One Minute to Midnight

CHAPTER Seventeen



30 December 2011

I’M WALKING THE streets of Manhattan, alone. Dom is in the hotel, working. He was asleep when I got back last night, so he doesn’t know about Alex. I will tell him, I just didn’t want to do it this morning. He was in a good mood (sex followed by breakfast in bed always does the trick) and I didn’t want to spoil it.

I’m walking up Madison, on my way to Barney’s. The weather’s changed overnight, the sky no longer bright and crisp, it’s dirty grey and ominous. You can smell the snow in the air. The thought of a snowstorm puts an inch or two of extra spring in my step. Dom and I have made plans to meet up later: he’s going to work until mid-afternoon, then we’re going to meet up at the Met for culture followed by cocktails. Maybe after that we can go ice skating at the Rockefeller Center, or take a walk in Central Park. I’ll tell him about Alex then.

I can’t afford anything in Barney’s. Well, maybe a scarf or a pair of sunglasses, but even that would be pushing it and I can’t really turn up to Karl’s party in sunglasses and a scarf.

Plus, everyone in Barney’s is scarily attractive – it’s as though a pack of models has been let loose on those cool white marble floors. Even in my skinniest jeans and my rocking Jimmy Choo biker boots, I feel dowdy and out of place. I scuttle out and continue along Madison Avenue, past Calvin Klein, Cartier, Chanel and Chloé. I am too afraid to enter any of these places, but the sight of the cerulean crêpe de Chine dress in the window of Giorgio Armani is too much for me to resist. I overcome my fear (I’ve been to Iraq, for Christ’s sake, how can I be intimidated by shop assistants?), suck in my stomach, straighten my back and in I go.

The shop assistants are delightful. They are unfailingly polite, they ooh and ah when I put on the dress, they recommend shoes and jewellery to go with it. The dress is gorgeous and it looks fantastic on: it hangs beautifully, it clings in the right places, it’s flattering and elegant. Perfect. And just a shade under a thousand dollars. I don’t give myself time to back out, I just slide my credit card over the counter and bite my lip: Dom is going to bloody kill me. I just won’t tell him what it cost.

I leave the shop feeling dizzy and guilty and delighted. I love the dress. I’ll wear it a hundred times. That way it only cost ten dollars per wear. Less in fact. A bargain. Hell, at least I didn’t get the heels they were suggesting to go with it which cost $400. It could have been a lot worse.

I’m walking quickly, not looking in the shop windows – I don’t want to spot something I like even more for half the price, I don’t think I could bear it. I need to get off Madison Avenue. I turn right and walk up a block, cross over Park and onto Lexington Avenue. I’m at the corner of Lexington and East 70th, an address which rings a bell for some reason. I’ve seen it somewhere recently, only I can’t think where. It takes me a few moments to figure it out, and then it comes to me: it was on the letterhead at the top of an email I received. The offices of Zeitgeist Productions are at the corner of Lexington and East 71st – one block up. Aidan works one block away from where I am standing. I can’t help myself, I have to go and just have a look.

Butterflies fluttering in my stomach, I walk past the glass doors to number 502. I stop for a moment to examine the list of names engraved into a chrome plate on the side of the building: Markowitz & Brown, Parker Prince Publishing, Zeitgeist Productions. They’re on the tenth floor. I step back onto the pavement, craning my neck to get a proper view of the place where, had I the courage or the recklessness, I could work for a while. It’s a far cry from the attic office with a view of Wimbledon Common. A snowflake lands on my eyelid. The snow is coming, it’s time to get inside.

I walk north for a couple of blocks before ducking into a tiny Italian café, its windows all steamed up, not a table free in the place, just one spot left at the counter next to the window. Elbowing a determined-looking young woman in a power suit and heels out of the way I grab the last seat in the house, signal to the waiter and order myself a glass of red. I eat an enormous bowl of linguine with the most delicious meatballs I have ever tasted while watching the world rush by outside the window. It’s better than theatre.

I finish lunch around two and start heading back south towards the Met. The sky is gunmetal grey now, it looks as though a storm is coming. I’m just passing the Zeitgeist offices again, on the other side of the road this time, when I spot him. Aidan, standing just outside the office building, talking to a woman with red hair. They’re laughing about something. The woman gives him a kiss on the cheek and turns to go. I just stand there, transfixed. He’s wearing jeans and a leather jacket with the collar up. He looks tanned and lean. His hair is shorter, but other than that he looks exactly the same. He turns to go into the building, and I feel weak, faint almost. I want to call out to him, but he’ll never hear me at this distance, not over the noise of the traffic. Why does every driver in New York have to lean on their horns all the time? He’s almost gone, and then, all of a sudden he turns back and looks at me, directly at me. He just stands there, stock still, staring at me. I don’t know what to do, so I raise my hand in a half-hearted wave. He waves back.

It seems to take an age for him to cross the road to where I’m standing. I’m in the middle of the pavement – the sidewalk – blocking the flow of impatient New Yorkers who push past me on their way back to their desks, carrying their salt beef sandwiches, their cups of steaming soup. I can’t move, I’m rooted to the spot, all I can do is watch him walk towards me, that languid movement so familiar; the way he cocks his head to one side when he smiles, it stops my heart. Aidan.

‘When I offered you a job I didn’t actually expect you to just turn up on my doorstep,’ he says as he reaches me. ‘I thought you’d at least call first.’

‘I was just … in the neighbourhood,’ I say and we both start laughing.

‘Right.’ He looks down at the Armani bag in my hand and says: ‘Just doing a bit of shopping, were you?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Well, it’s certainly a good neighbourhood for that.’ We stand there, smiling stupidly at each other, buffeted by the passers-by, until he says: ‘Do you have time for a coffee?’

The snow is falling harder now, so we duck into a bar just around the corner from Aidan’s office where we order two coffees and two whiskies. Just to warm us up. We sit in a snug in the corner, raise our glasses and clink.

‘So, what’s going on, Nic?’

‘I’m just here for a few days. Karl’s having a party for New Year’s Eve.’

‘Oh, yes. He mentioned.’

‘You’re going?’

‘I wasn’t planning to. I no longer feel very festive this time of year.’ He sips his whisky.

‘I know what you mean. But seeing as it’s Karl, I thought … Well. I never see him any more, you know?’

‘Oh, I know. I think it’s great you’re going. He’ll be so happy to see you. And it has been four years … It doesn’t seem like four years though, does it?’

I shrug. ‘I don’t know. It does and it doesn’t. It hurts like it happened yesterday, but I feel like I haven’t seen him in a centenary. Every now and again I have to get a photograph out because I feel like I can’t remember what he looks like.’ I look up at Aidan. ‘I suppose you don’t really have that problem.’

‘You always said we looked the same. I could never see it. He was much better-looking than me.’

‘Much, much better-looking,’ I say, and he laughs. ‘Also kinder, funnier, more intelligent …’

‘Yes, all right.’ He looks away as he says this, so I’m not quite sure but I think he has tears in his eyes. ‘I f*cking miss him, Nicole.’

‘I know.’

Aidan is sitting with his back to the window. He gets up and moves his chair around to my side, so we can sit together and watch the snow, which is really coming down now, a blizzard.

‘I’m supposed to be in a meeting with a new director in ten minutes,’ Aidan says.

‘And I’m supposed to be meeting my husband at the Met in half an hour,’ I say.

He looks at me and grins, a cheeky, let’s-play-hooky grin. ‘I’ll cancel if you’ll cancel,’ he says.

‘Won’t you get into trouble?’ I ask him.

‘With whom? I’m the boss.’

‘That’s right, you are. I can’t believe you’re the boss. You’re way too irresponsible to be the boss of anything.’

Aidan rings his office and makes his excuses while I ring Dom.

‘The weather’s horrendous,’ he says before I can say anything. ‘Shall we do the Met tomorrow instead?’

‘Okay.’

‘Are you on your way back?’ he asks.

‘I’m in Bloomingdale’s,’ I lie. ‘I haven’t found a dress yet.’

Aidan goes to the bar and orders two more whiskies. When he sits back down next to me and slips his hand into mine a jolt of electricity goes through me. Sense memory. I remember what it feels like to hold his hand. I remember the last time we held hands like this. He was waiting outside my flat in Brixton the day I came back from Wales, after I heard. He was sitting outside on the steps, his head in his hands. I got out of the car and walked towards him, we were both crying. Neither of us said anything, but he took my hand and we walked up the steps together, into the house. Dom followed behind us. When I realised Dom was still there, I dropped Aidan’s hand, and I didn’t touch him again. I haven’t touched him since, not even at the funeral when he looked as though he needed someone to hold him up, and when I wanted more than anything to be that someone.

The snow stops falling. We finish our whiskies.

‘Shall we go for a walk?’ he asks me.

It’s quiet outside, everyone has taken refuge inside shops or offices. Taxis roll by slowly, all of Manhattan is muffled by the thick carpet of snow. We crunch along the street, heading in the direction of the East River. All of a sudden, Aidan asks me, ‘Have you walked the High Line?’

‘Is that a euphemism for something?’

He laughs. ‘No, the High Line. It’s this old elevated freight railway that was built in the thirties. It closed down years ago, but it’s now been reopened as this kind of long, narrow public park thirty feet up in the air. It’s kind of cool. You really ought to see it when the wildflowers are out, but it should be fun in the snow, too.’

‘That sounds good.’

‘Let’s go then.’

Aidan hails a cab and asks the driver to take us to West 20th Street by way of the park. As we drive through picture postcard perfect Central Park blanketed in white, deserted and silent, I feel giddy, drunk on more than a couple of whiskies. I’m transported back in time, I’m nineteen again, on the back of Aidan’s bike, riding off into the sunset. I have to pinch myself, to dig my nails into my palms and remind myself that I’m not nineteen, I’m thirty-three, I’m a married woman with a husband who’s waiting for me in a hotel room across town. I can’t run away and have adventures any more.

‘What are you smiling about?’ Aidan asks me.

‘Nothing,’ I reply. I didn’t realise that I was.

‘You’ve got that look,’ he says, ‘the one you get when you’re about to do something reckless. Are you about to do something reckless?’

‘I am not,’ I say. ‘My reckless days are over.’

‘That’s a shame. You were always fun when you were reckless.’

The taxi drops us at the corner of West 20th and 10th, where a metal stairway leads up from the pavement. Taking care not to slip on the icy steps, we climb to the top and begin walking south along the line.

To our right, we look out across Chelsea Pier and the Hudson River towards Jersey, dimly lit in the distance. We reach 10th Avenue Square, a kind of mini-auditorium where you can sit and watch the traffic whizz by underneath by way of a viewing window. We stand up against the glass, watching taxis slushing past.

Aidan’s BlackBerry beeps. He gives its screen a cursory glance, then turns it off. ‘Just work,’ he says.

‘Call them back.’

‘It can wait. Speaking of work, you never got back to me about the Libya job. It’s a great opportunity, Nic. I think you’d be perfect for it.’

‘I know, I was going to call you. I can’t do it, I’m afraid. That’s not the kind of work I do any more. I can’t leave London for months on end, that’s not what my life is like now.’

‘Why isn’t it? It’s not like you have kids …’ This sentence hangs in the air, like an unanswered question.

‘I have dogs,’ I reply. ‘And I have Dominic.’ I realise as I say this how ridiculous it sounds.

We walk on in silence. Suddenly, Aidan stops, he turns to me and says: ‘You’re going to be pissed off with me.’

‘Well, that makes a change …’

‘I have to say this, though.’

‘Say what?’

‘You need to start living your life again.’

‘What does that mean? I am living my life. Here I am. This is my life. I’m living it.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘I don’t.’

‘Okay. After Julian died, you opted out. You stopped working—’

‘I still work.’

‘Oh, come on,’ he says, exasperated. ‘You stopped really working, you stopped playing …’

‘Playing?’

‘You stopped having fun.’

‘I was grieving, Aidan.’

‘I know, and it seems like you still are. He’s been gone four years, and you’re still the quiet, withdrawn, sad person you turned into after he died.’

‘How would you know, Aidan?’ I ask him crossly. ‘You haven’t seen me since he died.’ The annoying thing is that he’s right. Why is he right? How does he know?

‘I hear things,’ he says. Alex, of course. Alex and Karl, telling tales behind my back. How I’m not the girl I used to be. ‘Listen, Nic, I don’t want to piss you off, I really don’t, but it just feels like it’s a waste. You know? Do you remember how you were always making plans?’ Aidan asks me. ‘You were going to visit all seven continents, drive across Africa, run the Marathon des Sables, meet the Dalai Lama, live in a flat with a roof garden in Rome, run your own company …’

‘I had my own company …’

‘Yeah, you had, past tense. You wound up everything when Jules died.’ He shakes his head sadly. ‘You and Julian, with your New Year’s Resolutions …’

‘I still make New Year’s Resolutions.’

‘Yeah? And what are they this year?’

I hesitate. I don’t want to tell him, not just because the whole New Year Resolution thing was very much our tradition, mine and Julian’s. Yes, I know everyone does it, but it still feels like it was peculiar to us. I don’t want to tell him what I’ve resolved to do, I can’t very well tell him about taking the pill, or about promising myself not to contact him, can I?

‘Well?’ he prompts me.

‘Oh, I don’t remember,’ I say, irritated. ‘I have to repaint the kitchen …’

He starts to laugh. ‘You have to repaint the kitchen?’

‘Oh, f*ck off.’

‘That’s what I’m talking about. There was a time when you were planning to drive from the Cape to Cairo, or wanting to learn Mandarin. Now you’re talking about repainting the kitchen.’

‘That’s what growing up is about, Aidan. Not that you’d know, obviously, but there comes a time in your life when you can’t just think about holidays and adventures and having a good time, you have to think about … other things.’

‘The kitchen?’

‘Yes, the f*cking kitchen. And marriage and kids …’

‘So you are thinking about having kids?’

I don’t want to have this conversation with him. ‘I don’t want to have this conversation with you,’ I say. ‘It’s none of your business.’

‘Okay.’

We walk on in silence. He reaches for my hand, and I let him take it.

‘I just want to know that you’re happy,’ he says, ‘that you haven’t settled for less than you deserve.’

I drop his hand and fold my arms across my chest. ‘If you’re talking about Dominic, then you’re way off,’ I say. ‘He’s a good man, he’s not a consolation prize. He’s a good husband, he doesn’t hurt me.’

‘Is that right?’ Aidan asks, a harder edge to his voice now. ‘Is that why you and Alex stopped talking?’

‘F*ck you,’ I snap at him and storm off along the deserted walkway. Then I stop and turn around, I storm back again. ‘You have no right, you know that? You have no f*cking right to criticise my life, you have no right to question my choices, you have no right to talk to me about Alex or Dom. Especially Dom. He may not be perfect, it may not be the love affair that I had with you, but he does not break my f*cking heart every chance he gets.’

‘That’s not fair, I never wanted to hurt you, Nicole …’ There’s hurt in his eyes, I’ve wounded him more than I intended, more than I thought I could. ‘I know I f*cked up, I know I made a lot of mistakes. Laure was one of the big ones.’

‘You fell in love with her,’ I say, my voice a little softer now. ‘I suppose I can’t really hold that against you.’

He stops walking. ‘I didn’t love her. I never loved her,’ he says. ‘I thought I did, for a while, but it turns out that it was always you.’ He reaches out to me again, slipping his hand around my waist and into the small of my back, pulling me closer to him, brushing my hair back from my face. This is the point at which I should pull away, but I don’t want to. I want to stay here with him, breathing in the scent of his skin, feeling his hands on me, this is where I want to be.

‘I don’t know what my life would have been if I hadn’t loved you.’ He kisses me on the mouth and I’m going back in time again, his lips on mine feel exactly the way they did when he kissed me on the beach in South Africa fifteen years ago. No other kiss has felt like that since.

‘The thing I never realised, back then, was that I didn’t have all the time in the world,’ he says. ‘It wasn’t until Julian died and you got married that it occurred to me that you were gone, you were really gone. I couldn’t have you. I’d always thought we’d end up together. I knew we’d end up together. You’re everything to me, you always have been. It just took me for ever to realise it.’

He’s saying all the things I ever wanted to hear from him and I can’t stand it, it’s too late. I pull away from him.

‘It took you too long, Aidan.’ I smile at him although I really want to cry. ‘It’s like what my dad said to me the other day. It’s always later than you think.’

We’ve reached the Gaansevoort Plaza, the end of the High Line. Below is the Meatpacking District, packed with bars and boutiques. Alex and I talked about coming here, to have brunch at Pastis, just like the girls from Sex and the City did. We take the steps back down to street level.

‘I should be getting back,’ I tell Aidan. ‘Dom will be wondering where I am.’

‘Can I see you again before you go?’ he asks.

‘No, you can’t Aidan. It’s time we said goodbye.’

I hail a cab and leave him standing at the intersection of 8th and Greenwich Avenue. It takes all my willpower to not look back at him, to see if he’s waving, or if he’s already turned away.