One Minute to Midnight

CHAPTER Eleven



28 December 2011

I HIT DELETE, too late.

‘I didn’t know you two were talking these days,’ Dom says, moving past me into the room. He reaches for the bottle of Scotch on the kitchen counter. It’s four o’clock in the afternoon. He pours himself a glass, downs it in one, pours another. ‘There’s just so much I don’t know, isn’t there, Nicole?’

He puts the drink down and turns to face me, his arms folded across his chest, a look of resignation on his face. Here we go again.

‘If we’re going to go over that old ground, you’d better pour me one of those, too,’ I say, closing my laptop. He doesn’t move. ‘But before we get started, can I just tell you that I’m not talking to Aidan? He rang me, a couple of times, he left messages, something about a job. I haven’t rung him back—’

‘But it has been lovely to hear his voice …’ Dom’s voice drips sarcasm.

‘It has. He’s an old friend.’

‘Ha!’

‘He is, Dominic,’ I shout, getting to my feet. Mick, who’s been sleeping under the table, lets out a little whine and retreats to the laundry room. He hates it when I raise my voice. I pour myself a drink – if Dom’s going to be like this, I’m going to need it. I continue, more calmly: ‘I know there’s been other stuff between us, but I’ve known him half my life, more than half my life. And he’s—’

‘Julian’s cousin, yes, I know. He’s the only person who could possibly understand how you feel. Unless, of course, you count me. Unless you count Alex …’

‘Oh right, you can say her name now can you?’ Silence. ‘And you don’t understand how I feel, and neither did she.’

Dom sits down at the other end of the kitchen table.

‘You know what, Nic? It doesn’t really bother me that you’re talking to Aidan. It bothers me that you didn’t tell me he’d been in touch. It bothers me that you couldn’t talk to me about your dad being ill before running away to see him. This is supposed to be a marriage, a partnership. We’re supposed to be on the same side. I thought – after everything – that we’d agreed that we would talk to each other, that we wouldn’t keep secrets.’

I gulp down my Scotch, it burns in my chest. ‘Okay,’ I tell him. ‘Fine. You want honesty? I can do honesty.’ I rattle off the facts: ‘Aidan rang me, he left a message on my phone. He’s running a production company in New York now, he has a project he thinks would be perfect for me. It’s a film about the role of women in the Libyan uprising. He doesn’t have a director because the person who was supposed to do it is having a nervous breakdown or something. He needs someone to start in January. And I want to do it.’ Dom says nothing, just raises his eyebrows and passes a hand over his mouth. ‘Because I hate doing what I do now, Dom. I hate it. It’s pointless, it’s trash, I hate it.’

‘So you want to go running off to Libya?’

‘Oh, I’m not finished,’ I say. The alcohol is burning in my belly now, it feels like courage. ‘Since we’re being honest, I should tell you that I’ve been talking to Alex. Well, emailing Alex. For months now. She’s supposed to be getting married again. Only the guy she’s with is cheating on her. She wanted my advice. Knowing, of course, that I have some experience in that area.’ He breathes in sharply; that punch landed. I’ve hurt him. It doesn’t feel good, it feels awful. I can’t believe we’re doing this, the day before we’re due to go on holiday.

‘I’m sorry,’ I mutter, and leave the room. We retreat, wounded, to our respective corners, him to his study, me to mine.

Later, he calls up to me. ‘I’m taking the dogs out. You want to come?’

An olive branch.

It’s dark outside, so we don’t go onto the common. We walk along the road up towards Wimbledon Village, the dogs on leads. I take Marianne, he takes Mick. Dom takes my hand, he sings to me: ‘You can’t always get what you want.’ An old joke, but it seems to have resonance now.

‘Do you really want to go off around the world again?’ he asks me. ‘Staying in fleapits, getting jabs, popping malaria pills, getting ill all the time, getting shot at all the time, feeling afraid … Do you honestly want to go back to all that?’

‘This is an opportunity, Dom. To do something worthwhile again. And to be honest, I feel stifled here. I need to get out there again.’

‘I didn’t know I stifled you.’

‘You don’t,’ I say, squeezing his hand tighter. ‘You don’t stifle me, I just … feel stifled.’ Why can’t I explain this to him?

‘In any case, you can do worthwhile stuff here. You don’t have to go to Libya to film something real. There are plenty of awful, gritty, hard-hitting stories right here in good old Blighty, you know? There’s no reason you have to work on the kind of crap … on the kind of stuff you’ve been doing for the past few years.’

I ignore the slur on my work. It’s a fair comment. ‘I know that, Dom, but I’ve got the commission for this job, and it’s with a really good production house. That’s a big deal. I don’t have the contacts I once did. The industry has completely changed over the past few years, everyone I knew has moved on …’

We reach the end of the high street and turn right, it’s a mini-circuit we do when we’ve left it too late to take the dogs on a proper walk. Dom lets go of my hand and walks on ahead.

‘When did he ask you?’ he calls back over his shoulder. ‘When did Aidan offer you the job?’

‘A couple of weeks ago.’

‘Why didn’t you say anything?’

‘Because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do.’

‘And you didn’t think I’d be able to help you make a decision?’

‘Not really, no. Not when it comes to this. Not when it comes to him. And not when it comes to the question of me spending time elsewhere.’

We complete the rest of the walk in silence. When we get home, I feed the dogs, wash my hands, open the fridge and stare mournfully at the leftovers. I really can’t justify getting takeout again. Behind me, Dom is opening a bottle of red wine.

‘I’m not sure all this alcohol is going to help us sort this out, Dom,’ I say, trying to sound jokey.

‘Did you honestly think we were going to get anything sorted out? Because I thought you were just going to do whatever you wanted to do, having made the decision yourself, without discussing it with me.’

I feel like I’ve gone back in time. It’s two years ago, and we’re going round and round in circles. He’s hurt and angry because I won’t open up to him, won’t tell him exactly how I’m feeling; I’m frustrated because I don’t want to have to explain everything. He’s my husband, he should get me – I shouldn’t have to spell everything out.

I take the bottle from him and pour myself a glass of wine.

‘What do you want for dinner?’ I ask him. ‘Shall we eat the rest of this bloody turkey or shall we give it to the dogs?’

‘Turkey curry?’ he says, the ghost of a smile playing on his lips. I reach over to the spice rack and lob him a jar of ground turmeric.

We chop vegetables in companionable silence. I’m flooded with relief; the argument is over. I shouldn’t have told him I felt stifled here, even if it’s true. He’s right, I don’t need Aidan to kick-start my career; there’s no reason I can’t start over all by myself, in London. It’s just the thought of it: heading off on my own again, into the unknown, a small bag packed, a cameraman at my side, not really knowing what’s going to happen or how things will turn out. It’s intoxicating.

‘What are you smiling about?’ Dom asks me, tossing the remainders of the turkey, cut into chunks, into the pan.

‘Nothing,’ I say, regretting it the moment the words leave my lips. Dom raises his eyes heavenward.

‘Why can’t you just say it? Just tell me?’

‘All right, I was thinking about work. About how much I’d like to get my career back on track. That’s all. I wasn’t thinking about Aidan.’

‘I didn’t say you were.’ He picks up the pan, jiggers it about, coating the turkey in spicy, creamy goo. There’s a long, dangerous silence. This argument is not over. I was an idiot to think it was over. Dom takes a sip of wine, he takes a deep breath. Here we go.

Round two.

‘What about the baby?’

‘Dom …’

‘You said you wanted to try.’

Not exactly true, this. He said he wanted to try and I said all right, I’d stop taking the pill. Only I haven’t. Not yet. But I don’t correct him.

‘I did, I do. But I’m thirty-four, Dominic. There’s plenty of time.’

‘We don’t know that …’

‘Well, no, of course. We don’t know anything. But there’s no reason to think we’ll have trouble. We’re both healthy, we’re not overweight – not by much, anyway, we don’t drink too much, we don’t smoke—’

He snorts.

‘Oh, for god’s sake. One cigarette every now and again …’

‘Every now and again? There was half a pack in the glove box when I took your car in to be serviced before Christmas. It was gone when I looked this afternoon.’

‘Oh for f*ck’s sake!’ I throw the knife I’ve been chopping with into the sink. The dogs scarper. I storm out of the room, then turn around and storm back in. ‘I can’t believe you! You’re counting my f*cking cigarettes now!’

‘Stop swearing at me.’

‘Oh, god! Don’t smoke, don’t swear, don’t talk to your friends … I was stressed, all right? I’d just found out that my father has cancer …’

‘Stop using that, Nicole. It’s ugly.’ He’s right, and I feel ashamed. ‘In any case, I would have thought that finding out your father had cancer would be a very good reason not to smoke.’ He takes another deep breath, reaches over to me and takes my hand in his. ‘Do you want to have a baby, Nic?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Not sure about now? Or not sure at all?’

‘I don’t know.’ I really don’t know. I know that I don’t want to have a baby right now, I just don’t feel that urge that other women do. Does that mean I’ll never want to have one? Or is it worse than that? Is it just that I don’t want to have a baby with Dom? ‘We don’t have to decide now, Dominic. There’s plenty of time.’

‘Is there?’ He looks at me sadly, then turns away. ‘I would have thought you of all people would know that no one ever has as much time as they think they do.’

My mobile rings. Saved by the bell. It’s Mum.

‘Hola!’ she greets me. ‘¿Cómo estás?’

‘Well, hello. How was Costa Rica?’

‘Wonderful, darling. Wish you and Dom could have come. It was just lovely. Fantastic weather, gorgeous beaches … I missed you.’

I take the phone into the living room and pace up and down while we chat, about Christmas, her holiday, Charles’s dodgy knees. ‘We climbed the Arenal volcano on our last day. Bad idea. I thought we were going to have to get a stretcher to get him down.’

Eventually, once the small talk and holiday chatter run out, I know I’m going to have to tell her.

‘Anyway, darling, I should go. Charles has made shepherd’s pie.’

‘Okay. Mum …’

‘Is everything all right, darling? You sound … I don’t know. A bit sad.’

‘I’m fine, Mum. I’ll give you a call soon.’

I end the call and sit down on the sofa. Dom comes and sits next to me, and places his arm around my shoulders. ‘You can tell her tomorrow,’ he says.

We eat dinner in the living room, watching the news. A flood here, a train crash there. Kate and Wills are opening something, Lindsay Lohan back in rehab. It blurs before my eyes, I can’t concentrate on anything.

‘I think I’ll go upstairs and do some work,’ I say to him, getting to my feet and picking up the plates. ‘That was delicious, actually, thank you. Much better curried than roasted.’

‘I’m a better cook than my mother.’

‘You are.’ I kiss him on the forehead, go into the kitchen and fetch my laptop.

Upstairs, sitting on our bed, I log into my Hotmail account, discard the message I’d been composing to Aidan, and email Alex instead.

Do you regret not having a baby?

With Mike? No. But I do want one. Though with the way things are going at the moment I’m starting to think it’s going to be just me and the turkey baster. Why? Something to tell me? Omfg, are you pregnant?

No. But Dom wants us to try. He doesn’t want to wait any more. He thinks I stopped taking the pill two months ago.

Nicole, you can’t lie about stuff like that.

Annoyed, I ignore her last message and open a new browser window. I go to the BBC news page and read about the news I just watched on television. I still don’t take it in. I hate it when Alex gets self-righteous. She has no right to come over all self-righteous with me. Still, once I’m done with the news, I check my messages again and read her latest:

Nicole? Have you gone away again? Don’t be pissed off. If you don’t want a baby right now, you just have to tell him.

Problem is I don’t know what I want.

I wish we could talk properly. I wish you would let me come and see you.

I should just tell her. I’m going to be in New York tomorrow. I’ll meet you at the Plaza, for cocktails. But I don’t.

Have to go, Alex. Talk soon.

I open my resolutions file, yet again.

1. Get in touch with Aidan re job offer Talk to old ? BBC contacts about work Email Aidan to decline ? job offer – ask that he no longer calls Ignore Aidan, talk to old BBC contacts about work



2. Lose half a stone



3. Stop taking the pill – or at least admit to Dom that I’m still taking it Tell Dom I’m still on the pill and am not ready for a baby



4. Repaint the kitchen Read more! Read everything on 2011 Booker shortlist. And 2012 shortlist. When it comes out.

5. Sort out things with Dad Make an effort to see Dad regularly – monthly dinners?

I hear Dom coming up the stairs, so I close the file, close my Hotmail account and click on the file containing my notes from the meeting with Annie. Have I always been so secretive? Dom pops his head around the door.

‘You want tea, love?’

‘I’m all right, cheers,’ I reply, picking up the half-full wine glass which is on the bedside table.

‘You going to pack tonight?’

‘I was thinking of leaving it until the morning,’ I say.

‘We need to be at the airport at nine, Nic. That means leaving here at seven-thirty.’

‘Eight.’

‘Seven-thirty.’

‘Geez, all right then.’

I pull a chair over to the wardrobe and climb on top of it in order to get the suitcases from the top shelf. As I pull my case out, I manage to shift one of the boxes that we packed back into the cupboard on Boxing Day. It comes crashing to the ground, its contents spilling out onto the floor. As I clamber down to pick everything up, Dom comes running into the room.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Fine, just clumsy.’

He gives me a hand collecting together the papers and photographs. Once we’re done, I notice a little strip of paper under the chair I’d been using as a stepladder. Dom and I both go to pick it up at once, we bang our heads together, we start laughing. He gets to the bit of paper first. It’s the photo strip, the one I noticed on Boxing Day. Me, Julian and Alex in 1999. We got it done at Aldgate East Station, a few days after we moved into the flat off Brick Lane.

‘That’s weird,’ Dom says, placing the strip back into the box.

‘Don’t,’ I say, ‘don’t put it away.’ I take it from him and put it in my bedside table drawer.

‘How cold is it in New York, have you checked?’ Dom asks me as he pulls his own suitcase out of the wardrobe.

‘The BBC claims that it’s quite mild for this time of year – around seven or eight degrees, I think. But their weather forecasts are rubbish, so who knows?’

‘You could always ask someone who lives there. You know, Karl, or maybe … I don’t know … Alex?’ Dom says, giving me a half-smile. I smile back, but I don’t say anything. ‘Are you going to see her?’ he asks. ‘Will she be at the party?’

‘No, Karl didn’t invite her.’

‘But if you’ve forgiven her, Nic, why don’t you let him know? You could see each other again. It’s been … such a long time.’

‘Two years. And I haven’t forgiven her, Dominic. I just can’t live without her. I can’t live without them both.’