One Minute to Midnight

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 wave 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 f*cking, 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.

They opened a third bottle of wine. At some point, Alex started to cry. Dom couldn’t remember exactly why, just that they were sitting on the sofa, and she was weeping, and he got up and fetched her a Kleenex and handed it to her, then he sat down next to her and held her hand, he gave her a kiss on the cheek. She put her arms around him. They held each other. How they got from holding each other to taking each other’s clothes off, I’m not entirely sure, but I can imagine. I frequently do.

I came back from Edinburgh the following weekend. We’d spoken on the phone a couple of times that week, but we hadn’t really talked, we’d just exchanged banalities. How’s work going, are the dogs okay, what’s the hotel like? He wasn’t in when I got home, so I went straight upstairs and got into the shower, then came back down in my robe to make a cup of tea.

Dom had come home while I was in the shower, he was standing in the kitchen, sorting through the mail. The second he saw me, he came across to me and put his arms around me, he held me for ages without saying anything. We went upstairs and went to bed.

* * *

Afterwards, he apologised to me for reading the letters. I said it was okay, I didn’t want to talk about it any more. I’d expected him to be angry about that, I expected him to throw his hands in the air, his standard gesture of annoyance, I expected him to complain about how I never wanted to talk about anything, but he didn’t. He let it go. Later that evening, when we were sitting in the kitchen eating dinner, he told me that Alex had been round the previous weekend. She was upset, he said. I ought to call her. I said that I would.

It wasn’t until November – late November – that he told me what had actually happened. It was a Sunday evening, I’d just come back from spending the day with my mother. We’d had a bit of an argument – and she and I almost never fight – and she’d set me straight on a thing or two.

I’d been talking to her about buying a property abroad somewhere – I had some money left over from the sale of the business and I’d always wanted to have a bolthole somewhere else. I was thinking of Morocco.

‘A riad in a coastal town,’ I told her, ‘like Essaouira. Property prices are still pretty reasonable there.’

‘What does Dom think about that? I thought he was keen on Italy?’

‘He is, but I’d prefer Morocco. I’d be able to get more for my money. I’m thinking of going over there on a house-hunting trip. Do you want to come?’

‘Well … possibly, but shouldn’t you take Dom with you? It will be his house too.’

‘I haven’t really spoken to him about it,’ I told her. ‘I think it might be best presented to him as a fait accompli.’

When I said this it seemed to me to be a perfectly sensible idea. Mum did not agree.

‘Nicole, you can’t do that. You can’t just go off and buy a house and not tell your husband.’

‘Why not? It’s my money. I can do whatever I like with it.’

‘Okay,’ she said, keeping her voice even, ‘you can do that. You can go off and do whatever you like without telling Dom. But I think it would be a mistake, a huge mistake …’

‘Why? Because I have to ask hubby for permission before I do anything? Jesus …’

‘No, Nicole, but we’re not talking about buying a pair of shoes, here, this is a major decision, this is one you should be taking together.’

I pouted. ‘But I know he doesn’t want to buy in Morocco, he’s worried that it might turn out to be a poor investment.’

‘Well, maybe you should listen to him.’ I rolled my eyes at her, suddenly thirteen years old again. ‘I’m serious, Nic, and I have to say, I’m really worried.’

‘About what?’

‘About you. You and Dominic, the way things are going, the way you’ve been treating him.’

‘How have I been treating him?’

‘Badly, not to put too fine a point on it. You ignore him, you’re always angry with him, you’ve withdrawn from him, it’s as though you want to cut him out of your life …’

‘That’s bullshit.’

‘Out of your real life, your emotional life. Honestly, darling, I think the time has come for you to speak to someone because I don’t seem to be able to help you, and you won’t let Dom help you, you barely speak to Alex any more. You’re running the risk of alienating the people who really love you, and I don’t want to see you do that.’

She wasn’t saying anything I hadn’t already heard from Dominic, but somehow coming from my mother it sounded different. It sounded true, not just like a complaint from a pissed-off husband.

‘There’s a counsellor who’s done some work with some of Charles’s patients, trauma victims, people who have lost loved ones in accidents, things like that. He’s a lovely person, I think you’d really like him. I was wondering if you’d let me book you a session?’

When I got home, I told Dom that I was going to see a grief counsellor. To my horror, he actually broke down when I told him, he started to cry. I was overwhelmed, I had no idea how unhappy I’d been making him, how desperate he’d been.

‘It’s okay,’ I kept saying, holding him in my arms, feeling him sob against my chest, ‘it’s okay, Dom, it’s going to be okay.’

‘It’s not okay,’ he said at last, ‘it’s not okay, Nic.’

We were standing in the kitchen, I’d been about to make some tea.

‘It will be okay,’ I said, kissing my forehead to his. ‘We’ll sort things out. I’m sorry I’ve been so hard on you lately, I didn’t realise—’

‘Please don’t apologise to me,’ he said, turning away. ‘Please don’t apologise.’

When he turned back to me, his face ashen, I knew something was up.

‘I need to tell you something,’ he said, his voice barely above a whisper. ‘Let’s go into the living room and sit down,’ he said, but something in his expression told me I’d rather hear this news standing up.

‘What is it, Dom?’

He placed his hands on the kitchen table, leaning down hard on them as though for support. His head was bowed.

‘Something happened,’ he said, ‘when you were in Edinburgh. Something happened. With Alex.’

We didn’t fight then. I was pretty calm, all things considered. I just told him that I wanted him to leave the house and he did, right away, without even packing a bag. I didn’t cry or scream or wail. I took the dogs for a walk, made dinner and went to bed. I couldn’t sleep, so I fetched the box set of Six Feet Under DVDs from the living room and watched the whole of season one, back to back.

I must have fallen asleep around four, waking again when the sun was already high in the sky. I wondered, for a moment or two, where Dom was and why he hadn’t woken me up. Then I remembered. I wanted to stay there in bed, to pull the covers over my head and go back to sleep, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to. I got up and got into the shower, I sat on the tiles and let the water wash over me and cried and cried.

Dom was in the kitchen when I went downstairs, giving Marianne a cuddle. When he saw me he jumped up as though stung, as though caught in the act of doing something illicit. He looked stricken, pale, red-eyed.

‘Hi,’ he said.

‘Hello,’ I replied. I had no idea what I was going to say to him. I hadn’t planned on having this confrontation just yet.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked me.

‘I’ve been better. But then again, I’ve been worse. You?’

‘I’ve never been worse.’

‘Sorry to hear that.’

I went over to the coffee maker and tipped a couple of spoonfuls of Kenya’s finest into the filter. My hands were shaking. He came up behind me, gently placing his hands on my hips. I pushed him away.

‘Don’t touch me, Dominic.’

‘I’m sorry, Nicole, I’m so sorry. I don’t know why it happened, it was just this stupid, drunken thing, we were both feeling so lonely, so cut off from you …’

White-knuckled, I gripped the kitchen counter. If I let go I was going to hit him.

‘You felt lonely?’ I asked. ‘You felt lonely?’

And then the excuses came:

‘I couldn’t reach you …’

‘You were always so angry with me …’

‘I thought I was losing you …’

And then I started to shout.

‘You thought you were losing me, so your solution was to f*ck my best friend?’

I don’t remember all the things I said, I just remember screaming at him to leave, never to come back. He went upstairs and packed some things; he’s been staying with friends or his parents ever since.

After he left, and after I’d returned to some semblance of calm, I phoned Alex. I got her voicemail.

‘I know what you did, Alex. I know what happened. Dom told me. The only reason I’m calling you now is to tell you that I don’t want to hear from you, not now, not ever. This friendship is finished.’

The following day, she turned up on my doorstep, crying hysterically, begging me to talk to her, to let her explain. I slammed the door in her face and left her there, sobbing on the pathway, until eventually I couldn’t stand it any more. I left the house through the back door, got into the car and drove away. When I came back, hours later, she was gone. She’d written to me, sent me a couple of letters by mail and a couple of emails since then, but I hadn’t read them.

I poured myself another mug of champagne, picked up my notebook off the coffee table and looked once again at my list of resolutions. I wasn’t really going to call the cameraman who hit on me on the Wife Swap shoot. I only wrote that down because for some reason I couldn’t quite bring myself to write ‘Call Aidan’. I’d thought about it, of course I’d thought about it. In the days after Dom moved out, when I was at my most angry and most vengeful, I thought about little else. But I never actually picked up the phone. A voice in my head told me, ‘you’ll only be setting yourself up for disappointment, he’s bound to be seeing someone else’, but that wasn’t the real reason I didn’t contact him. The real reason was that if I called Aidan, I’d be admitting it to myself: my marriage is over. And despite everything I’d written down in my notebook, I wasn’t sure I was ready for that.

I ripped the page of resolutions out of the notebook and started on a second list.

1. Call Dominic



2. Go to see the counsellor Mum suggested



3. Try couples’ counselling



4. Write to Alex



5. Lose half a stone



Then I ripped that page out of the notebook too. On the first sheet of paper I wrote ‘heads’, on the second I wrote ‘tails’. Then I flipped a coin.