He dropped his hands from her arms, hitched the bee bag more securely onto his shoulder, and turned away to the steps up to Westminster Bridge. She hurried after him. She wanted so much to try to get him to talk to her about his stepmother and father and sister and what had happened, but, for all her training as a therapist, she was at a loss to know how to do that. How to help her own, beloved husband who was so perfect on the outside and so damaged on the inside, she didn’t even know where to start.
They had only been married two months. She had only known him for six. That was what she kept telling herself. When she got to know him better, she’d be better placed to give him the help he obviously desperately needed, to break down the wall he’d built around himself and defended with facetiousness and humour and charm.
And with silence.
Nick was a master of the silent treatment, particularly when he was thwarted.
‘I’m not in any danger from Paul, or from any of my clients,’ she tried, trotting to match his long stride as they approached the centre of the bridge, with its jaunty triple lantern lights. She was very conscious of the river flowing unseen beneath them, the wide, brown river that flowed past their penthouse apartment at Chelsea Harbour and that she loved so much but that also, at times, gave her a vague feeling of unease.
There were more than fifty ‘jumpers’ a year, Nick had told her the first time they viewed the apartment. People who jumped into this river. People who had watched it, perhaps, day after day, and felt its pull. And one day that pull had been too strong.
She stopped walking.
After a few steps, he turned and came back to her, as she had known he would. He would never leave her here. He never tired of reminding her of the number of women who were raped in London every year (over five thousand) and the number of murders (one hundred and twelve). He made her carry an illegal can of pepper spray in her bag, which he’d got from God knew where.
He’d made her promise to keep to the main thoroughfares when she was alone, and never take shortcuts up quiet, dubious alleyways. And she had to keep her phone switched on at all times in case she needed to call 999.
As he walked back to her, his expression contained, wary, her heart suddenly went out to him and she grabbed him into her arms and hugged him tight, so tight, the bee bag bumping awkwardly against them. She felt his chest heave with suppressed emotion.
Talk to me, she wanted to say. Talk to me about them.
Nick’s mum, Kathleen, had died in an accident when he was fourteen – she’d fallen from the galleried landing of their big Victorian house in the Scottish Borders while Nick, oblivious, was upstairs in his room. He had found her body. She thought of Paul, so traumatised by finding his father’s body that he’d been unable to let go of the experience, to let go of the rage, all these years. But Paul had had the loving support of his mother and extended family.
Nick had lost what remained of his family less than two years later, and in the worst possible way. She couldn’t stop thinking about him as he’d been then, sixteen-year-old Nick, coming home from a fun day out with his best friend and his best friend’s mum to find his family gone. Without a trace. And the police had been convinced that they’d just upped and left, leaving Nick behind.
What had that done to him?
At first, Nick had acted like he was amused by Lulu’s attempts to ‘psychoanalyse’ him, as he put it. Now, he just shut her down.
When they eventually moved apart, he lifted a hand to her face and smiled at her and said, ‘I’m sorry, Lu. I didn’t mean to add to your stress.’
‘You haven’t. You could never do that. When I’m with you, all the stress goes away.’
‘I just want you to be safe.’
She nodded, she smiled, she stroked the thick, soft hair at his temples. ‘I know. Oh, Nick, I know. But I am safe.’ She pulled him back into a fierce hug. ‘You’re not going to lose me.’ Like you lost them remained unspoken in the cool, river-smelling air that eddied around them. ‘I am safe.’
2
Maggie - August 1997
As Duncan turned into the drive and smiled at her and said, ‘Welcome home,’ Maggie managed to smile back, but God, it took all she had. Ten minutes ago, about a mile out of Langholm, she’d been forced to ask him to stop the car so she could get out and piss at the side of the road. She’d blamed the baby squashing her bladder, but it had been pure nerves. There she’d squatted, bare arse glowing like a beacon in the evening sunshine, as a couple of cars had passed by. One had slowed right down. She was hoping it might just have been a pervert, but knowing her luck it would turn out to be one of Duncan’s neighbours.
Oh, ugh – no, children, don’t look.
That’s not the common little thing Duncan Clyde’s got himself married to, is it?
It is!
Oh dear God.
And now she’d better subtly check that the folds of her maternity dress hadn’t got trapped in her pants, like had happened on the cruise. She smoothed the cheap floral polyester under her legs. Naw, she was fine. Well, not fine. She looked terrible. It was like this dress and Duncan’s crisp white shirt and navy chinos shouldn’t exist in the same universe, let alone the same couple.
The honeymoon had really brought home how far out of her league Duncan was. Maggie had expected the cruise to be all about stuffing your face and lounging in the sun and being deafened by the cabaret, but it hadn’t been that kind of ship. It had been a ‘boutique’ cruise with less than a hundred passengers, ninety per cent snobby bastards. The food was magic, aye, but there was no cabaret, just lectures on the botany and archaeology of the places they stopped off at. And none of the other women were wearing polyester maternity dresses from a dodgy market or leggings from Topshop, and Maggie had had to keep washing out her new East sundress and hanging it up to drip-dry in the lav so she could wear it again. Duncan said he didn’t care what she wore, but how could that be true?