‘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 You ignore him, you’re always angry with him, you’ve withdrawn from him, it’s as though you want to cut him out of your life …’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 fuck 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.
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.’