One Minute to Midnight (17 page)

‘That’s not true, Aidan, it has been reported …’

‘You’ve no idea, Nic. You’ve no idea.’ He passed his hand over his eyes, shook his head, as though trying to dislodge the bad memories. ‘There are girls, little girls, ten or eleven, who’ve been gang raped by soldiers, it’s just another weapon, a cost efficient way of destroying the enemy. It makes you want to fucking weep. Because when it’s over, when they’re done, if these women are left alive, they’re ruined. They’re just finished.’

His hands shook as he tried to light his cigarette. I placed my hands on his to steady them. He smiled and took a deep drag.

‘I’ve had enough. The whole thing has been doing my head in. And you know what? I’ve been doing this so fucking long that I’ve started to forget that there are people, plenty of people in fact, who live their lives and do their jobs without being in constant bloody fear of getting their heads blown off. I want a life like that. I can’t explain it to you, I really can’t, how fucking exhausting it is, just always being afraid.’

‘Aidan,’ I said, squeezing him tighter, I had no idea what to say, I’d never seen him like this, vulnerable like this, I’d never felt protective of him before.

‘Plus, I’m getting old.’

I seized the opportunity to lighten the mood.

‘That’s right, you’re in your thirties now. Bloody ancient.’

‘It’s depressing, I can tell you.’

‘I know, I’ll be twenty-three in May. That’s mid-twenties! I’ll no longer be in my early twenties! It’s horrible.’

‘Yeah, but you’re just as beautiful as you were the first time I saw you,’ he said, turning to face me, running his thumb from my cheekbone to my lips.

I pushed him away. ‘I was fourteen the first time you saw me, you pervert.’

‘But I thought you were sixteen.’

‘I still reckon that makes you a pervert.’

We walked on to Southwark Bridge, where we crossed the river. We walked on, past the Globe, past the imposing edifice of the Bankside Power Station, not quite yet the Tate Modern; we found ourselves a bench and sat down, huddled together for warmth, looking out across the river.

‘It’s not the only reason,’ Aidan said to me. ‘Those aren’t the only reasons.’

‘What aren’t the only reasons for what?’

He flicked his cigarette butt over the guard rail, watched the shower of sparks descending into the black.

‘The job, Congo, my being a knackered alkie. They aren’t the only reasons I wanted to move here.’

I could feel my pulse start to race.

‘I was thinking, you know, if you want, that maybe …’

‘Maybe?’

‘I don’t know. We could, you know, make a go of it. You and me.’

It was the most awkward romantic proposition I’d ever had. It was funny, actually: this was Aidan, the one who’d always been so smooth, and here he was coming off like a thirteen-year-old boy. I smiled at him.

‘I don’t know, Aidan, I’m not sure—’

‘I want to be with you, Nic. I think about you all the time. I’ve missed you.’

And there he was, all smooth again. It was strange, this was exactly what I’d wanted to hear, and yet the moment he said it, it sounded like a line. Like a lie. I pulled away from him a little, sat up straight.

‘You wouldn’t have known it, from all the times you called me.’

‘I’m sorry, Nic, you know what I’m like. When I’m working … I just get caught up in stuff.’

‘That’s not an excuse, Aidan.’ I felt pissed off with him all of a sudden, I could see myself, see
us
, through Alex’s eyes and I didn’t like it. ‘I was really messed up after last time. This thing you do, dropping in and out of my life whenever you feel like it – it messes with my head.’

‘I know, and I’m sorry, but it won’t be like that any more, I promise you …’

‘Don’t make promises. And don’t move back here to be with me, because I’m not even sure that’s what I want. I can’t count on you. I can never rely on you. All you ever do is let me down.’

I got to my feet and started walking away.

‘Where are you going?’ he called after me.

‘Blackfriars. I’m going to get the tube home.’

He walked behind me all the way, and followed me down into the bowels of the underground. He sat next to me in the tube carriage, holding my hand, not saying anything. I didn’t have the strength to tell him to let me go. I didn’t want to. We walked back to the flat in silence; the rooms were in darkness, Julian and Alex were still out. It was just after three. We didn’t turn on the lights, we undressed each other as we moved through the flat, from hallway to living room to hallway to bedroom.

* * *

I woke just after seven, slipped out of bed, moving silently through the house, picking up our clothes as I went. Alex and Julian’s bedroom doors were both closed. I hadn’t heard them come in. I put on the kettle and made two cups of coffee, white for me, black and sweet for Aidan.

I went back to the bedroom, nudged Aidan awake with my knee, handed him his coffee and gave him his marching orders.

‘You need to go,’ I told him. ‘I don’t want you here when Alex gets up. She’s just going to give me a hard time.’

‘It’s none of her business, Nic,’ he protested sleepily, slipping his hand under the oversized
Cure
T-shirt I was wearing. One of Julian’s cast-offs.

‘Well, I want you to go anyway. I need to think about things and I can’t think straight when you’re in the room. Never have been able to.’

He grinned at me, lazy, lascivious, infuriating. Irresistible. An hour later, I walked him downstairs to his bike and kissed him goodbye. The street was deserted; no one else yet out of bed on the first day of the new year (not the new millennium). We were alone again.

‘I’ll ring you later,’ he said to me as he swung one long leg over the bike.

‘Don’t,’ I said, enjoying for the first time the feeling that I had some power, some control over the relationship. He was staying, I didn’t need to panic, I could call the shots. He reached out, placed his hand on the back of my neck and gently pulled me towards him. He kissed me, long and deep.

‘I love you, Nic,’ he said. ‘I mean it, I’m in love with you.’

My heart stopped. He smiled, pulled on his helmet and rode off down the road. That feeling of control hadn’t lasted long.

Back upstairs I went into the kitchen to make myself another cup of coffee. I couldn’t get to the kettle, however, because there was a naked man standing in front of it, his back to me.

‘Hi,’ I said.

‘Oh, hello,’ he replied, turning to face me. He was holding a tea towel with a picture of the Queen’s head on it in front of him. A Sex Pistols tea towel. Julian had found it somewhere. ‘I’m Karl,’ he said. A German accent.

‘Nicole,’ I replied.

‘I’ve heard a lot about you.’ He didn’t appear to be in the slightest bit embarrassed about his nudity. A Germanic thing, perhaps.

‘You were at Fabric last night, then?’

‘That’s right. It was a lot of fun.’ He was handsome, in good shape, with a tattoo on his washboard stomach that was partially obscured by the Queen’s face. I couldn’t, on such a cursory inspection, figure out whether he was with Alex or Julian, and didn’t want to offend him by asking. The kettle began to whistle.

‘Would you like some coffee?’ he asked me, turning once more to display his perfect backside.

‘I’m all right, actually.’ I couldn’t quite bring myself to force him to put down that tea towel. ‘I think I’ll just get myself some juice.’

I went back to bed. When I woke again, the sun was streaming in through the window, the sky an icy blue. I pulled on the
Cure
T-shirt and some trackie bottoms and poked my head around the door. I could hear muffled laughter coming from Alex’s room. I crept up to the door, listened for a second. I could hear Alex’s voice, and Julian’s. No one else’s. I pushed the door open; the two of them were lying on the bed, Alex up against the headboard, Julian with his head resting on her tummy.

‘There you are at last!’ Jules said as I stuck my head around the door.

‘I was too scared to come out of my room in case I ran into any more naked men,’ I replied. ‘Which one of you was responsible for him?’ Then, in a lower voice I asked, ‘Shit, he’s not still here is he?’

‘No he is not,’ Julian replied, ‘and oh my god you need to get your gaydar seen to.’

‘Yours then?’

‘Of course. I thought you saw him naked? Straight boys don’t have bodies like that. Straight boys don’t have piercings like that.’

‘I didn’t noticing a piercing,’ I said.

‘Well, you probably didn’t see him quite as close up as I did,’ Julian replied archly.

I blushed. ‘It was probably obscured by Her Royal Highness.’

‘A queen hiding behind the Queen,’ Julian remarked. ‘How apt.’

‘Well, he was very pretty.’

‘Wasn’t he?’

‘And you, miss?’ I said, turning to Alex. ‘How did you fare?’

‘Well, I got three numbers – one from a
professional
rugby player – but came home alone because I have some dignity and self-respect and am not a total slut like the pair of you.’

‘I am not …’ I started to protest, but they both started laughing.

‘Oh, we saw your underwear strewn all over the place last night,’ Julian said. ‘Strumpet.’

‘Where is he anyway?’ Alex asked. ‘Waiting for breakfast in bed?’

‘I kicked him out first thing, actually,’ I replied, giving Alex a triumphant look. ‘Without so much as a bacon sandwich. Told him I needed time to think about things. Told him—’

But Alex was no longer listening. ‘Bacon sandwich!’ she exclaimed, shoving Julian off her and jumping to her feet. ‘Please, please, please tell me we have bacon.’

Chapter Nine

28 December 2011

I LEAVE THE Ashton Guest House just after nine and drive back to Dad’s, picking up coffee and muffins from Starbucks on the way. Dad greets me at the door looking brighter, healthier and a good deal more cheerful than he had the previous evening. My mood lightens immediately. I was right to come; Dom must understand that. Okay, as usual I handled things badly, but he knows I’m lacking in emotional intelligence. I think it’s one of the things that attracted him to me in the first place. It makes me vulnerable.

‘Got something to show you, Nicole,’ Dad says as he ushers me into the kitchen. There, on the table, is a notebook. On its face is printed, in my father’s neat hand, ‘NB, work, 2006-’. I flick open the book. On the first page a date is written: 6 March 2002. Below it my father has stuck a small square of newsprint cut from a
TV Guide:

BBC Choice, 11.30 p.m.:
Twenty-First-Century Slavery:
a harrowing look at the illegal sex traffic from eastern Europe and Africa to the UK, including interviews with trafficked women and the men who pay for their services
.

It’s the listing for the first film I ever had shown on television. I flick over the next page, and the next – I’m astonished. Here, in this book, through press cuttings and reviews, my father has followed my career. I can’t quite believe it, I don’t know what to think. He knew all about me, he knew what I was doing and he was interested enough – proud enough – to make this scrapbook. He was just never brave enough to pick up the phone and tell me that he was proud.

I leaf through the book until I get to the centre spread: there, in pride of place is an article from
Marie Claire
which named me ‘one to watch’ in a piece on movers and shakers in the arts who had not yet turned thirty. Those were the days. There was a picture of me, looking solemn and austere in a black trouser suit, surrounded by prettier, sunnier creatures: actresses, composers, music producers.

That was in the summer of 2007. After that, there were just two more entries. Dad watches me flick through a few blank pages before closing the book.

‘You’ve done ever so well, Nicole,’ he says.

‘Well, I started well, certainly,’ I say with an embarrassed little laugh.

We sit down at the table. Dad wolfs down his blueberry muffin. I pick at mine. Apple Bran. Trying to be healthy.

‘What are you working on at the moment?’ he asks. A question I’ve come to dread.

‘It’s … it’s a thing on relationships.’

‘Right, right …’ He obviously expects me to tell him more, but I don’t want to.

‘It’s not a big deal. It’s a thing for Channel Five. Bit trashy really.’ He looks disappointed. I sigh. ‘I don’t do so much of the serious stuff these days.’

‘Why’s that? You were so good at it. That programme about the people traffickers, the thing you did in Albania – that was really good. That was proper, hard-hitting stuff. I remember talking about it to some of the chaps from work.’

I’m simultaneously touched and annoyed. Touched because, after all this time, all our troubles and our silences, I know that he is proud of me, proud enough to go bragging to his colleagues. Annoyed because he even needs to ask why I stopped doing that kind of work.