One Minute to Midnight

by Silver, Amy

  ‘I guessed as much,’ I said. ‘It’s lovely to meet you, too. Congratulations.’

  ‘Oh yes, finally getting him down the aisle,’ he said with a laugh.

  ‘I’m sure he didn’t need too much persuasion. He always was a sucker for weddings.’

  Karl comes back into the living room and picks up a glass.

  ‘What can I say? I am an old romantic.’ The three of us clink glasses and Sean invites me to sit. He is not what I expected; he has a good ten to fifteen years on Karl, not at all the twenty-something gym-bunny I imagined in my head. Why I imagined that I’ve no idea, but I’m oddly relieved that Karl is with someone older, someone to look after him. I feel like I ought to say something about my earlier behaviour, and I start to explain, but Sean waves away my apologies.

  ‘Don’t give it a moment’s thought,’ he says. ‘I understand completely.’

  ‘So,’ I say brightly, sipping my champagne, ‘tell me about your wedding plans. Germany, Karl said?’

  Sean pulled a face. ‘I’d rather do it in the States. I’m pushing for Cape Cod. Cape Cod in the spring, don’t you think that would be great? Would you come over if we did it in the spring?’

  ‘Of course, I would,’ I say. ‘And I’d pick Cape Cod over Germany, too.’

  ‘What’s wrong with Germany?’ Karl asks. Sean and I exchange a look. I like him already.

  ‘And how did you guys meet?’

  ‘Sean’s a sculptor,’ Karl says, beaming at him proudly. ‘A very good one. That’s one of his,’ he says, pointing to a striking bronze figure standing on a low-slung bookcase to my left. It stands next to a large framed photograph of Julian, tanned and happy, laughing at the camera. I love that he’s here in the room with us. ‘Sean had a show at my gallery last year and … well. You know.’ They smile at each other, they’re almost coy. It’s so lovely to see Karl like this again.

  ‘And what about you?’ Sean asks me. ‘I was expecting to meet your husband.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ I mumble. I can feel myself colouring. ‘Um … he went back to the hotel. He was a bit pissed off with me about … earlier. I behaved badly at the bar.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Karl says.

  ‘Call him,’ Sean says, refilling my glass, ‘tell him to come over and join us.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know … He was in a bit of a bad mood.’

  ‘He’ll get over it,’ Karl says. You don’t know the half of it, I want to say, not even the quarter, but I fish my phone out of my handbag. Just as I’m about to dial it starts to ring.

  ‘There you go!’ Sean says with a laugh, ‘serendipity!’

  ‘Hi, Dom,’ I say, getting to my feet and walking over to the window. This may not be a conversation I want others to hear. ‘I’m at Karl’s. We were just wondering if you wanted to come over?’ I bite my lip, steeling myself for a stream of bitter invective.

  ‘No, Nic, you need to come back.’

  ‘Please, Dom. We can talk about that other stuff later …’

  ‘No, Nicole …’

  ‘I want to talk about it, I do, we need to talk—’

  ‘Nicole, forget about that. You need to come back to the hotel, okay?’ His voice sounds odd, he doesn’t sound angry, he sounds worried.

  ‘Dom, what is it?’

  ‘Your mum rang.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus, is she all right? Is Charles all right? What’s wrong?’ My heart is suddenly hammering in my chest.

  ‘She’s fine, Nic, she and Charles are fine. It’s your dad.’

  Chapter Twenty

  New Year’s Eve 2009

  London

  Resolutions:

  1. Find a divorce lawyer

  2. Return Alex’s letters, gifts etc (except maybe the McQueen heels?)

  3. Ring the cameraman who hit on me at the Wife Swap shoot

  4. Lose half a stone

  5. Start flat-hunting – contact agents in Hackney/ Stoke Newington?

  I TOLD MUM that I just wanted to stay at home, to pretend that it was just another night. It was just another night. What else is New Year’s Eve, really? I know I’ve always imbued it with some great significance, but it isn’t really anything special, it’s just an arbitrary marker of passing time, as annoying as a birthday. But she rang to invite me round anyway.

  ‘Why don’t you just come round, love? Come and have a glass of champagne and something to eat with me and Charles? He got the new Jamie Oliver from his sister for Christmas, the American one. He’s made the most delicious vanilla cheesecake. Come round and have a slice.’

  ‘Mum, honestly, I don’t want to go out. I’ve had a drink, anyway, I can’t drive.’ This was a lie, and a stupid one, given Mum’s entirely predictable reaction.

  ‘Oh Nicole, I can’t bear it, you sitting there drinking on your own. It’s awful. Hop in a taxi. Or I’ll come there. Why don’t I come round there? I’ll bring some ice cream and we can watch a DVD or something.’

  I didn’t want to watch a DVD. I didn’t want to have to talk about it, to rehash it all with her. I didn’t want to eat ice cream and watch chick-flicks and live up to the broken-hearted woman stereotype.

  ‘At the risk of sounding like Greta Garbo, I just want to be alone. Honestly. To be horribly blunt, I don’t want you to come round. I’m sorry, but I’d rather just be here on my own with the dogs. Why don’t we do something tomorrow? We can meet for lunch.’

  ‘All right then,’ she said, ‘just don’t drink too much.’

  Although I’d promised myself I wouldn’t drink alone, all this talk of booze had got me in the mood. I went into the kitchen and retrieved the bottle of Laurent Perrier Rosé one of Dom’s grateful clients had sent to him a while back. We’d been saving it for a special occasion. The dogs followed me to the fridge, Mick standing dutifully behind me while Marianne tried to poke her nose into the vegetable drawer.

  ‘Are you hungry, little girl?’ I asked her. She wagged her tail, looking up at me hopefully. On the middle shelf of the fridge sat a honey roast ham which Dom’s mother Maureen had sent to me, along with a card wishing me a happy Christmas and hoping that I would ‘listen to reason’ regarding the matter of her son’s (understandable, in her mind) behaviour. I took the ham out of the fridge, hacked several large hunks off the bone and shared them out onto two plates. The dogs couldn’t believe their luck.

  I opened the champagne and poured myself a large mug. There were no clean glasses left, let alone champagne flutes. The washing up had not been done for days, the house hadn’t been cleaned for weeks. Pizza boxes and foil containers from the Chinese place were piled high on the kitchen counter, a stack of newspapers that reached almost to my waist sat in Dom’s study, unread and un-recycled.

  I wandered into the living room with my mug and flicked on the TV, hopped through the channels mindlessly, taking nothing in. I turned it off again and turned on the stereo. I’d been listening to Sticky Fingers pretty much on repeat for a month. To the strains of ‘Wild Horses’, I slugged back my champagne and lit a cigarette.

  The phone rang. For the ninth time that evening. It was the landline, which has no caller ID so I couldn’t tell who it was. It wouldn’t be my mother again, she’d got wise to the fact that I wouldn’t pick up the phone unless I knew the identity of the caller, so she only rang on the mobile. I couldn’t say for sure who it was, but I could narrow it down to a list of two: Dominic or Alex. Who else would be calling me at ten o’clock on New Year’s Eve?

  The caller didn’t leave a message, I 1471-ed. It was Dominic, either him or his mother, but probably him. I felt a twinge of guilt, I knew how desperately he must be hurting, how awful he must feel, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak to him. I couldn’t bear to listen to any more of his apologies, however heartfelt, somehow they always ended up segueing into excuses: he was desperate, he was lonely, he couldn’t talk to me, he never meant for it to happen, they’d had too much to drink, they couldn’t reach me so they reached out to each other. The guilt is washed away by a wa
ve of nausea.

  The worst thing, the very worst thing was that he didn’t tell me straight away. He waited for months. I’d been sleeping with him for months not knowing that he had been with someone else. Better that he had never told me at all.

  Alex got that one right. ‘I didn’t tell you,’ she sobbed, when she came to see me two days after Dom came clean, ‘because it wouldn’t have helped. It might have made me feel less guilty, but all it did was hurt you, and I never wanted to hurt you, Nic. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was to hurt you.’

  ‘Well maybe you shouldn’t have slept with my husband then,’ I said, slamming the door in her face.

  The deed was done, right here in this house, in September. I’m not exactly sure where. When he told me, one of the first things Dom said to me was: ‘We didn’t do it in our bed.’ Apparently, this was supposed to make me feel better. ‘Oh all right, darling, you shagged my best friend, but at least you didn’t besmirch the 400 thread count sheets your mother gave us for our wedding anniversary.’ I didn’t ask where they did do it, since at the time I was too busy calling him a fucking, cheating, lying scumbag bastard, so now I find myself wondering. Was it here, on the sofa? Should I be getting the sofa recovered?

  I’d been in Edinburgh when it happened, filming a particularly soul-destroying episode of Wife Swap. Dom and I had not spoken for two days: we’d had a terrible row before I left and I hadn’t been returning his calls. More fool me.

  The argument started over nothing. Dom’s parents had invited us to spend the following weekend with them in Yorkshire. I didn’t want to go. I told Dom that I had too much work to do, it just wasn’t a good time. This was bullshit, and he knew it. I hardly had any work on at that time, certainly nothing I needed to spend my weekends researching. When he challenged me about it, I came clean.

  ‘Okay, I don’t have too much work to do, I just don’t want to go. I don’t feel like seeing your parents at the moment.’ I was upstairs in my study, he was on the landing, we were having this conversation through the hatch.

  ‘That’s all right,’ he said, conciliatory as ever, ‘we don’t have to go. We could do something else – why don’t we invite Matt and Liz to stay? We could walk across the park to Richmond with the dogs, go to Petersham Nurseries for lunch?’

  ‘Petersham Nurseries? That’s a bit extravagant, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is my birthday, Nic.’

  Oh shit. ‘Yes, I know it’s your birthday.’ I’d completely forgotten about his birthday. I walked over to the hatch and climbed down the stairs. ‘I know it’s your birthday,’ I said again. He was standing there, an amused expression on his face. He knew I’d forgotten, he thought it was funny. This annoyed me. Everything about him annoyed me, the way he made allowances for me, the way he backed down in arguments – his kindness annoyed me.

  ‘I don’t want Matt and Liz to come,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, come on Nic, it’ll be fun …’

  ‘I don’t want them to come. I don’t feel like talking to people at the moment. You just don’t get it, do you?’

  I pushed past him and stomped off down the stairs, he followed at a safe distance. He caught up with me in the kitchen, where I was standing in front of the sink, glowering out of the window at the glorious sunshine outside.

  ‘I’m trying to understand, Nicole,’ he said, placing his hand gently on my shoulder.

  ‘But you don’t.’ I snapped. It took an iron will not to brush his hand away. ‘You don’t understand. No one does. I have no one to talk to about this.’

  He pulled his hand away with a sigh. We’d had this conversation a dozen times. He kept suggesting that I go to counselling.

  ‘It’s been a year and a half, Nic. And you’ve still not dealt with it, if anything you’re getting worse …’

  ‘I’m getting worse? Worse at what?’

  ‘Don’t be like that, Nic …’

  ‘Like what?’ I was furious with him, red-faced, blood pressure rising, my hands balled into fists, nails digging into my palms – and I wasn’t even sure why. ‘When do I have to be over him, Dominic? When exactly is it supposed to stop hurting? What date would suit you?’

  ‘You’re being unfair, I just want you to get help.’

  ‘I don’t want help,’ I shouted at him.

  ‘What do you want? Who do you want to talk to? Jesus Christ, Nicole, if he really is the only one you want to talk to, then just call Aidan. Go on,’ he said, picking up the phone and handing it to me, ‘just call him.’

  ‘Where the hell did that come from?’ I asked. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d mentioned Aidan’s name. He turned his back on me. ‘Dominic?’ Silence. ‘Why did you say that?’

  ‘I saw the letters.’

  The letters. The ones I wrote to Julian, the ones in the folder on my computer desktop labelled ‘Admin’.

  ‘You saw my letters?’ He was leaning against the kitchen counter, arms folded. He wouldn’t look at me. ‘You just saw them? You happened to be browsing through the admin folder on my laptop? What were you looking for, my old tax returns?’

  ‘No, I was looking for something to help me understand what it is that is going on in your head, I was trying to help …’

  ‘You were spying on me. You were invading my privacy.’

  ‘I was trying to help. But according to you, according to your letters, I can’t help you. No one can. The only people you want to talk to are Julian, and he’s dead, or Aidan. And with him, what was it? What did you say? Oh yes, that’s right.’ He air quoted with his fingers. ‘“You can’t talk to Aidan because you can’t bear to hear his voice and not be able to touch him again.”’

  I took the train to Edinburgh the following morning, a full four days earlier than I needed to. I fumed all the way there, incapable of reading, incapable of working, I was consumed with rage and guilt. Yes, I’d written those things about Aidan, and yes, they were horrible things for my husband to read, but those letters were private. I wrote them as though I were talking to Julian, but really they were a diary, a confessional. They were never meant to be read by anyone else. And Dom had no right to read them, however noble his intentions.

  In any case, I wasn’t sure how noble his intentions really were. He wanted me to get better, to stop being so unhappy, of course he did. But I think he wanted that for himself as much as he wanted it for me. He wanted me to be fun again, he wanted his life to be easier. It’s fair enough, why shouldn’t he? But still, I couldn’t help feeling that my unhappiness had become, more than anything, an inconvenience to him.

  I arrived on a Thursday evening. Edinburgh, post-festival, a place with a hangover. There was a sense of normalcy returning, the English and Americans leaving, locals returning, relieved to have their city back. Wife Swap’s producers were putting me up in the Radisson on the Royal Mile, but that booking wasn’t until Monday. In the meantime, I checked myself into an overpriced B&B on George Street. My first floor room was tiny and stuffy, the window opened only slightly, letting in no breeze but plenty of noise.

  Because my room was so awful I spent most of the weekend walking the streets and parks of the city, reading my book in Princes Street gardens or in Holyrood Park, drinking endless cups of coffee at a little café on Blackfriars, ignoring my phone. Dom had been left a series of messages, ranging from the supplicating to the irate. Alex had been calling, too.

  Alex and I hadn’t seen much of each other lately. I’d been avoiding her and I felt guilty about it. And the more guilty I felt, the less I wanted to see her. I knew that she needed me, I knew that she’d been having a tough time with the divorce. I just felt as though I couldn’t help her. I didn’t have it in me. I promised myself that I would do better when I got back to London, I’d make more of an effort to see her. In the meantime, I wanted to be left alone.

  I texted the pair of them. To Alex, I said: ‘In Edinburgh working. Will call when I get back.’ To Dominic, I wrote: ‘Leave me alone. I’ll call you next week
.’

  More fool me. Because that Sunday night, while I was lying awake in my grotty B&B room in Edinburgh, Alex and Dom were crying on each other’s shoulders, seeking solace in each other’s arms.

  I don’t know who instigated it. I’m not sure that I care. This is what Dom told me: Alex came over around eight. She arrived in a black cab, she’d already been drinking, he said, although she wasn’t drunk. She brought with her a good bottle of red. They sat in the kitchen, drinking and talking. She was in a state. Mike had been round to clear the remainder of his things from the house, which was due to go on sale that week. While he was there, he told her that he’d met someone. Well, not exactly met someone, because he’d known her for some time – it was Karen, the party planner, the woman who’d organised the New Year’s Eve party the night Aidan punched Mike’s friend. Mike had known her for years. When Alex asked him how long it had been going on, he’d shrugged and said, ‘It doesn’t really matter now does it?’

  To make matters worse, she was worried that she might be about to get sacked. After the divorce she’d accepted a (much lowlier) position at her old publishing house, but kick-starting her career was proving difficult in her current state of emotional turmoil. She had, she told Dom, taken fifteen sick days over the past two months.

  ‘Lay-offs are imminent,’ she said. ‘They’re going to sack at least ten per cent of the staff and frankly, if I was the one doing the sacking, I would totally sack me. I’ve been worse than useless lately.’

  They finished the bottle of wine, opened another and ordered a pizza. They talked about me. Alex asked Dom why I was ignoring her, why I would never take her calls. Was I angry with her? Dom said he didn’t know what was going on in my head any more. He told Alex about the letters, about what I said about Aidan. He asked Alex if I ever talked to her about Aidan, whether she thought I was still in love with him. Alex said she didn’t know. They finished the second bottle. It was getting late. Alex said she ought to get a taxi to the station; Dom said he didn’t think she should get the train home. She might fall asleep and miss her stop. He suggested she stay the night.