One Minute to Midnight

CHAPTER Twenty-one



30 December 2011

KARL CALLS ME a taxi and I rush back to the hotel, as much confused as concerned.

‘I don’t understand,’ I say to Dom when I get back to our room. ‘He wasn’t even due to go into hospital until Tuesday.’

‘It’s not the cancer, Nic,’ Dom says, reaching for my hand. ‘He had a heart attack.’

He’s got the hotel phone tucked between his shoulder and his chin, he’s on the phone to British Airways, on hold, trying to find out how soon we can get on a flight to London.

‘Oh.’ I don’t know how to process this. ‘Is it bad?’ I ask, and then I start laughing. ‘Sorry, that’s ridiculous. It’s a heart attack. Of course it’s bad.’

‘Well, we don’t know how bad. We know that he’s in … Oh, yes, I’m here. But it’s an emergency. Yes. A family emergency. My wife’s father. Yes, very serious.’ He looks over at me and shakes his head as if to say, ‘It isn’t really serious. I’m just saying that so they’ll get us on the flight.’

I open the wardrobe and start pulling out the clothes I unpacked yesterday, flinging them unceremoniously into my open suitcase. Packing to go home is always depressing. Packing to go home three days early because your father is dying, particularly so. I sit down on the bed, waiting for tears to come, but they don’t.

‘I need to call my mum,’ I say to Dom.

‘Tell her … tell her we’ll be at Heathrow at around seven-thirty tomorrow evening …’

‘We’re on the flight?’

‘Standby, but I reckon if we turn up there and cause a scene they’ll find a way to get us on.’ He reaches for my hand again and squeezes it. ‘It’ll be okay. Ring your mum. Tell her we’ll drive straight from the airport, so hopefully we should be with them some time after ten.’

She picks up on the second ring.

‘Oh Nic, I’m so sorry.’

‘Is he gone?’

‘No! No, he’s all right. Well, not all right, but … fortunately your uncle Chris was there with him when it happened and the ambulance got there quickly. They took him to Malvern but I think he’s going to be transferred to Gloucester once they’ve got him stabilised.’

‘Where are you?’ I ask.

‘We’re in the car, we’re on our way there now. Charles is driving.’

‘Have you spoken to him?’

‘No, he was in surgery, so I couldn’t. I spoke to Chris.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

‘What do you mean? Why are you sorry?’

‘I’m sorry I’m not there, you shouldn’t have to deal with this …’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not a problem. I …’ She starts to say something else, but I can’t hear her.

‘You’re breaking up, Mum,’ I say, but the phone has already gone dead.

31 December 2011

Dom puts down the phone. ‘The flight’s at eight, so in theory we need to be there at six, but I suppose we should get there earlier.’ I look at the clock next to the bed. It’s almost midnight.

‘We could just go to the airport now and wait.’

He sits down on the bed next to me.

‘We could, but I’m not sure it would help. Plus, JFK is not the most comfortable place in the world to hang out. Why don’t we just pack, you could try and get a bit of sleep and then we’ll go?’

‘I don’t think I can sleep.’

‘All right, then. We could pack and talk. I think we need to talk.’

We finish packing. Then we sit on the bed drinking extortionately priced drinks from the mini-bar.

‘I should ring Karl,’ I say. ‘To let him know that we won’t be coming to the party.’

‘We’ll do it in the morning.’

‘And Alex. She wanted to see me again before I left.’

‘What about Aidan? Is he expecting to see you too?’ I cover my face with my hands, but Dom crouches down in front of me and takes my hands in his. ‘I’m not trying to start a fight,’ he says. ‘But I need to know. We have to – you have to – make a decision.’

‘Not now, Dom, I can’t do it now,’ I say. ‘I think I should call Karl. He’ll be wondering what’s going on.’

I ring Karl and tell him what’s happened.

‘Jesus, Nicole. I’m so sorry.’

‘I’m sorry we’re going to miss the party.’

‘Forget the stupid party.’

‘I wanted to be there, I really did.’

‘I know.’

‘And I want to come to your wedding. Promise me you won’t forget to invite me to your wedding?’

‘I was rather hoping you would give me away.’

I laugh. ‘Are you the bride?’

‘Of course not,’ he tuts, ‘I’m way more butch than Sean. But I don’t see why only brides should be given away. It’s sexist.’

‘I would love to give you away.’

‘Good. Ring me when you get to London. Let me know how he’s doing.’

‘I will.’

I call Alex who bursts into tears when I tell her that I’m flying back to London in the morning.

‘I’ll come with you,’ she says. ‘I’ll get myself on a flight. I’ll come to the hospital, I can help out.’

‘I don’t need you to, Alex.’

‘But I want to.’

‘I don’t want you to either.’ I look over at Dom, and say, ‘Look, I’m not being mean, Alex, but there are things I need to sort out with Dom. I won’t be able to do that with you there. It’ll complicate things. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ she sniffs.

‘I’ll see you again soon. I promise.’

Dom is rooting around in the mini-bar. He holds up two tiny bottles. ‘Overpriced Scotch or overpriced vodka?’

I take the Scotch, which I drink neat while Dom mixes himself a vodka tonic.

‘I feel awful,’ I tell him.

‘I know,’ he says, sitting down next to me and slipping his fingers through mine. ‘It’ll be okay, Nic.’

‘No, I mean, I feel guilty. I don’t feel upset enough. I should be hysterical, I should be heartbroken … but I don’t think it will break my heart if my dad dies. Isn’t that horrible? I’ll be all right. I’ll still have Mum, I’ll still have you …’

‘You’ll always have me,’ Dom says, putting his arm around my shoulders and pulling me closer. Now the tears come, and they’re not for Dad, they’re for us. Me and Dom.

We sit like this for a long time. Eventually I stop crying, dry my eyes and blow my nose.

‘You know I love you, Dominic.’

‘I know, Nic. You just love Aidan more.’

‘I don’t know, I don’t know if I do …’

‘I think you do. I think you always have. And I think I’ve always known.’

‘Dom …’

‘No, let me talk.’ There are tears in his eyes now, and I can’t bear it, I just can’t bear it, I sit on the floor at his feet, resting my head on his knee as he explains to me why he thinks our marriage is ending.

‘When you said you wanted to marry me, I should have said no. I should have told you, like Alex did, that we needed to wait until you were ready, until you were really ready. The thing is, back then I think I suspected that you never would be ready, that you would never say you wanted to marry me and really mean it, really want to be with me just because you loved me more than anyone else in the world and wanted to spend the rest of your life with me.’

‘I did, Dom, I did want that.’

‘No you didn’t, Nicole. Julian was family. You felt like you had lost part of your family. You were suddenly scared, terrified of being alone, what if something happened to your mum, you’d have no one in the world … you needed to make a new family, just in case something terrible happened, just in case another terrible thing happened. And I knew that. I knew that you were marrying me for the wrong reasons and yet I went ahead with it anyway, because I wanted so badly to make you mine.’

I wrap my arms around his legs and hug them tightly.

‘Back then, I thought that one day you would be ready, you really would be mine, your feelings for me would change, you’d forget about Aidan and you’d love me completely, like I love you.’ His voice cracks a little, he strokes my hair as I start to sob.

‘But you never did. And it’s not your fault, there’s nothing you can do about that. But I think … I think if we keep going the way we have been, if I keep trying to hold onto you, then we’ll just end up hurting each other, even more than we already have.’

‘Please don’t, Dom, don’t tell me it’s over now. I can’t do this now.’

‘I know. I just want you to know that it isn’t your fault.’

He’s right that I married him for the wrong reasons, but I chose to stay with him for the right ones. Two years ago, I flipped a coin to decide whether I should fight for my marriage or just let it go. It came up heads: get divorced, move out, move on. And I knew right away that that wasn’t what I was going to do. I ripped up that list, and I stuck with the other one. I did my best to get over it. I did my best. We both did. And it’s not enough.

We climb into bed and lie there in the dark, wrapped in each other’s arms, not sleeping, not talking, watching the snow fall, listening to the sound of that unsleeping city, waiting for morning, for whatever the day brings.