One Minute to Midnight (38 page)

‘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.

Chapter Twenty-two

New Year’s Eve, 2011

Malvern

Resolutions:

1. If I get the chance, make things right with Dad

2.

3.

4.

5.

AFTER THE FIRST one, I can’t think of anything else to write. At the moment, it doesn’t seem right to write anything else.

The journey goes as smoothly as a transatlantic flight possibly can: as long as I live, I will never say anything bad about British Airways ever again. The staff are sympathetic, they get us seats in Business Class so we can try to get some sleep, and they help us rush through immigration at Heathrow, they ensure that our bags are first onto the carousel so that we can get out of the airport as quickly as possible. We’re in the car a little after nine in the evening. Dom lets me drive while he rings my mum for an update.

‘Okay, okay,’ he says, so I know Dad’s not dead yet. ‘We should be there in … I don’t know … a couple of hours. Maybe less. You know how Nic drives.’ I smile at him, he squeezes my leg. ‘We’ll see you there. Are you okay, Elizabeth? Good. Good.’ He hangs up.

‘We’re going to Malvern,’ he tells me. ‘They haven’t been able to move him yet.’

‘What did she say?’

‘The operation went okay, but he’s still in critical condition.’ He squeezes my leg again. ‘I’m sorry, Nic. Apparently it was a massive coronary, his heart has been badly damaged.’

‘So, he’s going to die?’ I ask, my voice sounding suddenly small.

‘I don’t know, Nic. But you should …’

‘Prepare myself?’ That’s what they say, isn’t it? Prepare yourself. How do you do that, exactly? How is it that you prepare for loss? I’ve not done it before. Last time, I didn’t get the opportunity.’

Keeping one hand on the wheel, I rub my eyes one at a time. I am beyond exhausted, I’ve crossed over into a weird kind of auto-pilot state. I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t be driving, but what else is there to do? Dom is just as knackered. Business class or no, neither of us slept much on the plane. I just need to get there. I open the window a little, allowing the freezing night air into the car, and press down harder on the accelerator.

Talking will help me stay awake, but I don’t want to talk about the things I need to talk about. I don’t want to talk about Dad and I don’t want to talk about us, so instead we talk practicalities. We talk about where we should stay while Dad’s in hospital, about when Dominic needs to go back to work, about whether he’ll leave the car with me and take the train back to London, about whether we should leave the dogs with Matt and Liz for the time being. It’s soothing, real life, but there are only so many practicalities we can discuss when everything’s up in the air like this, and the conversation peters out just past Oxford.

Dom roots around in the glove compartment and under the seat in search of something to listen to. Miraculously, he finds
Let it Bleed
, and we listen to that all the way to Malvern.

We make good time: it’s about ten to eleven when we get to the hospital. I leave Dom to sort out parking and run into the building, where of course I have to wait ten minutes before anyone will tell me anything. The receptionist has a lengthy discussion with someone on the phone: from her end of the conversation I gather the problem is that ordinarily they would prefer that visitors not visit critically ill patients in the middle of the night. But it appears that in this case they are prepared to make an exception. This fact alone tells me how serious things are: they are giving a man one last chance to see his daughter. Eventually, I’m directed to the appropriate waiting room, where I find Charles sitting alone, his head bowed almost to his chest, nodding gently as he falls asleep. I sit next to him and touch him gently on the arm, causing him to jerk awake with a start.

‘Oh, Nic, sweetheart.’ He wraps his arms around me and hugs me tight. ‘Your mum’s in with him now. He’s awake. You go on in and say hello.’

Dad is in a private room just across the hall. The room is in darkness, but there is enough light from the hallway for me to make out Dad’s figure on the bed and my mother’s in a chair on the opposite side of the room. She gets up when she sees me and walks around the bed silently, she takes my hands in hers and gives me a kiss. From the bed, there is a faint coughing sound, Dad is trying to prop himself up a bit further against the pillows.

I let go of Mum’s hands and go to his side. Even in this faint light I can see that his face is grey, there’s a touch of blue around his lips. I bend down to kiss him.

‘Hello, love,’ he says in a faint croak. ‘I’m sorry you cut your holiday short. You shouldn’t have, you know. I’m feeling a lot better.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ I say, sitting down next to him and taking his hand in mine. It’s like ice, and this makes me want to cry. His hands were always warm when I was a child, he was always warm. Mum said he was like a hot water bottle. I really don’t want to cry now, though, it’ll seem to him as though I’m admitting defeat, so I swallow hard and try to smile.

‘Are you really feeling better, Dad? Are you in a lot of pain?’

‘Not too bad, not too bad,’ he says, but I can tell that’s a lie, everything in his demeanour, the way he’s holding himself, rigid, his left arm across his chest, suggests that he’s suffering.

‘I’ll leave you two to have a chat then,’ Mum says. ‘I’ll go and get us a cup of tea.’

After she leaves we lapse into silence. A few minutes pass, then he says: ‘She’s been really kind, your mum. Very kind.’

‘Good, that’s good.’ I have no idea what to say to him now.

‘Did you have a nice time in New York?’ he asks.

‘Yes, it was … very nice.’

‘Good. Did you see Alex?’

‘I did, yes.’

‘That’s good.’ Dad doesn’t know about the Alex and Dom incident, I’ve never told him.

‘And Julian? How’s he doing?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Julian. He’s all right, is he?’

‘You mean Aidan, Dad.’

‘No, Julian. The Symonds boy. The homosexual.’

‘Dad …’

‘He did well for himself, didn’t he? Photography. You’ve both done so well.’

Mum comes in and hands me a cup of tea. Dad says, ‘We were just talking about Julian.’

‘Oh, yes. Such a terrible thing,’ Mum says.

‘What’s that?’ he looks confused, now so does she.

‘Where’s Uncle Chris, Dad?’ I ask, trying to steer the conversation back to safety, or at the very least to the present day. ‘Is he not here with you?’

‘No, he’s not here.’

‘He is, Jack, he just went to the twenty-four-hour shop to get himself a sandwich,’ Mum says.

‘Oh, yes.’

We fall back into silence and after a few minutes Dad falls asleep snoring gently. Outside in the hall I can hear people laughing and chatting, wishing each other a happy new year. I look at my watch; it’s a few minutes after midnight.

‘He’s confused,’ I whisper to Mum. ‘He thinks Julian’s still alive.’

‘It’s not all that surprising, darling. He’s just had a very serious operation. He’s been under general anaesthetic, it’s traumatic. Some people aren’t quite all there when they wake up. You know … well, you know that he’s not out of the woods, don’t you?’

‘I know.’

‘The surgeon spoke to your uncle Chris, he did say that the damage was severe. With your dad’s general health not being all that good …’

‘I know. Has he been all right with you, Mum?’

‘Yes, he’s been fine. Very polite, actually. He apologised for a lot of things. It was rather sad, really. I do wish he’d found someone else to spend his life with.’

‘I should have spent more time with him,’ I say. ‘Made more of an effort.’

‘Oh, Nic, you tried very hard. He was impossible, he made it impossible to be around him. You shouldn’t feel bad.’

But I do, I can’t help it. It’s all just such a waste.

Mum picks up the chair that she was sitting on and brings it around the bed so that she is now sitting at my side.

‘Did you get to do anything fun in New York?’ she asks me. ‘Did you see any of your friends?’

‘I saw everyone,’ I say, smiling at her, but the tears are running down my face now.

‘Everyone?’

‘Karl and Alex and Aidan.’ Mum puts her arm around my shoulders and pulls me to her.

‘And how was that?’

‘It was good. I don’t know. I felt like … I felt different when I was there, when I was with them again.’

‘You felt like your old self again.’ How does she know?