Chapter 4
FOUR
NICK
Nick barely had time to register the spray of sparks from the cable before he was launched backwards across the small kitchen, landing with a thump against the cabinets behind him. He sat there in a daze for a moment, scarcely able to believe what had just happened, noting fuzzily that the putty chisel he’d reached for was now several feet away, having been projected from his hand by the surge of electricity. I’ve just been electrocuted, he thought, shocked in more ways than one. His heart was pounding, unsurprisingly, but felt quite regular, and his hand looked okay, no burns. The tool must have left his hand quickly enough that it hadn’t had the chance to cause any real damage.
He took a deep breath and stood up, shaking himself from top to toe. Everything seemed to be in working order.
He picked up the putty chisel again, seeing that the worn handle had some exposed metal, and looked inside the cupboard. He didn’t remember putting the chisel on that ratty coil of extension cable yesterday. And why would he? On closer inspection, he saw the cable had a large split in the plastic casing, copper wires glinting from inside, the perfect conductor for some sizzling electricity to pass through the chisel and into his unsuspecting body.
In fact, nothing in this cupboard was where he’d left it. He wondered if Libby had been moving things around in here, then felt a pang of guilt. What if she’d touched that chisel, being pregnant and everything? He swallowed dryly and, with care, reached down to unplug the ropey extension cable from its socket. His eyes followed the path of it to see that it had been snaked under the cupboard door and was being used to power the kettle.
Libby wandered in, mug in hand, and asked him if he’d like a brew with a look that said she didn’t like the mess he’d made in here.
‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I was just about to come and find you. You need an electrician in here pronto.’ He briefly considered telling her how he’d almost become a victim of her crumbling building but thought better of it. He didn’t want to add the perception of any more chaos to this job – he had a reputation to uphold. He’d already noticed that the lilies he’d bought for her friend had gone untouched, so he knew all was far from forgiven.
She flicked the switch on the kettle repeatedly. ‘What’s wrong with this?’ she asked, seemingly so focused on her cuppa that she hadn’t listened.
He picked up the ragged cable and showed her the exposed wires. ‘You can’t power the kettle with this.’
She sighed. ‘Okay, I’ll get a new extension.’
‘I really don’t think you should,’ he said. ‘It’s not safe running extensions all over the place. Not with wiring this old. See?’ He bent down into the cupboard and warily nudged the plug socket. It rattled around, barely fixed to the crumbling plaster behind it. ‘I could put you in touch with a friend of mine. He could put you in a new socket near the counter top instead.’
Libby wrinkled her nose. ‘Maybe. I’ll let the dust settle after all this work, then we’ll see.’
Nick went to speak again, but she’d clearly grown fed up with waiting for her hot drink and was making for the stairs instead. He thought better of chasing after her, deciding to just get on with the last bit of his job and be done with it.
After retrieving his tools, he set about replacing the little window at the back of the shop, the last of the windows in this place that had a rotten frame. He checked in from time to time to see if his heartbeat felt normal, and it did, although he did keep getting surges of adrenaline at the memory of his brush with doom. He wondered if he should get himself checked out at the doctors or whether he was overreacting.
After he’d put the finishing touches to the new window, he stood back and admired a job well done. He liked the feeling of having completed something, the satisfaction of exchanging old for new, not to mention the way his job was absorbing enough to keep him from overthinking other areas of his life. He had, in the past, been prone to long bouts of introspection, musing over and over about how he could have done things differently. Maybe he could have avoided losing Callie? He was over her now, but it didn’t stop him thinking about what might have been or how they could have handled things better after the split. For Ruby especially. He really hoped Ruby had been too young to remember how little he’d been around at one point, even if it hadn’t been by choice. He was trying so hard to make up for lost time now, but maybe it was too late?
He felt a throb in his chest and panicked momentarily, pausing in his efforts to pack up the tools. He pressed his hand to his heart. Had he done his cardiovascular system a number by getting himself electrocuted, or was it just that familiar ache that came from time to time? He imagined it was the latter.
He gathered up the last of his tools and took them outside to his van, then came back in to leave his invoice. There was nobody at the desk, and that hipster-looking lad was deep in conversation with a customer about Camus. He was showing no sign of stopping, and Libby was nowhere to be found, so he left the invoice on the desk, with a short note, urging Libby to reconsider about the electrician and to call him if she changed her mind. After a moment’s thought, he went back out to the van, retrieved a relatively new extension cable and left it next to the note. Even if she didn’t get the wiring sorted right away, at least she was safer running the kettle off this.
He was just about to leave again when he saw a small display of medical books by the door. There was a selection of biographies of celebrated physicians and some self-help books, and in the centre was a large family medical guide, the type to feed the paranoia of hypochondriacs and overcautious parents.
Looking around, almost sheepishly, he lifted the cover and thumbed through with exaggerated casualness. He alighted upon a section about accidents in the home, scanned it quickly and saw that even minor electrical shocks warranted medical advice. He let the book close with a thump.
He would pop into the walk-in centre on his way home.
Nick arrived home mid-afternoon, pleased to be done early for the day and to be finished with the Cravenwick Pages job altogether. Working at the bookshop since ‘the incident’ yesterday had started to feel like lingering at the scene of a crime. He felt Libby would be very glad to see the back of him, not just for his clumsiness but also for his nagging about the electrics.
He’d been given the all-clear by the doctor at the walk-in centre, who had strapped him to an ECG machine and declared his heartbeat to be ‘unremarkable’, which felt rather like an insult. If his heart could withstand 230 volts coursing through it, then surely it warranted a more flattering description.
He’d been glad to be out of there quickly anyway. The waiting room had been full of odd bods, ranging from a man yelling that the lizards were coming for them all to a woman wearing a business suit accessorized with a Sea World baseball cap and large sunglasses, who was burying her face in an upside-down copy of Homes and Gardens . It wasn’t a place he wanted to hang around.
The sound of Classic FM drifted from Travis’s third-bedroom office. The ‘Jupiter’ movement from Holst’s The Planets , if Nick had it right. Travis liked to work to the sound of classical music, since he’d heard that it increased a person’s IQ a few points while listening, although Nick wasn’t sure what the intellectual challenge of packaging T-shirts and accessories into envelopes and boxes was.
He took off his dusty boots by the door, as well as his grubbier outer clothes, as was the rule at Travis’s. The flat was pristine. Clean lines, minimalist and shades of pale cream and grey, which meant that Nick’s manky work clothes were verboten beyond the doormat. The doormat got hoovered approximately twice a day anyway.
He padded through to the bathroom, threw the rest of his clothes into the laundry basket, and had a shower before getting changed into joggers and poking his head into Travis’s office. Where the rest of the flat was like an Instagram interiors account, the office was an explosion of colour, cardboard and chaos. As Nick entered, Travis was folding a pair of leather-look trousers to the tune of Eine kleine Nachtmusik .
‘Alright?’ he asked, leaning on the door frame.
Travis looked up. ‘Afternoon, brother. Good day at work?’ He said this with his lips partially pursed around a bit of parcel tape, which he then used to tamp down the packaging around the trousers.
‘Not bad. Just a minor altercation with the mains electric, but other than that – okay.’
‘That place sounds like a death trap. Although a little spark of electric through the system might be just what you need. Perk you up a bit. A taser to the libido.’
‘Travis, you’re so obsessed with my… libido .’ The word made him want to gag. ‘I’m starting to think it’s you with the problem.’
‘I’ve no problem with my libido, Nicky.’
‘Quite the opposite, I’d say. Who was that I heard sneaking out this morning? Because whoever it was smelled strongly of aftershave and left what I hope were foundation marks on your towels.’
‘Ugh, I know. It’s come out in the wash though. And it’s none of your business who it was.’ He avoided Nick’s eye, picked up a sheer top with sequins in the nipple area and started fussing with it.
Nick grinned. ‘You don’t remember his name, do you?’
‘I do. I’m just not going to tell you. Besides, you don’t know him.’
‘Oh, I can’t imagine I do. But colour me curious. What was he called?’
Travis continued fiddling with the top and surreptitiously slid his hand to his phone.
‘Without checking the app!’ said Nick, trying not to laugh.
Travis rolled his eyes, picked up the phone and huffed. ‘Alright, I can’t remember. But I won’t be seeing him again anyway. My bathroom linens deserve better.’ He scrolled on his phone. ‘Oh, the mother ship has been in touch.’
‘Oh, right. How’s she doing?’
Travis scrolled through a short message, his face impassive. ‘Exhausted, too old for this grafting, yada yada… Sends her love.’
Nick and Travis were used to their mother’s long-distance parenting style. She was a singer and had worked the clubs when they were tiny, then as soon as she’d deemed them old enough (aged sixteen and ten), she’d largely disappeared for a life on the cruise ships, leaving them to live with their nanna. Tracey fancied herself as the Geordie Jane McDonald, and to be fair to her, although ITV had never come calling, she had carved out a long career doing what she loved. Nick had taken her absence pretty well, being older, and their nanna had been very much there for them, but Travis still seemed to feel the sting of rejection.
Dads hadn’t featured heavily in their lives either. Travis’s dad flitted in and out when he wasn’t taking various girlfriends on holidays – whenever he’d had a lucky tip at the horse racing that made him temporarily rich – and had treated Travis a bit like a maiden aunt in a care home. He did his duty with visits, had been generous with presents, but wouldn’t have entertained Travis coming to stay at his own place.
Nick had never known his own dad, and he was rarely spoken of. When he was mentioned, it was vague, with no particular identity offered up and the strong implication that he wouldn’t want to know. The thing was, he kind of did want to know, but when he’d pressed his mam, she’d dodged the questions like she dodged dry land. His nanna wasn’t much better – she was a proud and loyal woman, and if Tracey had asked her to keep things to herself, she certainly seemed to be sticking to her end of the bargain. She did tell Nick that his dad and his mother hadn’t had a long relationship and that she herself had never met him, and Nick had read into that as any person would.
‘Well, at least she’s been in touch. Anyway, I’m going to head out to the coast for a walk. Do you want to come?’
Travis wrinkled his nose. ‘Nah. I’m snowed under here.’
Nick regarded the small pile of items left to wrap next to the large pile already completed and smiled. ‘Righto.’
He went to get his keys and wondered how long it would be before his brother started checking the messages on his dating app.
The Northumberland coast was only a short drive from Hangforth and was one of Nick’s favourite places to blow off the cobwebs after busy days at work – or if something was on his mind. He parked the van and got out, looking at the sea. The tide was out and the water was a moody blue-grey, the summer weather being typically British and overcast. But it was still a view that pepped him up.
He headed down the coastal path, bouncing down the steps and breathing in the salty air, which was warm despite the clouds. After being cooped up in the dusty bookshop, this was just what he needed.
His pace slowed as he hit the sand, and he aimed for the middle of the beach where the sand was not quite wet and not quite dry, firmer underfoot and easier to walk on. A brown spaniel raced past, running after a stick, then careered into the sea, foam splashing everywhere as it zoned in on its prize. It came running back out of the water, stopping for a quick shake, but instead of running back to its owner, it raced up to Nick and stood panting in front of him, the stick still in its mouth.
‘Hiya, boy,’ murmured Nick, rubbing its head and deciding he was a boy despite lacking any evidence either way. ‘Clever lad, fetching your stick.’
‘Oy, buggerlugs!’ yelled the owner, a late-middle-aged man wearing a flat cap, with shaggy brown hair hanging beneath it. ‘Fetch it ower here!’
The dog’s ears pricked, and he looked over at his owner.
‘Sorry about him,’ said the owner good-naturedly, wandering over. ‘He’s a nuisance, isn’t he?’
‘Not at all,’ said Nick. ‘He’s a lovely dog.’
‘He’s a little sod. Throw him a stick, he wants a ball. Fetching back to anyone else but me. He’s not normal.’ The man rubbed the dog’s head and produced a tennis ball from his pocket. ‘You’ll be wanting this instead, will you?’
The dog immediately dropped the stick and bounced up and down until the ball was thrown, and Nick watched him tear off along the sand. The man said goodbye and wandered after him.
Nick walked along the beach, his mind drifting back to his absent father. No matter how much he’d been steered away from the subject of his paternal lineage or been led to believe that having no dad was slightly better than having a fair-weather one like Travis, he thought about his dad often. Who was he? And why had he never tried to meet his own son? Nick sighed, thinking how the lack of a father figure might have left him lacking the tools to sort out the situation with Callie and Ruby. A father adrift from his own kid, trying to swim back to her even though the waves kept pushing him back.
Then he heard laughter from nearby, out of sight. Laughter that sounded familiar. He stood up, craning his neck to see above him, where the promenade ran along the top of the beach. His heart skipped a beat.
Up on the promenade were Callie and Ruby. And him . They walked past, just above Nick’s head, towards the car park in the distance. Ruby was between them, holding a hand either side and being swung up in the air at intervals. She was laughing and shrieking happily, her black pigtails bouncing, and the two of them were looking down at her, the picture of a perfect family. He had a cap on backwards – the twat, Nick thought with a twinge of irritation.
Nick stood there, frozen in place, watching them walk away, then decided that despite his feelings towards Justin, Callie’s new boyfriend, he couldn’t miss an opportunity to see Ruby.
Nick walked quickly up the ramp. By the time he reached the top, they were some distance away, so he picked up the pace, his eyes focused on his little girl.
The three of them stopped, looking in the window of the beach cafe, Ruby pointing at the sign advertising ice creams. But Callie shook her head and they walked on, Ruby’s feet scuffing the sandy path, her head lowered. Nick broke into a jog, determined to catch up, making a mental note to get Ruby her ice cream when he next had her. But by the time he made it to the car park, Justin’s car was pulling away onto the coast road.
Nick stood still, his happiness at seeing Ruby fading away. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen Justin walk off into the distance with his family, and he couldn’t face watching it again now. He turned and walked back the way he’d come.