One Minute to Midnight

by Silver, Amy

  I tail off. She’s looking at me intently. ‘And you forgave him? You really forgave him?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ Annie says, gazing a little mournfully into her wine glass, ‘that every time we argue, every time something goes wrong …’

  ‘You’ll throw this in his face? His affair, his betrayal?’

  ‘Exactly. I’m afraid we’ll never get past it. Or that I’ll never get past it, anyway.’

  This was the moment. The big sell. ‘That’s why I think you should do the programme, Annie.’

  She shakes her head again.

  ‘No, I mean it. That’s where the counselling will be invaluable. We won’t be asking you sordid, tawdry questions, we’ll be getting you – and your husband, and your sister – to really talk through your emotions, to deal with issues of guilt and recrimination. You can tell them how you feel, how they’ve made you feel. And I hope you’ll find a way, just as my husband and I did, to move past this and get on with your life.’ She’s listening carefully, I can tell she’s weakening, I have her on the ropes. I go for the jugular. ‘I know betrayal, Annie. I know how it feels, and I feel sure that working with us on this programme can help you, and help others in similar situations, too.’

  She looks down at the tablecloth and back up at me. There’s hope in her eyes. In that moment I hate myself.

  We finish our coffees, I pay the bill and we leave the restaurant.

  ‘Thanks for meeting me, Annie,’ I say, as we walk out into the watery afternoon sunshine. ‘I really appreciate you taking the time.’

  I want to ask her whether she’ll reconsider doing the interview for the programme right there and then, but I feel it’s best not to push. Instead, I shake her hand, give her my warmest, most reassuring smile, and head off along St Giles towards the city centre. I’ve only walked a few yards when she calls after me.

  ‘Nicole,’ she says, ‘What about your friend?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Your friend? You said that your husband had an affair with your best friend?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Alex.’

  ‘And did you forgive her, too?’

  ‘Yes, I did. It took a while. For some reason, her betrayal seemed even worse than his. I mean, you expect men to play around, don’t you? You don’t expect it from your mates.’

  ‘Or your sister.’

  ‘No, quite.’

  ‘But you’re okay now, you and her?’

  ‘We’re fine,’ I lie. ‘We’re good.’

  She smiles at me warmly and, quite unexpectedly, gives me a hug. ‘Thanks for talking to me, Nicole. I’ll email your assistant with some times for an interview tomorrow.’

  ‘You’ll do it then?’ I ask her, slightly incredulous.

  ‘I’ll do it.’ As I watch her walking off down Little Clarendon Street, I feel a peculiar mix of emotions. There is the satisfaction of a task completed, of course, that mission-accomplished sense of jubilation, but there’s certainly no pride. Quite the contrary. I feel ashamed of the lies I’ve told.

  * * *

  I check my watch. It’s just after three: lunch went on longer than expected. What I should do, I know, is to go straight back to the car and drive back to London. Instead, I cross the road and enter the gloom of the Lamb and Flag, scene of many a good night back in my student days. I sit there, nursing a gin and tonic (for old time’s sake), counting the lies I’ve just told a perfectly nice and obviously vulnerable woman.

  One. Dominic did not have an affair. He had a one-night stand. Different thing entirely.

  Two. We never went to counselling. Dom wanted to, he begged me to after we separated, but I refused. I didn’t want to talk about it.

  Three. And this follows from two: as a result, I haven’t really forgiven him. And I haven’t forgiven Alex, either.

  I switch on my phone, which was turned off during lunch, and listen to my messages. One from the office, just checking how I’m getting on with Annie Gardner, one from my mum, who sounds like she’s having a great time in Costa Rica, although to be honest the line’s so bad she could be saying almost anything, and one from Dom.

  ‘Hi love, we’ve got a table booked for eight. Matt and Liz are going to come round a bit earlier for drinks. Ummm … it’s just after two now … give me a call when you get this. Hope all’s well. Love you.’

  On my phone, I Google B&Bs in Ledbury. I ring the Ashton Guest House, ‘a family friendly B&B standing on the hill slopes, overlooking the market town of Ledbury’, and book a room before I can give myself the chance to back out. Then I ring Dom. Relief floods over me when the phone goes straight to voicemail. Cringing at my own cowardice, I leave a message.

  ‘Dom, hi. You’re not going to be very pleased with me. I can’t make it back for dinner tonight. I’ve decided to go and see my dad. I know this is a bit out of the blue, but there is a reason, and I’ll explain it all when I get back. Tomorrow. I’m going to stay in Ledbury. I’ll ring you later, okay? Hope dinner’s fun. Love to Matt and Liz.’

  I end the call and turn off my phone straight away. I don’t want to face his wrath just yet, and he’s going to be furious. Not so much that I’ve cancelled dinner or that I’m not coming home right away, but that I’ve been secretive about something. He hates it when I sneak around.

  Chapter Six

  New Year’s Eve, 1996

  Cape Town

  Resolutions:

  1. Get a first in Prelims

  2. Lose half a stone

  3. Apply for internship with production house

  4. Plan Julian’s twenty-first. It has to be major!

  5. Go rowing. Or hunt-sabbing.

  ALEX MET ME at the airport. Typically, effortlessly gorgeous in denim cut-offs and a white vest, Ray-Bans and flip-flops, her skin was already tanned a deep golden brown after ten days in South Africa en famille. I, on the other hand, looked like hell: dressed in black jeans and a grey polo neck, sweltering in thirty-degree heat, I was sweaty, smelly and bedraggled after a marathon, three-leg journey from London. Eight and a half hours to Nairobi, a three hour stop-over at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, a four-hour flight to Johannesburg, another two hour stop-over, and finally, two hours to Cape Town – for a girl whose previous longest flight was a couple of hours to Rome, it felt like I’d travelled halfway to the moon.

  And as Alex drove me through the outskirts and then the heart of Cape Town towards her parents’ home in Camps Bay, the moon might just as well have been where I’d landed, so alien did all this seem to me. I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but it hadn’t been this: the traffic-choked city, the high rises, the tangle of highways; and then, all of a sudden, a glimpse of the ocean, or a view of Table Mountain rising above us. I felt disoriented, almost panicky, my nerves not helped by Alex’s erratic, high-speed driving. I clutched the door handle and ghost-braked all the way from the airport through the grimy, poverty-stricken district of Athlone, as we headed towards Camps Bay.

  ‘Lock your door!’ Alex yelled at me over the music as we screeched to a halt at a set of traffic lights.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your door! Lock it!’ I did as I was told. ‘Car jackers!’ Alex yelled cheerfully.

  At the next set of lights I almost jumped out of my skin when a child appeared at my window, seemingly from nowhere, in the middle of four lanes of traffic. A little boy, no more than seven or eight, clad in shorts and a filthy T-shirt urging me to enjoy Coca-Cola. He grinned at me and held up a bucket.

  ‘He wants to wash the windscreen,’ Alex explained, giving a little shrug of exasperation. ‘You get them at every bloody light.’

  The child gazed soulfully at her through the window, his head cocked to one side. ‘Oh, all right then!’ she yelled at him, nodding her head. ‘The water’s so bloody filthy it makes things worse rather than better,’ she said to me, but continued to smile sweetly at the child, who could barely reach the top of the windscreen with his cloth. The traffi
c lights changed to green, behind us, drivers lent on their horns. Alex rolled down the window and handed the child a ten Rand note. He thanked her, waving cheerfully at us as we pulled away, a tiny, raggedy figure standing in the middle of the road, apparently unconcerned by the cars and lorries trundling past just inches away.

  I took a deep breath and leaned back in my seat.

  ‘You okay?’ Alex asked me. ‘Glad you came?’

  ‘Of course I am!’ I replied, although I still couldn’t quite believe I’d done it. Coming all this way for a one-week holiday – and spending half my student loan on the airfare – was probably the most daring, irresponsible thing I’d ever done. It was a ridiculous idea, one I’d be paying for all year – literally. But that was the effect Alex had on me. She made me reckless. And once Alex had decided that something was a good idea, she could convince just about anyone. I found her totally irresistible.

  I hadn’t been able to say no to her since the first day I met her, during freshers’ week. She turned up at my door at two o’clock in the morning, an obscenely short, red silk robe wrapped around her statuesque frame, asking if I had any vodka.

  ‘I’m making cocktails,’ she announced.

  ‘I think I have some wine,’ I said, pulling my own robe (floor-length terry cloth), a little tighter around me.

  ‘That’ll do!’ she said happily, ‘I’ll get you a bottle tomorrow!’

  She never did, of course, but she did show up a couple of days later armed with an enormous box of chocolates and a stack of books, suggesting we study together. We did no studying at all, but stayed up half the night comparing life stories. Since then, we’d become virtually inseparable.

  ‘How’s our favourite boy?’ she asked me, turning down the radio so that we could have a conversation. Julian.

  ‘He’s very good. He’s fine. He’s incredibly jealous. But he sends his love.’

  ‘He should have come.’

  ‘He’s flat broke, Alex, he just couldn’t afford it.’

  ‘I know. But it would have been so cool for all three of us to be here together.’ (This was one of the many, many things I loved about Alex: she loved Julian, too.)

  ‘So what’s he up to tonight? Raging in London?’ Alex, who had only lived in England for a few years, spoke accented English littered with South Africanisms. Raging = partying, lekker = good, frot = rotten, that sort of thing. For some inexplicable reason she called traffic lights ‘robots’. (Her directions to the Social Studies library had left me utterly mystified – turn right at the robots? What on earth was she talking about?)

  ‘He’s going to a party at Heaven, I think, as well as various others. You know what Julian’s like. Likes to keep his options open. Much more importantly, what are we up to for New Year’s Eve?’

  ‘Well, we’re starting off with the obligatory cocktail party at my parents’ place.’ She glanced over at me, caught my stricken expression and grinned. ‘It’ll be okay, not massively exciting, just some friends, some family – it’s not a big deal. And we don’t need to stay long. But we may as well have a few drinks on the olds before we have to start paying for our own.’

  ‘Good plan.’

  ‘After that, we’re invited to a party at La Med, which is a cool bar down by the beachfront. Alternatively, there’s a beach party at Clifton, which is likely to be very hectic, but also a lot of fun. We can always do both. We’ll just have to get someone to give us a lift from the bar to Clifton Beach, because there’s no way I’m driving tonight. I’m sure we’ll be able to talk someone into giving us a ride.’

  I had no doubt. Alex, tall, dark and beautiful with huge blue eyes, Brooke Shields’ eyebrows and the widest smile you’ve ever seen, could talk anyone into anything. She was the kind of girl who on first sight I’d expected to be a total bitch (girls that beautiful usually are, aren’t they?) but turned out to be utterly charming and unaffected. Which was all the more amazing given her exotic family background.

  Alex’s father came from Zambia where he’d been part-owner of a copper mine. She and her three older sisters had spent their childhood running wild in the grounds of some enormous rambling pile in the lush suburbs of Ndola, they rode horses, they spent their summers on safari in Kafue and Bangweulu, they went rafting on the Zambezi, they danced the night away in dodgy nightspots to which they were far too young to gain admittance. Alex’s father, having made plenty of money, retired in the early nineties and moved the family to Cape Town. The Roses, Alex’s family, had it seemed lived their lives in glorious Technicolor. I, on the other hand, felt distinctly black and white.

  Arriving at the Roses’ home hardly put me at my ease. We entered the property through high gates and wound our way up the driveway to the crest of a hill. Alex parked the car, hopped out, rushed around the car and opened the door for me with a flourish.

  ‘Welcome!’ she said, taking my hand and pulling me out of the car. ‘Casa Rose!’

  Once again, my expectations were shattered: this was not the grand old Cape Dutch house I’d secretly dreamed about, it was something else entirely. Large, sprawling, low, stark and modern, the villa was all glass and chrome, a magnificent contrast to the lush vegetation surrounding it. It clung precariously to the hillside, high up on the slope where Table Mountain rises out of the sea.

  We grabbed my luggage (dirty and tatty-looking, I noticed all of a sudden) out of the boot of the car when the front door flung open. A woman dressed in a brightly printed kaftan swept through the door, her arms opened wide in greeting.

  ‘There you are at last!’ she called out. She had exactly the same wide smile that Alex did, ‘I’m Karen, Alex’s mum.’ She kissed me on both cheeks. ‘You look exhausted, you poor thing. Was your flight awful?’ She took the suitcase from my hand and put it down on the ground. ‘Here, leave that,’ she said. ‘Solomon will get it.’

  ‘Oh that’s okay—’ I started to say, but she cut me off.

  ‘No, leave it,’ she insisted, and led me into the house.

  If my first impression of the Roses’ home amazed me, the second struck me dumb. From the entrance hall you could see all the way through the house, across a balcony to the ocean, shimmering under a low sun. It was jaw-dropping, awe-inspiring. High Wycombe, it was not.

  Alex and Karen, standing a little to my left, were both smiling at me.

  ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ Karen asked. ‘I never get tired of that view.’

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ I breathed. ‘You feel as though you could jump off the balcony and dive right in, right into the Indian Ocean!’

  ‘Atlantic, actually,’ a voice boomed out from somewhere deeper into the house.

  ‘Hey, Dad!’ Alex called out, and her father emerged from behind the bar to the left of the living room, a glass in hand. Scotch on the rocks, it looked like. Easily six foot three, Alex’s father had white hair, a deep mahogany tan and thick, beetling eyebrows. He looked like a tall, scary Giorgio Armani. He held out an enormous hand for me to shake, his expression stern.

  ‘If you want the Indian Ocean, you’ll need to go about fifty kilometres east,’ he told me. ‘Our views are better, our restaurants are better and our beaches are better, but the water is a hell of a lot warmer over there, I can tell you.’ He smiled. ‘I’m Robert,’ he said, his enormous hand engulfing mine and squeezing like a vice. ‘We’re very pleased to have you here with us, Nicole.’ He took my arm and steered me towards a drinks cabinet in the corner of the room.

  ‘What’s your pleasure?’ he asked. ‘Gin and tonic? I understand you’ve been reading Marx? I used to be a communist. A long, long time ago. Only for about five minutes, though. Then I started making money and I realised it was all bullshit.’ Realised, pronounced ree-lahzed. His accent was much heavier than Alex’s. ‘Gin and tonic, ja?’

  Two gin and tonics and one frankly terrifying discussion of the Communist Manifesto later, Alex escorted me down to the guest room, a palatial suite on the lower ground floor with French windo
ws opening out onto the pool area. My grubby suitcase had been placed, presumably by the as-yet unseen Solomon, beside the bed.

  ‘Is this all right?’ Alex asked with a grin. Seeing the look on my face, she said, ‘Don’t look so worried,’ and gave me a hug. ‘Have a shower, get dressed and then you come up and meet my sisters. They’re at the beach right now, but they’ll be back any minute.’

  The prospect of meeting the Rose girls, the infamous Rose girls, sent the butterflies in my stomach into overdrive. I had heard the stories, I’d seen the photographs: to say that these women were going to be intimidating was an understatement. First, there was Kate. The eldest at twenty-nine, Kate ran her own graphic design company and drove a Mercedes. Jo, twenty-five, was doing a masters in psychology. Lisa, twenty-two, was just back from Milan where she’d just got her first spread in Vogue Italia.

  So, I muttered to myself, flinging open my suitcase and inspecting its contents with disdain, what does one wear to impress a supermodel? The ideal outfit, given the climate and the company, would be some sort of strappy sundress with high heels and just a smattering of jewellery. I, however, was not the sundress sort, strappy or otherwise. Never had been, and most likely never would be. Despairingly I rifled through my poorly packed and by now incredibly crumpled clothes. Oh god oh god oh god. I had imagined, before I’d arrived here, that New Year’s Eve in South Africa would be a casual, jeans and T-shirt type of affair. Having seen the house, it was clear that jeans and a T-shirt were not going to cut it. With a mounting sense of panic, I scrabbled through the untidy pile of clothes, looking for something suitable.