One Minute to Midnight

CHAPTER Five



27 December 2011

I GET UP in darkness, again. This time there’s no time to walk the dogs. Hop in the shower, get dressed, get my notes together, drink my coffee, out the door. I need to be in Jericho, in Oxford, by nine-fifteen. If I leave at half seven I’ll make it.

At seven forty I dash back upstairs to say goodbye to Dom. He’s just stirring.

‘You off already?’ he croaks sleepily.

I kiss him on the head.

‘You’ll be back for dinner, yeah?’ he asks. I don’t say anything, I just kiss him again. ‘Have a good day, love,’ he says. ‘Good luck with the interview.’ On my way out of the front door I catch sight of myself in the hallway mirror and recoil slightly. My hair, which was cropped quite short in the summer, is now in that awkward neither short nor long phase. I could definitely do with some styling. And I look pale, a little tired. Like someone who’s been inside for too long.

* * *

I get stuck in traffic on the M40. Traffic. The day after Boxing Day? Where the hell is everyone going? Hopefully, I root around in the glove box. And there it is, contraband. A packet of Marlboro Lights, half full. Dom would kill me if he knew.

I light a cigarette and flick on the radio. Some mindless chatter for a minute or two, then The Pogues with Kirsty MacColl, ‘The Fairytale of New York’. This, just as I’m passing the sign for the off ramp to High Wycombe. It feels like a sign, or a horrible cosmic joke. In reality, it isn’t so remarkable – after all, they play this song to death every single Christmas now, now it’s been voted Greatest Christmas Song in the World Ever.

Still, for a moment all I can see is Julian, twirling my reluctant mother around the kitchen, singing at the top of his lungs in a terrible fake Irish accent. That was what, twenty years ago? Me, Mum and Jules, drinking illicit sparkling wine and scoffing mince pies, the year Jules’ parents went to visit his aunt in Australia, the first Christmas we ever spent together. I turn off the radio and put out my cigarette.

The car in front of me moves a few yards, brakes, trundles a little further on, brakes again. I force myself to keep my eyes on the bank of red brake lights ahead, refusing to look over to the right hand side of the road, to my old hometown. The sky above looks ominously grey. Somehow the weather always seems miserable at this point in the road. I light a second cigarette (bad, bad girl) – anything to distract me. But as soon as I get past the turnoff to High Wycombe I start to feel better. Not going back there always feels like a little victory.

I can hear my phone ringing from the depths of my handbag. As luck would have it, the traffic’s just started to move again, so I can’t answer. I’ve already got six points on my licence and I don’t fancy any more. As soon as we grind to a halt, I grab the phone and dial into my voicemail.

‘Hello? Ms Blake? It’s Annie here. Annie Gardner. I’m really sorry to inconvenience you, but I can’t do nine-fifteen. I’ve got a meeting here I can’t get out of. I could meet you for lunch though. Really sorry to cancel at such late notice. Please give me a call when you get this message.’

My heart lifts a little. It’s like hearing you have a snow day when you’re supposed to have a test at school. A temporary reprieve. With the traffic still stationary, I ring Annie back to say that lunch will be fine. Browns at one o’clock.

By the time I actually get into Oxford and find somewhere to park the car, it’s after ten o’clock, so it’s a good thing Annie had that meeting. I have a few hours to kill before lunch, but the good news is that the sky over Oxford is clear; it’s a bright, crisp winter day, the perfect sort for wandering around one of England’s loveliest cities. All the more so out of term time: with no students and not too much traffic, Oxford is a joy.

I park at the shopping centre near the station and wander along George Street into town. Past Balliol, past Trinity, the Sheldonian theatre and the Bodleian Library, I turn right at the King’s Arms and walk through the heart of the university. On every street, around every corner, there are ghosts. Alex and I, reeling along Holywell Street, singing at the tops of our voices, arms linked, kebabs in hand, after a long, boozy afternoon in the Turf Tavern. Alex, stripped of her ball gown, right down to bra and knickers, jumping off Magdalen Bridge – in clear defiance of University rules – on a freezing May morning in our second year. Despite myself, I can’t help but smile. I found myself wandering along, laughing out loud, occasional passing tourists shooting bemused glances in my direction.

I turn back, ending up, inevitably, walking down Parks Road towards our old college. There we were again, Alex and I, sunbathing in the gardens of Rhodes House or drinking wine in the university parks that sweltering summer that Julian came to visit, watching the boys play cricket. I reach the solid, dark oak doors of the college and, butterflies quivering in my belly, step inside.

‘Can I help you?’ A porter emerges from the lodge, a frown fixed upon his face.

‘I just wanted to take a look …’

‘College is closed to visitors,’ he says abruptly, indicating the sign to that effect.

‘I used to go here. This is my old college.’

‘Closed to visitors,’ he repeats. ‘It’s open in term time.’

‘I just wanted …’

‘We’re closed,’ he snaps, virtually pushing me out of the door. The porters always were miserable old bastards. As I walk slowly around the college, back towards St Giles, I have another flashback, of Alex and I getting a bollocking from the head porter for making a racket when we came back to college one night, and of her, hoiking up her skirt, bending over and showing him her arse in reply. I start to giggle again. With everything that’s happened over the past couple of years, sometimes I forget how happy we were. Back then, it was impossible to be miserable when Alex was around.

There’s a coffee cart on the corner of Keble Road and St Giles – a new innovation, that certainly hadn’t been there in my day. I buy myself a large latte and find myself a quiet spot to drink it on a bench in the graveyard of St Giles Church. Protected from the wind by a line of firs, and with the sun on my face, it feels quite warm. I lean back on the bench, close my eyes and try not to think about the day ahead. After a while, I couldn’t really say how long, a shadow looms over me. I open my eyes.

‘Are you all right there?’ It’s the vicar.

‘Sorry,’ I say getting to my feet. ‘I suppose you don’t encourage loitering.’

He laughs. He has a broad, open face and dreadful teeth, yellow and gapped. ‘Not at all. Loiter all you like.’ He gestures for me to sit back down on the bench and takes a seat beside me. ‘Bit warmer today, isn’t it?’

‘Mmm-hmm.’

‘Are you visiting?’

‘Just here for the day.’

‘Have you seen the sights? It’s quite a climb, but I’d recommend you try the top of St Mary’s tower. There’s a marvellous view.’

‘Oh, I’ve been before. I actually studied here. A long, long time ago.’

He smiles at me. ‘It can’t have been that long ago. You have good memories of the place?’

‘Wonderful,’ I say, and I can feel tears pricking my eyes. Ridiculous. I must be pre-menstrual. I grab a tissue from my bag. ‘Sorry,’ I say, embarrassed, ‘for some reason coming back to Oxford always makes me nostalgic – you know, lost youth, missed opportunities, all that.’

‘Lost youth?’ he laughs out loud. ‘I’m sixty-three.’

‘You know what I mean. It’s just … when you come here, when you’re that age – eighteen, nineteen, you know – you’re so convinced that you can do anything, that you will do something amazing, that you’re invincible. It’s ridiculous, obviously, but I just miss the way that felt.’

‘The way you feel before you learn to compromise,’ the vicar says with a wry smile. ‘Before real life gets you.’

‘Exactly. And I miss the friends I made here.’

‘You don’t see them any more?’

‘Some of them. Not all.’

‘Well, you should do something about that. You should never be careless about friendship. You will find, the older you get, that new friendships do not come around quite as often as they once did. You should treasure those you have, protect them fiercely.’ He nods sagely to himself. ‘Plus, these days you have all those social networking sites, don’t you? Spacebook, Myface, all that sort of thing. Makes it much easier to track people down.’

We sit in silence for a moment, and then he gets up to leave.

‘My father has cancer,’ I blurt out all of a sudden, and he sits back down right away.

‘Oh my dear,’ he says, placing his hand on my arm, ‘I’m so very sorry. What’s his prognosis?’

‘I think it’s okay,’ I say. ‘I’m not really sure. We don’t talk. I haven’t seen him for years.’

By the time I get to the restaurant, Annie Gardner is already there. A small, slight woman with a rather severe dark bob, she rises to her feet as I approach and holds out her hand for me to shake.

‘I’m sorry about this morning,’ she says, her voice so soft I can barely hear it, ‘it was unavoidable.’ She looks nervous and uncomfortable; she doesn’t quite meet my eye.

‘Not at all,’ I reply, beaming at her, ‘gave me a chance to wander around a bit. I haven’t been here for ages, so it was great to have the opportunity to see the sights again.’ Already, I’m a little too jovial, a little too eager to make her like me.

We order lunch – a salad for her, fish and chips for me.

‘Would you like a glass of wine?’ I ask her.

‘Oh no, I have to go back to work this afternoon, and I’m useless if I’ve had a drink at lunchtime.’

‘Oh go on,’ I say, cajoling, ‘just one?’ The more relaxed she is, the more likely I am to be able to talk her into this. Reluctantly, she agrees, and I launch into my pitch. I tell her how helpful the programme will be, how it will give her the opportunity to talk to qualified counsellors who can really help her to heal her family.

She shakes her head sadly. ‘I just don’t know,’ she says, ‘I don’t know if it’s the right thing. You don’t understand …’

‘The thing is Annie,’ I jump in, interrupting her, ‘I do understand. I know how you feel.’

She chuckles. She’s very pretty when she smiles. ‘I doubt that.’

‘No, I mean, I haven’t been in exactly your situation. But … my husband was unfaithful to me.’

She looks up at me, quizzically. I can tell she isn’t quite sure whether to believe me or not. This was it, the critical point in my plan: the way to get Annie onside was to show her that she wasn’t alone. I knew what she was going through. I’d been there myself, and I’d survived. I knew how she could come out of it the other side, her marriage and dignity intact.

‘A couple of years ago. Okay, it wasn’t quite your situation, but he had an affair. With a friend of mine. A close friend. My best friend, in fact.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. She looks stricken. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘It was horrible. It was very painful.’

‘You left him?’ she asks.

‘No,’ I take a slug of my wine and set the glass back on the table, ‘but I thought about it. I thought long and hard about it, in fact. We were separated for a while. But I love him very much, and I know he loves me, and I know that he made a bad mistake, a terrible mistake, and that he regrets it enormously. We had counselling, for several months, and we worked through everything. And, eventually, we were able to live together again, to be close again …’

I tail off. She’s looking at me intently. ‘And you forgave him? You really forgave him?’

‘I did.’

‘I’m afraid,’ Annie says, gazing a little mournfully into her wine glass, ‘that every time we argue, every time something goes wrong …’

‘You’ll throw this in his face? His affair, his betrayal?’

‘Exactly. I’m afraid we’ll never get past it. Or that I’ll never get past it, anyway.’

This was the moment. The big sell. ‘That’s why I think you should do the programme, Annie.’

She shakes her head again.

‘No, I mean it. That’s where the counselling will be invaluable. We won’t be asking you sordid, tawdry questions, we’ll be getting you – and your husband, and your sister – to really talk through your emotions, to deal with issues of guilt and recrimination. You can tell them how you feel, how they’ve made you feel. And I hope you’ll find a way, just as my husband and I did, to move past this and get on with your life.’ She’s listening carefully, I can tell she’s weakening, I have her on the ropes. I go for the jugular. ‘I know betrayal, Annie. I know how it feels, and I feel sure that working with us on this programme can help you, and help others in similar situations, too.’

She looks down at the tablecloth and back up at me. There’s hope in her eyes. In that moment I hate myself.

We finish our coffees, I pay the bill and we leave the restaurant.

‘Thanks for meeting me, Annie,’ I say, as we walk out into the watery afternoon sunshine. ‘I really appreciate you taking the time.’

I want to ask her whether she’ll reconsider doing the interview for the programme right there and then, but I feel it’s best not to push. Instead, I shake her hand, give her my warmest, most reassuring smile, and head off along St Giles towards the city centre. I’ve only walked a few yards when she calls after me.

‘Nicole,’ she says, ‘What about your friend?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Your friend? You said that your husband had an affair with your best friend?’

‘Yes, that’s right. Alex.’

‘And did you forgive her, too?’

‘Yes, I did. It took a while. For some reason, her betrayal seemed even worse than his. I mean, you expect men to play around, don’t you? You don’t expect it from your mates.’

‘Or your sister.’

‘No, quite.’

‘But you’re okay now, you and her?’

‘We’re fine,’ I lie. ‘We’re good.’

She smiles at me warmly and, quite unexpectedly, gives me a hug. ‘Thanks for talking to me, Nicole. I’ll email your assistant with some times for an interview tomorrow.’

‘You’ll do it then?’ I ask her, slightly incredulous.

‘I’ll do it.’ As I watch her walking off down Little Clarendon Street, I feel a peculiar mix of emotions. There is the satisfaction of a task completed, of course, that mission-accomplished sense of jubilation, but there’s certainly no pride. Quite the contrary. I feel ashamed of the lies I’ve told.

* * *

I check my watch. It’s just after three: lunch went on longer than expected. What I should do, I know, is to go straight back to the car and drive back to London. Instead, I cross the road and enter the gloom of the Lamb and Flag, scene of many a good night back in my student days. I sit there, nursing a gin and tonic (for old time’s sake), counting the lies I’ve just told a perfectly nice and obviously vulnerable woman.

One. Dominic did not have an affair. He had a one-night stand. Different thing entirely.

Two. We never went to counselling. Dom wanted to, he begged me to after we separated, but I refused. I didn’t want to talk about it.

Three. And this follows from two: as a result, I haven’t really forgiven him. And I haven’t forgiven Alex, either.

I switch on my phone, which was turned off during lunch, and listen to my messages. One from the office, just checking how I’m getting on with Annie Gardner, one from my mum, who sounds like she’s having a great time in Costa Rica, although to be honest the line’s so bad she could be saying almost anything, and one from Dom.

‘Hi love, we’ve got a table booked for eight. Matt and Liz are going to come round a bit earlier for drinks. Ummm … it’s just after two now … give me a call when you get this. Hope all’s well. Love you.’

On my phone, I Google B&Bs in Ledbury. I ring the Ashton Guest House, ‘a family friendly B&B standing on the hill slopes, overlooking the market town of Ledbury’, and book a room before I can give myself the chance to back out. Then I ring Dom. Relief floods over me when the phone goes straight to voicemail. Cringing at my own cowardice, I leave a message.

‘Dom, hi. You’re not going to be very pleased with me. I can’t make it back for dinner tonight. I’ve decided to go and see my dad. I know this is a bit out of the blue, but there is a reason, and I’ll explain it all when I get back. Tomorrow. I’m going to stay in Ledbury. I’ll ring you later, okay? Hope dinner’s fun. Love to Matt and Liz.’

I end the call and turn off my phone straight away. I don’t want to face his wrath just yet, and he’s going to be furious. Not so much that I’ve cancelled dinner or that I’m not coming home right away, but that I’ve been secretive about something. He hates it when I sneak around.