One Minute to Midnight

CHAPTER Three



Boxing Day, 2011

I’M SUPPOSED TO be working. And if I’m not working I ought at least to be cleaning the house. I’m doing neither. I’m sitting at my desk in my tiny attic office, composing polite replies to my father’s email, explaining that, while I’m terribly sorry to hear that he had been diagnosed with cancer, I’m not able to come and visit him before his operation. I just don’t have the time.

How extraordinarily callous that sounds. It is extraordinarily callous. It’s also true. I don’t have time. I have three days in which to do a million things before we leave. And why should I change my plans for him anyway? What, to paraphrase Janet Jackson, has he done for me lately? It’s just so bloody typical of him to come to me now he’s vulnerable and feeling low. Where was he four years ago, when my whole life fell apart? And the language of his message! ‘… this is a matter of great regret for me …’ – it sounds like he was resigning from a job, not writing to the daughter he’s barely seen in twenty years.

Then again, I am going to be in Oxford tomorrow to carry out the interview that I ought to be preparing right now. And Ledbury is only about an hour and a half’s drive from Oxford. I could always drop by after the interview. Show some generosity of spirit, a bit of kindness to an old man struck down by illness, even if he is a miserable old bastard who doesn’t deserve it.

I should talk to Dom about it. Dom will know what to do. I wonder, briefly, whether I should contact my mother and let her know. We almost never speak about him; he’s the elephant in all of our rooms. I can’t tell her. Not now, she’s in Costa Rica on holiday, having fun with friends. I’m not going to spoil that, not for him, not after everything he’s put her through.

I pick up my phone and ring Dom’s mobile.

‘Nicole,’ he says when he picks up. ‘This is a ridiculous waste of money.’

‘I’ve got five hundred free minutes,’ I protest. ‘I never use them.’

Dom is downstairs, in his study, a little annex off the living room on the ground floor of the house. Yes, it may sound like I’m being lazy and profligate but it’s actually not that easy getting in and out of my office. Access is via a step ladder which has a tendency to slip and slide about, posing considerable risk to life and limb, not to mention fingers, which are liable to get jammed in the hinge as it moves. Despite its inaccessibility, I love my office. It’s tiny, you can barely move in here, but from the Velux window there is the most amazing view across the common, a view that changes month to month, week to week, a view that never bores me. Also, even though Dom’s not exactly towering in stature, he’s still too tall to stand up in here, so it’s the one place I retreat to and he can’t follow me. And sometimes you just need that.

‘What’s up?’ Dom asks.

I want to tell him about my dad, I want to ask his advice, but for some reason I just can’t. I can’t bring myself to say the words because I know that when I say them out loud I’m going to cry. And I don’t want to cry over him. I’ve done more than enough of that over the years.

‘I think we should make a start on the Christmas decorations,’ I say instead.

‘You phoned me to tell me that?’ Dom asks, incredulous. ‘You do realise that if you’re going to help me take down the decorations you are going to have to leave your study and come all the way downstairs? Or are you just phoning me to issue instructions?’

‘I’ll be down in a sec,’ I say, hanging up.

Some people find the taking down of the Christmas decorations to be a depressing ritual, but I can’t say that I do. If I’m honest, I’ve always preferred New Year’s Eve to Christmas. Christmas is cosy and familial; New Year’s Eve is thrilling, filled with possibility, the scent of pastures new, the opportunity to start afresh, to push the boundaries. And to wipe the slate clean, of course. To put yesterday away, somewhere it can be forgotten.

Dom and I pack lights and decorations into boxes and ferry them upstairs to the wardrobe in the spare room, which was specially cleared for the arrival of Dom’s parents. Its usual contents – books, papers, files full of old credit card and bank statements, notebooks from Dom’s old cases and my old assignments – have been temporarily transferred to our room, where they were hidden under the bed so that his mother doesn’t realise how disorganised we are. Dom stows the decorations on the top shelf, I start bringing the rest of the junk through.

‘We really ought to sort through all this stuff,’ Dom says, ‘I’m sure a lot of it can be thrown away.’

‘Not this week, Dom. We don’t have time. When we get back.’

‘Let’s just do it now. May as well now we’ve got it all out. Won’t take a minute.’

I sigh, plumping my lower lip out. ‘It’ll take forever.’ He gives a little shrug, the way he does when he thinks I’m being difficult. ‘Oh, all right then,’ I say. ‘You get started, I’ll make the tea.’

By the time I get back upstairs, Dom’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, two boxes at his side, their contents strewn around him. He’s flicking through a notebook, shaking his head.

‘What is it?’ I ask, handing him the tea.

‘No bloody idea, your handwriting’s illegible.’

I glance at the notebook over his shoulder. ‘Look at the front, it’ll have a date on it.’

‘November 2004. Madrid? Does that say Madrid?’

‘Yeah, that one can go. Anything up to about 2008 can go.’ I grab a third box and flip open the lid. It’s full of papers. Letters, postcards. I close it again.

‘What’s in that one?’ Dom asks.

‘Just stuff. Nothing I want to throw away.’

Dom is looking at me quizzically but he doesn’t say anything. I pick up the box and am about to place it at the back of the wardrobe when a slim slip of paper which has been caught in the folds of cardboard at the base of the box falls out. It drifts to the floor and Dom picks it up. He looks at it, gives a sad little smile and hands it to me. It’s a photo strip, one of those ones you get from booths, four little pictures in a row. Me, Julian and Alex, a tangle of arms around necks, beaming at the camera, gurning, pulling stupid faces, hysterical with laughter. On the back is written ‘London, 1999’. I put the strip back into the box.

‘I think I’ll put this one in the cupboard in the bedroom,’ I say. I can feel Dom’s eyes searching for mine.

‘I’m going to Oxford tomorrow,’ I tell him in an effort to direct the conversation away from dangerous ground as quickly as possible, ‘I have to talk to Annie Gardner, see if I can get her to do the interview for the Betrayal series.’

Dom sips his tea. ‘Nic,’ he started, tentatively. I know he wants to say something about the pictures, and I don’t want to hear it.

‘We also have to think about the dogs. Shall I take them to Matt’s, or do you have time to do it?’

‘Nicole …’

‘I could do it on Wednesday.’

‘Subject closed then?’ he asks.

‘Do you know what?’ I say, ignoring his question. ‘I actually think I feel like coffee. Do you want some?’

‘I’m fine with tea,’ he says softly, and goes back to sorting through the notebooks from my previous life.

I leave Dom to sort out the mess in the guest bedroom and decide to tackle cleaning the kitchen instead. There’s nothing I hate quite so much as the thought of domestic drudgery, but actually once you get into it it’s weirdly cathartic. And because it’s so mindless, your thoughts can drift elsewhere. So while I’m scouring surfaces I sketch out a mental plan of the days ahead. Tuesday: interview in Oxford. Wednesday: to Selfridges to find dress for party; hair appointment and manicure in the afternoon; take dogs to Matt and Liz. Thursday: New York, New York …

The final traces of muddy paw prints have just been erased from the kitchen floor when Dom appears, a bulging orange recycling sack in each hand.

‘Right, these are all the work notebooks and papers up to 2008,’ he announces. ‘Yours and mine. You sure you’re happy for me to chuck it?’

‘Absolutely.’

He takes the bags into the utility room, the dumping ground for recyclables awaiting collection. Mick and Marianne, spotting an opportunity, burst past him into the kitchen, bits of dried mud flying from the paws as they scamper happily into the warmth of the kitchen. I pretend not to notice.

‘Do you want to go out to dinner tomorrow night?’ Dom calls out to me. ‘I was thinking we could invite Matt and Liz? They could stay the night and then take the dogs back with them on Wednesday. Save us having to make the trip.’

I hesitate. The email. I should tell him about the email. This is the perfect moment to discuss Dad’s email.

‘Ummm … Yeah. I’ll be back by four-ish I expect,’ I say. So that’s that. I won’t have time to get to Oxford and Ledbury and back to London by dinner. Dad will just have to wait. And in the meantime, his email can be added to the list of secrets, just one of many, that I am keeping from my husband.

‘So I’ll book something shall I? Local? How about that Lebanese place in the village?’

‘That’s fine, darling.’

I glower at the flecks of mud on the floor, now being trodden on and mashed up and smeared across the tiles. There’s a reason I hate housework: it’s so bloody futile. And I remember that I haven’t cleaned the oven, which I probably should have. It’s seen a lot of action over the past few days.

‘Nicole?’

‘Mmm?’

‘Is everything all right?’

Oh, bollocks to the oven. ‘Yeah, sorry. I was just thinking of Quentin Crisp.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You know: there’s no need to do any housework, because after the first four years, the dirt doesn’t get any worse.’

‘Leave it then,’ Dom says, giving the room the once over. ‘Looks fine to me.’ There could be rats taking residence in the sink and Dom would say the place looks fine. ‘Come and listen to my speech instead.’

‘What’s it about?’

‘The limitations of the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act.’

‘Sounds fascinating,’ I reply.

‘Well, you can listen to me or you can clean the loo. It’s your choice.’

‘I’ll just get the Harpic …’ I say with a grin, but I’m already following him into the living room to listen to his speech.

And the extraordinary thing? It actually is fascinating. Dom can make the dullest, driest, most tedious subjects interesting. He has a way of explaining complex concepts, of illustrating his points with everyday examples, which brings his subject to life. And his subject – labour law – does need livening up.

‘It’s great,’ I say as he finishes, getting up off the sofa to give him a kiss. ‘Really good.’

‘You don’t think that section in the middle on codes of practice goes on too long?’

‘No, honestly, it’s good. Who’s this one for again?’

‘It’s for the Law Society dinner in January. I’m keynote speaker, remember? I did tell you about this Nic.’

‘Yes, of course. I remember.’

He raises an eyebrow, sceptical. ‘No you don’t.’

‘I do.’ I didn’t.

I’m incredibly proud of Dom. He’s a very successful solicitor, made partner at thirty-two, he’s forever getting asked to give speeches and appear on committees. But sometimes I do space out when he’s talking about his job, and not just because employment law is not the most enthralling of subjects. It’s because I’m jealous. It’s pathetic, I know, but I can’t help myself. Witnessing the steady, hard-won, well-deserved progression of his career from strength to strength only serves to highlight the painful decline of my own. And it’s stupid, I know, because this isn’t a zero-sum game: his doing well doesn’t have anything to do with my doing badly. Still, it hurts.

Take, for example, my latest project, Betrayal. When I was first asked to produce the programme, the production company informed me that it was going to be a fairly sober three-part series ‘examining the causes and consequences of domestic treachery’. Obviously I knew what the basic subject matter would be: divorces, affairs, Machiavellian goings-on in the workplace, that sort of thing. I also thought it might be quite interesting. The production company promised interviews with psychologists and psychiatrists, in-depth sessions with family counsellors, cultural references and historical comparisons – we’d look at the stories of Judas and Iago, Brutus and Delilah. I thought I might learn something. I thought it might help me deal with my own situation. Ha! I never learn. Turns out it’s just another prurient, cruel trawl through the dirty laundry of people whose lives have just not turned out the way they thought they would.

Annie Gardner, the woman I have to visit in Oxford tomorrow, is a case in point. Annie is married to Jim. They have two daughters and, as far as Annie was concerned, they were perfectly happy. That was until Annie’s sister, Suzanne, fell pregnant and announced to Annie that Jim was the father. Suzanne has decided to keep the baby and Jim, big-hearted chap that he is, has agreed to support it. Annie has forgiven them both. And into this domestic hell go I.

Annie is the ideal subject for the programme – and they’re not all that easy to find, despite what a daily diet of Jeremy Kyle and Jerry Springer might suggest – but she’s very nervous about airing her dirty laundry in public. Who wouldn’t be? In any case, she’s having second thoughts about participating and it’s my job to convince her to go ahead. Now all I have to do is prepare a pitch which will not only convince Annie to take part in the programme, but which will also not be a cynical, manipulative lie, the telling of which will keep me awake at night. It is not going to be easy.

I wrestle with the subject all afternoon, eventually giving up around seven. I come downstairs and discover Dom in the kitchen, staring into an open fridge.

‘What do you fancy for dinner?’ he asks. ‘We have turkey, ham, half a dozen mince pies …’

‘Chinese,’ I say. ‘I feel like Chinese.’

We order crispy aromatic duck, black bean stir-fry, butterfly tiger prawns and spring rolls, seaweed and loads of prawn crackers. We eat this feast on the sofa in front of the TV, and afterwards lie there, sated and soporific, Dom’s arms around me, the dogs snoring next to the fire, watching a marathon of Blackadder Goes Forth re-runs on Gold. Perfection. Solid, safe, domestic bliss.

‘Nic?’ Dom says sleepily, squeezing me a little harder. ‘You fancy an early night?’

‘What?’ I ask, feigning shock ‘Twice in one day?’

‘No, I actually mean I want to go to bed. To sleep. I’m knackered.’

‘All right, old man,’ I say with a smile. ‘I’ll put the dogs to bed, you make the Horlicks.’

I wake with a start from a bad dream, the precise details of which I can’t remember. I just know that it was horrible. Dom is sound asleep at my side, I slip my hand into his for comfort. He doesn’t wake. I lie there, motionless, for a minute or two, just listening to his breathing. I feel suddenly and completely awake, my heart beating just a little too quickly.

I check the time on my phone. One-thirty. Five more hours of sleep. If only. I can’t seem to shut my mind down; I can’t stop thinking about New York. I’ve been looking forward to it for months, ever since Karl invited us over to attend his inaugural ‘New York for New Year’s Eve’ party. I haven’t been over there for years, not since 2005, and I love New York. It’s one of my favourite places on earth. And I can’t wait to see Karl again. But New York isn’t just home to Karl; it was also home to Aidan and to Alex. How was it that some of the most important people in my life have ended up there, in glamorous Manhattan, while here I was stuck in boring old southwest London? This wasn’t the way things were supposed to turn out.

I slip my hand from Dom’s, flip my pillow over, lay my cheek on the cool cotton and close my eyes. Sleep. I must sleep. I can’t sleep. Instead, I make a mental list.

* * *

New Year’s Resolutions, 2011:

1. Get in touch with Aidan re job offer



2. Lose half a stone



3. Stop taking the pill



4. Repaint the kitchen



5. Sort out things with Dad



The sublime, the ridiculous and the incredibly vague: a perfect list of resolutions. I ought to write it down. Carefully, I swing my legs over the edge of the bed and creep out of the room. Padding around in the dark again. It was getting to be a habit. I can’t go upstairs to my study – it’s directly above our bedroom and the floor boards up there creak terribly – so I go downstairs instead. I tiptoe into the kitchen (don’t want to wake the dogs up), and in the darkness search for the bottle of Scotch we’d opened on Christmas Day. I discover it next to the toaster, pour myself a large measure and, with the bottle still in hand, pad into Dom’s study and switch on his computer. I log onto the Internet, open my email account and the message from my father. I click ‘reply’.

Thanks for your message Dad. I’m very sorry to hear you’re unwell.

That sounds lame, as though he’d written to me telling me he’d been a bit under the weather. I try again.

Dear Dad, I am terribly sorry to hear your news. Unfortunately, the timing is awful …

The timing is awful? What the hell am I talking about? Am I saying it’s a bad time to tell me he has cancer, or simply that it’s a bad time to get cancer? For god’s sake. Just be direct:

Dad, I’m afraid that I cannot come and see you before your operation.

And that’s just brutal. Nothing I write sounds in any way close to adequate. I sit and stare at the screen, reading and rereading his message, desperately trying to think of something to say to him, something I actually feel. Trouble is, I don’t really know what I feel, other than horrible. I give up, delete what I’d written and close the message. Then I open another email account, the secret Hotmail one that Dom doesn’t know about. I have three new messages. Two are spam, quickly deleted. The third, which arrived that afternoon, comes from [email protected]. Alex. No subject line. I click on her name to open the message.

So, it’s confirmed. Aaron’s playing away. Checked his BlackBerry on Christmas morning while he was in the shower. Message from Jessica. And I quote:

‘Lying in bed, wearing new La Perla (thank you, thank you!) and no one to play with. Can you get away Boxing Day? Happy Xmas my darling Jx’

I wasn’t surprised, of course, but you were right, it does feel like someone’s stuck a knife into one’s chest and is twisting it, slowly, slowly, oh so bloody slowly. Haven’t said anything to him yet. I’ve barely got out of bed since I saw the message. Feigning illness. So now he brings me chicken soup in bed and soothes my (allegedly) fevered brow and all I want to do is punch him in the face.

I guess you must think I got what was coming to me.

God, I miss you Nic.

xA



I take a large gulp of whisky. Some of it drips down off my chin and onto my T-shirt. It’s one of my sleeping shirts, I’ve got a few, all of them ancient relics from another life. This one is my Different Class T-shirt, Julian bought it for me when we went to see Pulp play at the Brixton Academy in the first term of my first year at university. It’s soft, worn thin over my shoulders, holes appearing along the seams. It will disintegrate to rags before I throw it out. I take another swig of my drink, shut down the computer, wipe the tears from my eyes and go back to bed.