was about to enlarge on his previous point when Nick’s phone rang.

  It was Cath. ‘I’d have left you a message, love, but there’s been a bit of a mix-up and I’m still not sure what’s—’

  ‘Nick, shut up. Josh has been arrested.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s been dealing drugs.’

  ‘I can’t eat this, it’s fucking cold.’ Spicer gestured at the tray on the over-bed table.

  ‘We should have waited.’ Perhaps there’d been a mistake, although Cath had been pretty definite about it. The charge was possession with intent to supply, and Josh had been found with five grams of cocaine as well as ‘a massive amount’ of dope. When Nick had told Cath he’d discharge himself and come straight to the police station, she’d snapped that she’d got enough on her plate without having to look after him as well. When the children were little they’d faced things together – Holly’s meningitis, various issues that had cropped up at the children’s schools, structural problems with the house – and she’d been glad of him. Now, he’d gone from being the main breadwinner, a reliable, solid part of a team, to a dependent, even an encumbrance. It hadn’t happened just now, of course, or even all at once, but gradually, over the last few years.

  ‘They should have waited till we come back. This is the last meal I’ll get till after my op tomorrow – and you haven’t got nothing.’

  ‘I’m not supposed to have anything except water.’ What did Josh think he was playing at? Dealing could get you a prison sentence. A proper
one, and not a borstal or whatever it was called nowadays, because Josh was twenty-one.

  ‘Yeah, but if they’re not going to do anything to you today, they’ve got to give you something to eat, haven’t they?’

  ‘I’m not hungry. Anyway, I don’t know they’re not going to do it.’ The nurses’ station was deserted, and there was no one around to ask. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Course it bleeding matters.’ Spicer jabbed an angry finger at the buzzer and held it there. ‘Hey! Where the fuck is everybody?’

  The other patients looked up from their meals. As far as Nick could see, nobody had eaten much. Perhaps Josh would only get a fine. After all, it was a first offence, and prisons were overcrowded, weren’t they? ‘It’s OK.’ He sank onto his bed. ‘I’m not bothered. Honestly.’ Josh would still have a conviction, though, wouldn’t he? Surely you didn’t have to include that on your CV? They might ask specifically, if there was a questionnaire or something – which there probably would be, even for an internship like the ones Josh had been talking about applying for, where they didn’t give you a salary, just travel expenses.

  ‘Well, I’m bleeding bothered. I mean, look at it! I wouldn’t give that to my dog. Hallo! Nurse!’ Spicer stopped, grasping at breath. ‘Fuck’s sake,’ he wheezed. ‘You have a go.’

  ‘What’s your dog’s name?’ asked Nick, hoping to distract him.

  ‘Bronson. Jesus, I can’t fucking breathe.’

  ‘Why don’t you get into bed?’ Christ, he felt shattered. If Josh got a fine, that could come out of his savings, the money Cath’s mum had left him. Assuming he hadn’t spent it all since his twenty-first birthday, of course. Assuming he hadn’t used it to buy the drugs.

  ‘What,’ gasped Spicer, ‘about, my, fucking, dinner? And what’s my dog’s name got to do with it?’

  ‘Who’s looking after him while you’re in here?’

  ‘Neighbour. Why?’

  ‘Just interested.’

  ‘He’s fine, mate. Good as gold.’

  Nick pictured a snarling status dog with a studded collar. What if Josh couldn’t pay the fine? Would they send him to prison? Or would they fine him and imprison him? What if he couldn’t get a job and ended up …

  ‘Fuck’s sake!’ Spicer gave the over-bed table a shove, so that it skidded away, plates clattering as it crashed into the wall, and fell back on his bed.

  ‘Look,’ said Nick, ‘why don’t I go and find someone?’ He was exhausted, but clearly Spicer wasn’t going to be deflected, and trailing up and down corridors was preferable to being stuck here next to him.

  ‘It’s their job, not yours. Hey! Nurse!’

  ‘They’re probably overstretched.’ Nick had just levered himself off the bed when the Asian nurse who’d been in the lift appeared and told Spicer that there wasn’t any more food. Nick, imagining Spicer telling her to fuck off back to Pakistan and take the grub with her, winced in anticipation.

  ‘What do you mean, no food? This is a hospital, for fuck’s sake. It’s got a fucking kitchen, hasn’t it? And what about him?’

  Great, now he’d be bracketed with Spicer as an overly-entitled chav as well as a racist. Nick smiled weakly as the nurse turned to him, her face carefully neutral. ‘I’m fine, honestly. I don’t think I’m meant to eat anything.’

  ‘Did you fill in your form?’

  ‘Form?’

  ‘To choose your meals.’

  ‘I’m sorry – I might be wrong, but I don’t think I was given one. I was meant to be having a procedure but there was some—’

  ‘Excuse me!’ said Spicer. ‘I’m still here, you know, and if you can’t get me anything else, this food’s not going to warm itself up, is it?’

  ‘I’m afraid we can’t re-heat meals.’

  ‘Why not? Stick it in a microwave, job done.’

  The nurse explained about health and safety regulations and Spicer swore at her. Nick wanted to tell Spicer to shut up, but was afraid of incurring his hostility. Why was he scared of him? The man was about to have half his breathing apparatus removed, for God’s sake. What could he possibly do? Other than spend the next few hours – or as much of it as they were both, simultaneously, conscious – swearing at him, of course.

  After several minutes’ circular explanation and recrimination, the nurse turned to leave. ‘I’m sorry,’ said Nick, ‘but would you mind finding out what’s supposed to be happening to me?’

  ‘They haven’t told us,’ said the nurse. ‘We can’t do anything unless they tell us.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to do anything,’ said Nick. ‘I don’t want any lunch. I’d just like to know what’s going on.’

  The nurse, sounding as though she were humouring the whim of a madman, said that she’d try, and left.

  ‘What a fucking shambles,’ said Spicer. ‘I bet if I’d wanted halal or one of them things, they’d be straight onto it, but heat a bit of food up? No mate, too much bother. Got trouble at home, have you?’

  Nick stared at him.

  ‘That phone call, before. Your missus, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Not found out about the girlfriend, has she?’

  Nick shook his head.

  ‘One of the kids, then?’

  ‘It was work. We work together.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Nick could imagine, all too clearly, Spicer’s ‘Welcome to the club, mate,’ and the subsequent advice about doing your bird. Or maybe – assuming the man actually knew anything at all about any of his children apart from their names – he’d regale him about when Ryan or Amber or possibly even the eight-year-old twins Ashlee and Briana (God) had got into trouble with the law. He’d almost certainly know all about probable fines and sentences and whether you had to disclose a conviction to a prospective employer, as well.

  Nick went and hid in the loo, which was quiet and reasonably clean. He sat down and leant sideways to rest his head on the tiled wall. His phone rang and he answered, assuming it was Cath. It was Natalie.

  ‘Didn’t you get my messages?’

  ‘Messages? No. I mean, I didn’t … I had to turn the phone off,’ he lied.

  ‘So you didn’t hear them? I sent you a couple of texts, too.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Look, Nat, I’m going to have to cut this short because I’ve got to—’

  ‘Nick, I’m pregnant.’

  Spicer talked all afternoon, various grievances. His bad luck in being easily led, so that he’d skipped school, his bad luck in getting in with the wrong crowd, in not being nabbed earlier, which might have scared him onto the right track, in not finding the right woman …

  Had Nat done it deliberately, Nick wondered for the umpteenth time. When he’d hinted at this she’d become tearful and said she thought he’d be pleased. Pleased! Unbelievable … They’d had a row, of course. She’d threatened to ring Cath if he didn’t tell her himself, today. He’d hesitated just a second too long when she’d asked if he loved her, which had made her start crying again. He didn’t love her. He’d never loved her – surely she knew that saying it in bed didn’t count? He just wished she’d go away.

  No chance. Her last words, after he’d managed to mollify her, were that he wasn’t to worry because no one would ever love him as much as she did and she and the baby would always be there for him. Remembering this, Nick only just managed to restrain himself from groaning aloud.

  This wasn’t how his life was supposed to be. He could cope with the slackening of ambition, the knowledge that his career had already peaked and he’d not been half – well, OK, maybe not half, maybe a third – as successful as he’d hoped, but for Christ’s sake! He’d kept his part of the bargain, hadn’t he? Worked hard at school, and later at his job, saved, got married, bought a house. He was supposed to do better than his parents, and his children, in their turn, better than him and Cath: that was the deal. Except, apparently, it wasn’t. As for the cancer, that was a trick, too. He’d been watching his diet and taking regular
exercise since the age of thirty, when he’d also given up smoking and started following the government guidelines on booze. Unlike Spicer, who was even now talking about an almighty piss up in his local when he got out – although that was obviously bravado because the guy had lung cancer, for Christ’s sake – Nick had done nothing to deserve any of this, so why was it happening?

  He’d always imagined that, by this point, he’d have made his pile. He’d have the London house, all paid for, and perhaps a country place, too – nothing grand, just the cottage. The children would be successfully launched into the world, and he’d be contemplating early retirement. Nick thought of the adverts showing bright-eyed pensioner couples, always with plenty of silver hair for the wind to ruffle as they stood on the decks of ocean liners and pointed at things on the horizon and smiled with perfect teeth. The way things were going, the only thing he’d be pointing at on the horizon was the bloke in the cloak with the scythe.

  His eyes fell on the newspaper on Spicer’s bed. ‘Tragic Valerie Wiseman’. There she was, grinning in a party hat, with no idea that she’d end up dying alone and rotting for nine months before anyone noticed. What a colossal fucking mess. He couldn’t tell Cath. He’d have to persuade Nat. Supposing he couldn’t? Nat might be phoning her right now! Nick imagined his wife picking up the phone in the kitchen, elbows on the butcher block then springing upright as she realised what was being said to her. Except that Cath would still be at the police station trying to sort Josh out, wouldn’t she? Oh, God, Josh …

  There was no way Nat would have Cath’s mobile number, was there? She’d had plenty of chances to get it off his phone if she’d wanted to. Cath being at the police station also meant, now he thought about it properly, that she must have missed her meeting this morning, or had to leave it almost as soon as she’d arrived, which in turn meant that the new contract – and, let’s face it, their main source of income for the next two years – had, in all likelihood, gone up in smoke.

  Not that Nat knew anything about any of that, of course. He’d always been careful to give the impression that he was, if not exactly flush, then comfortably off. There were two credit cards that Cath, who was in charge of the paperwork, knew nothing about. Then there was Holly, expecting them to finance her while she did an MA in journalism, as if there was any point in that. The fact was, there were more places on journalism courses than jobs in the profession – all of which were, in any case, already filled.