One Minute to Midnight

CHAPTER Eighteen



New Year’s Eve 2008

Lamu, Kenya



Resolutions:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

IT WAS DOMINIC’S idea to take our honeymoon over the New Year. It wasn’t my choice: I was quite happy to leave it until the following summer, but Dom, who had never shown himself to be superstitious about anything up to that point, was adamant that it was bad luck not to honeymoon in the actual calendar year in which you get married, so it was our last chance.

We flew to Nairobi on the anniversary of Julian’s death. I self-medicated fairly heavily on the flight: four gin and tonics and half a bottle of red. It took us a couple of hours to get out of Nairobi Airport, I spent most of that time in the toilets throwing up, then we transferred to another, smaller airport and got onto another, much smaller plane for the sixty-minute flight to Manda Island.

I was feeling better by this point, and not just because I’d purged most of the alcohol from my system. Coming back to Africa made me feel better, it always did. There was something irresistibly invigorating about the noise and chaos, the heat and space, all that blood-red earth. We landed on Manda at around five o’clock, there was nothing there but an airstrip and a little wooden hut, on which someone had hung a painted sign saying ‘departure lounge’.

We – Dom and I, plus three other couples (from the looks of them, honeymooners too), and one set of exhausted-looking parents plus their two small children – were escorted to the shore and helped into two small boats, which ferried us across the narrow stretch of water which separates Manda from Lamu Island. I sat in between Dom’s skinny white legs at the back of the boat, leaning against him, watching as the setting sun caught the top of the whitewashed roofs of Lamu village, and I felt at peace. Maybe this had been a good idea after all. This is exactly the sort of thing Julian would have wanted me to do on the anniversary of his death, had he been around to make recommendations.

I’d spent a lot of time that year thinking about what Julian would have wanted me to do. Mostly, I think I’d gone against his wishes. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have approved of my abandonment of two film projects I’d been working on for months. I doubt very much he’d have thought that marrying Dominic was the best idea. Not under the circumstances, anyway.

We got married in March. It was about as low key a wedding as is possible: just me, Dom, Mum, Charles, Dom’s parents, Matt and Liz and Alex and Karl at the Chelsea Town Hall on a brisk Friday morning. I wore a pale-gold draped silk chiffon dress from Lanvin, Dom wore his best suit. We all took taxis to Petersham afterwards and had a fabulous lunch at the Nurseries. Nobody made any speeches. Everyone had a good time, except for Dom’s mum who said the whole thing was so sad it made her want to weep.

Since I’d never been the sort to want to dress up like a princess, it was exactly the sort of wedding I probably would have chosen even had I not been grieving. But that wasn’t really the point. It was the timing of the thing that caught everyone off guard. I could tell that even Dom was a little taken aback when, three weeks after the funeral, I told him I thought we ought to get married.

‘I thought you said you weren’t ready,’ he said.

‘I changed my mind,’ I replied.

‘I don’t even have a ring,’ he said.

‘You’ve been asking me to marry you for three years, Dominic. How can you not have a ring?’

‘I just … I don’t know. I suppose I thought I had at least another four or five New Years to go until you said yes.’

‘I don’t want a ring,’ I said. ‘I don’t need a ring. Let’s just do this quickly. No fuss, no tiaras, no bridesmaids, no churches. Okay?’

He agreed, and he didn’t ask more questions about why I’d changed my mind. I suppose he didn’t want to press the point. Alex did.

‘Are you sure?’ she asked me. ‘Why now? You know they say that you shouldn’t make any major decisions within six months of somebody dying. Or is it within six months of winning the lottery? Something like that, anyway. I don’t think this is the best time to be making life-changing decisions. Imagine what Jules would say.’

‘Julian is gone,’ I said, bluntly. For some reason I couldn’t bear to hear her talk about him. I couldn’t bear to hear anyone talk about him.

‘Yes, I know Nic, but—’

‘Well stop bringing him up, then. This has nothing to do with him. This is about Dominic and me. And it’s time. I want to get married.’

Unlike Dom, Alex wasn’t prepared to let the subject drop just like that. A few days after I’d phoned her to tell her that Dom and I were getting married, she rang me to ask me to meet her for drinks at the Duke of York off Gray’s Inn Road.

‘I have to see my lawyer,’ she told me. ‘Always a horrible experience. I’ll need to get pissed afterwards.’

I didn’t want to go. Getting pissed with Alex wasn’t as much fun as it used to be. Plus, the weather was filthy, cold and wet, with a northern wind blasting through my corner of Brixton as though it were stuck out on some peninsula instead of being sheltered by the council blocks of the Loughborough estate.

By the time I arrived, it appeared to me that Alex had a head start; she was garrulous and louder than usual, laughing at things that weren’t particularly funny. She launched into what seemed to be to be an ill-prepared ‘marry in haste, repent at leisure’ speech, illustrating her points with numerous examples from her own marriage, then in its spectacularly vicious death throes. I countered easily.

‘One,’ I told her, ‘you didn’t marry in haste. You were with Mike for years before you married him. And I’ve been with Dom for more than four years, so it’s not really that hasty, is it? And two,’ I went on, ‘much more importantly, Dom is not Mike. Surely even you can see that?’

‘All right,’ she said, a look of hurt flickering across her face. Then, she asked: ‘What do you mean, even me?’

‘Nothing,’ I said, crossly. I drained the rest of my drink. I wanted to leave, but I’d only just got there. Outside, it looked like the end of days, the rain hammering down, monsoon-like.

‘Let’s have another,’ Alex suggested. She went to the bar, and instead of buying two more glasses of wine, she bought a bottle. My heart sank.

‘Cheaper this way,’ she said cheerily, pouring us each another glass. Then she started up on the marriage thing again.

‘I know that you love Dom,’ she said, ‘and I’m not saying that marrying him is not the right thing to do, I just think you might live to regret a decision made in grief …’

‘Don’t talk to me about my grief, Alex,’ I said, pushing my glass to the centre of the table. I’d had enough. I couldn’t face this. ‘You have no idea what I’m feeling. You have no idea what it’s like for me.’

I got to my feet and started putting on my coat. Alex reached out to grab my hand, there were tears in her eyes. ‘Nicole, don’t go. I just want to talk to you. Please, Nic. I loved him too you know …’

‘Don’t do that!’ I snapped, pulling my hand away from hers. ‘Don’t compare your relationship with him to mine, there is no comparison. You didn’t have what we had.’ I grabbed my handbag and walked out into the rain, knowing that I would have hurt her less if I’d stuck a knife into her chest, and having no idea why I was doing it. We’d not spoken much since.

Our little boat dropped us off at a jetty outside the Peponi Hotel, a low, whitewashed building clinging to the south-western edge of the island, surrounded by tall palms and lush lawns. A tall, white-haired gentleman with a deep tan and a Scandinavian accent welcomed us off the boat.

‘Karibu,’ he said his arms outstretched. ‘Welcome to Lamu.’

We sat on sun loungers on the terrace outside the hotel bar, our fingers gently interlaced, sipping gin and tonics, watching the sun dip into the sea. A warm, salty breeze came up off the water, lulling us towards sleep. I resisted.

‘I’ve decided I’m going to wind up the company,’ I told Dom. He opened his eyes and looked over at me, a look of concern on his face.

‘Really? Are you sure?’

I shrugged. ‘We haven’t made anything all year,’ I said. ‘I’m just losing money on office space and employees. I think I’m done with all that now.’

‘Okay,’ he said, giving my hand a squeeze. ‘If you think that’s best.’

‘I do. Maybe I’ll write instead, or … I don’t know.’

‘You don’t have to work,’ Dom said. ‘You could just take it easy for a while.’

‘I want to work,’ I replied, ‘I just don’t feel like travelling any more. Not unless it’s doing stuff, like this.’ I leant over and kissed him on the lips.

‘Good, I’m glad. I want my wife at home.’

I flinched at this, but I knew he didn’t mean it the way it sounded, so I didn’t say anything. A waiter brought us another round, with a little dish of peanuts.

‘So is that one of your resolutions, then?’ Dom asked. ‘Winding up the company?’

‘I haven’t made any resolutions this year,’ I said. ‘It’s just a decision.’

The next day, we lay on the beach in scorching sun, our pale English bodies turning gently pink in the sun. Local boys, incongruously dressed in early nineties English football strips, wandered along the shore and approached with baskets of wares to sell: samosas, cans of Coke, ready-rolled spliffs. Dom bought us two of each.

‘Are you really a Manchester United fan?’ Dom asked our vendor.

‘Ronaldo,’ the boy replied with a grin. ‘Rooney, Giggs. Best team in the whole world.’

Dom looked pained and muttered something about the ubiquity of the Premiership being ‘yet another thing to resent Rupert Murdoch for’. The boy just smiled at us and trotted off down the beach, humming ‘Volare’.

Dom and I found ourselves a square metre of shade under a low palm, smoked our joints looking out over the shimmering sea. In our beach bag, my phone buzzed again and again. It was Alex.

‘You should answer,’ Dom said. ‘Just say hello.’

‘It’ll cost a fortune from here, Dom. It’ll cost both of us a fortune. Anyway. We’re on our honeymoon. Why does she keep calling? There can’t possibly have been another hideous tragedy at exactly the same time of year can there?’

‘Perhaps she’s just calling because it’s … well … the anniversary. She probably just wants to find out if you’re okay.’

‘She’s driving me mad.’

‘She’s hurt. She just got divorced, and she also lost a friend, Nic.’

‘Oh, don’t you start.’ I got up off my towel. ‘I’m going for a swim.’

In the shallows, the water was clear and warm as a bath, but it turned colder and darker blue the deeper I got. I floated on my back, eyes closed, I drifted. I was thinking about the first time I swam in the Indian Ocean. It wasn’t the New Year’s Eve in Cape Town, that was the Atlantic. This was eleven years ago, April or March, I think. Aidan had started his desk job in London, he was earning a decent salary at last, Karl had just sold a piece to a gallery in New York, so he was in the money, too. So the four of us – Julian and Karl, Aidan and I – decided to take a holiday in Mozambique.

We flew to Maputo and drove north to Vilanculos. I was awestruck, I’d never seen beaches like that – endless, unspoiled, completely deserted, with not a building, high rise or otherwise, anywhere in sight. We couldn’t even wait to take off our clothes, let alone pitch our tents, the moment we arrived at our camping spot we just piled out of the rental car and tore down onto the sand and into the water. We bought fish from a local market and grilled it over a fire on the beach, accompanied by cheap (gut-rotting) rosé. It was heaven.

Salt tears were running down my cheeks, joining the ocean. And I could hear someone yelling my name.

‘Nicole! Hey! Nicole!’

I opened my eyes and started to tread water. I’d drifted right into the middle of the channel between Lamu and Manda, the current was carrying me towards the open ocean. Drift out there and you don’t come back. For just the slightest fraction of a moment the idea was tempting, the thought of disappearing out into the endless blue, but the desperation in Dom’s voice brought me back to myself, and I started to swim, I started to fight.

It took me twenty minutes to get back to shore. Dom, following my progress from the land (he never was a very strong swimmer), came running to meet me as I half walked, half crawled up the beach.

‘What were you doing?’ he yelled, grabbing hold of me, enveloping me in his arms. ‘What on earth were you doing?’

‘I’m sorry,’ I panted, collapsing down onto the wet sand. ‘I drifted too far.’

He sat down next to me. ‘That’s the last time you get stoned before going swimming.’

‘Definitely. Either that or we need to fashion some sort of anchor to keep me near to shore.’

Dom put his arm around my waist and kissed my shoulder. ‘If only,’ he said, ‘if only I could make an anchor to keep you near me.’

We went back to our room, made love under the mosquito net, drank hot sweet tea brought to us by the hotel staff. We compared sunburn. Mine was definitely worse, no doubt exacerbated by all that time in the water.

‘Putting on clothes again is going to be agony,’ I complained.

‘We could just spend the rest of the holiday naked,’ Dom suggested.

‘Tempting, but do you not think we might look a little out of place at the New Year’s Eve party tonight?’

‘I don’t know,’ Dom shrugged. ‘They looked to me like a pretty swinging crowd.’

In the end I wore a maxi dress with no underwear, which excited Dom no end and kept me comfortable. The party, held in the hotel bar, started out a quiet affair.

‘That’s the problem with these honeymoon-y places,’ I grumbled to Dom. ‘It’s all couples, so there’s no atmosphere. No one’s hitting on anyone else.’

‘Don’t be so sure about that,’ Dom replied. ‘The blonde over there with the large … uh …’

‘Tits?’

‘I was going to say bottom, but she’s fairly proportionate, I suppose. Anyway, I reckon she’s been eyeing up the overly tanned chap with the tight T-shirt on.’

While other couples made stilted conversation about their weddings (size, location, quality of best man’s speeches), Dom and I sat in the corner, people-watching and munching on the most delicious crab cakes I have ever tasted.

‘We really ought to mingle,’ Dom said after his fourth crab cake. ‘We’re being a bit antisocial.’

‘This is our honeymoon, Dominic. We’re supposed to be antisocial. In any case, I don’t think they’d be terribly impressed by our registry office nuptials, do you?’

Fortunately, the handsome Danish hotelier, Michael, had invited some locals who arrived three sheets to the wind and livened the place up no end. Dom and I got talking to Bruce and Lara, originally from Devon, who ran a donkey sanctuary just outside Lamu village, and who invited us to go on a snorkelling-slash-fishing expedition on their boat the following day.

‘You see?’ I said to Dom. ‘The key thing is to be antisocial until the interesting people show up and invite you to go out on their boat.’

‘You’re so much cooler than I am,’ he said.

‘Aren’t I?’

Dom and I skipped the New Year countdown, choosing instead to go for a walk on the beach. Even at one minute to midnight, it was almost as bright as day, a full moon reflecting off the vast expanse of pale, wet sand. Apart from waves breaking far out to sea, the silence was perfect. We walked, hand in hand, for two or three miles, then turned and walked back again, awestruck by a seemingly endless expanse of inky, star-studded sky.

We rounded the beach head and were heading back towards the lights of the hotel when Dom wandered down to the water. He looked up at me with a grin.

‘Fancy a swim?’

‘I’m not wearing my bikini, Dominic.’

‘I know,’ he said, the grin turning from merely cheeky to lascivious.

Giggling like school children, we stripped off and jumped into the water. It was cooler than it had been that afternoon, it felt delicious on my hot, sunburned skin. We floated on our backs, looking up at the sky, hands interlaced.

‘We should do this more often,’ Dom said to me.

‘Skinny dip?’

‘Get away, just the two of us. And yes, we should skinny dip more often, too.’

‘You reckon they wouldn’t mind too much at the pool at Wimbledon Leisure Centre?’

We drifted a little further and then started back for shore. It was only when we reached the point at which our toes could touch the sand with our chins still above water when I noticed that there was somebody on the beach. Two people, actually. The curvy blonde and her husband. They were sitting about a metre or two from where I’d dropped my dress.

‘Hiya!’ the blonde called out. ‘What’s the water like then?’

‘Lovely,’ Dom said, shooting me a look. ‘It’s very nice.’

‘Yeah, lovely,’ I agreed. We’d reached the point at which, if I went any further towards the beach, I was going to be flashing my tits at them.

‘You’re braver than I am,’ the blonde said. ‘I wouldn’t go in the water in broad daylight, let alone at night. All those creepy crawlies … Ugh. Have you seen the size of the crabs round here?’

Dom and I splashed around half-heartedly, waiting for the couple to get bored and leave. They did not.

‘Have you been to the donkey sanctuary yet?’ the woman went on. ‘Poor mites. In a terrible way some of them.’

‘We were thinking of going tomorrow,’ Dom replied.

He and I swam around a bit more. I was starting to get cold and the couple on the beach showed no sign of leaving.

‘Really enjoying it out there, aren’t you?’ the bloke asked.

Dom was laughing to himself.

‘They’re never going to leave,’ he whispered.

I was getting the giggles, too.

‘We’re going to have to face death by freezing or death by embarrassment. Which would you prefer?’

‘I say we just brazen it out.’

And so we did. Hand in hand, stark naked, the two of us waded out of the water and up the beach as casual as you like. The blonde and her other half watched us, open-mouthed.

‘The water really is lovely,’ Dom said as he pulled on his boxer shorts. ‘You ought to try it.’

‘Maybe tomorrow,’ the blonde said, her gaze averted.

‘Well, we’re off to bed now,’ I said, and the two of us walked off towards our room, heads held high, as though flashing complete strangers was something we did every day.

Back in our room, we collapsed on the bed, laughing helplessly.

‘Oh my god, did you see the way they looked at us?’

‘We have to face those people at breakfast,’ Dom said. ‘I’m not sure I can bear to leave the room.’

‘It’s just like you said. We just brazen it out. Act completely natural. Never complain, never explain.’

Someone – presumably the handsome Danish hotelier – had left a bottle of champagne and a box of Belgian chocolates in our room, with a note wishing us a happy New Year. We took these goodies and climbed into the enormous stone tub in the bathroom. I lay back in Dominic’s arms, my eyes closed. In moments like these, I could forget about everything. I could be happy.

* * *

I woke, as I often did, in the early hours of the morning. I wriggled out of Dominic’s embrace and checked the time on my phone: it was just before four and I had three missed calls. Alex, inevitably, my mum, unsurprisingly, and Aidan.

That wasn’t expected. Aidan and I hadn’t spoken in months, not since he’d called me in April. He was in London for a couple of weeks, he wondered whether we could meet up. Just to talk. He was finding it a bit of a struggle, he said. I was the only person he felt he could talk to about Julian. I was the only person who would understand. I didn’t tell him that I felt the same way. I didn’t tell him that I couldn’t talk to Alex, I couldn’t talk to Dom. I didn’t tell him that he was the only one I wanted to talk to, because he was the one who knew Julian like I did. I didn’t say that. Instead, I said: ‘I got married. A few weeks ago.’

There was a long silence on the other end of the line. Eventually, he spoke. ‘Congratulations.’

‘It was just a small thing,’ I said, not really sure why I was explaining that. It could have been the most lavish ceremony since Charles and Diana’s nuptials and he wouldn’t have expected to be on the guest list.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Well. That’s … well. Brilliant. Great. Congratulations. All the best, Nic.’

We stayed on the phone for a ridiculously long time, neither of us saying anything, until eventually I hung up.

I checked the time of his call, it was about two hours ago. I slipped out of bed, pulled my dress over my head and gently pushed open the door. Our room had its own little terrace, then a few steps down to a lawn, and from the lawn a few more steps to the beach. I walked down onto the sand. I sat down with my back to a palm and, my heart hammering in my chest, dialled Aidan’s number.

‘Hey, Nic.’ I was expecting him to sound drunk, or at least to be shouting above the noise of a party, but his voice was clear, quiet and sober. ‘Thanks for calling back. Wasn’t sure what you were up to for New Year. Just thought I’d check in.’

‘I’m on honeymoon,’ I said.

‘Shit. Sorry. Hang on a minute – you’re on your honeymoon? First marriage didn’t last long then?’

‘This is my first marriage, you git. We just haven’t had time to get away.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Lamu. Kenya.’

‘Bloody hell, what time is it there? It must be …’

‘About four.’

‘Sorry, Nic. Thought you were in London.’

‘That’s okay. You in New York?’

‘Yeah. It’s just after nine.’

‘Not going out tonight?’

‘No, quiet one for me. Where are you?’

‘Lamu, I told you …’

‘No, I mean, where exactly? At the moment?’

‘On the beach.’

‘Really?’

‘Really. I didn’t want to wake Dom.’

‘You didn’t have to ring straight back.’

‘I know.’

I was walking up the channel towards the beach head, towards the open ocean. I held the phone up above my head.

‘Can you hear the breakers?’

‘Not really. Maybe a little.’

I walked along a little further, holding the phone up again.

‘Now?’

‘Yeah, I can hear them.’

I sat down on the beach looking out across open ocean.

‘I was thinking, today …’

‘About Cape Town?’

‘About Mozambique, actually. The Indian Ocean. That was the first time I swam in it.’

He laughed softly. ‘I remember. You were so excited.’

‘Do you remember Julian trying to climb that date palm?’

‘When he fell and hit his head …’

‘And then freaked out and insisted that we keep him awake for twenty-four hours to “monitor him” in case he had brain damage?’ We both laughed at the memory.

‘That was a good holiday,’ Aidan said.

The sky above was beginning to brighten a little, turning from black to grey.

‘I wish I didn’t think about him so much,’ I said.

‘I wish I didn’t think about you so much,’ Aidan replied.

‘We shouldn’t talk any more.’

‘I know.’

‘It feels like …’

‘A betrayal.’

‘Exactly.’

‘I’m sorry. I just wanted to hear your voice. I miss your voice. I miss …’

‘Goodbye, Aidan.’

‘I love you, Nicole.’

I went back to our room and slipped into bed beside my husband, slipping my arms around him.

‘You’re cold,’ Dom croaked sleepily.

‘I went for a walk,’ I said.

‘You’re always disappearing on me,’ Dom said. ‘Where is it that you go?’

‘Just walking. I was just walking.’

‘Thinking about Julian?’

‘Just walking.’