Nicole
Nicole
Nicole’s heart thunders in her chest.
On the far side of the room, Andrew sits on the edge of their bed, staring at her like a forlorn puppy awaiting forgiveness. But Nicole cannot forgive him, can barely tolerate looking at him; he is the person she should trust above all others, and yet he has committed the most egregious betrayal.
‘I’m sorry, Nicole. I don’t know how many more times I can say it.’
‘Stop saying it then.’ The words snap from her lips.
Out of the corner of her eye, she senses Andrew glance tentatively towards her – wanting something from her that she cannot give – before sinking his head into his hands.
All night long they have circled the same conversation: the same apologies, the same entreaties for forgiveness, the same pitiful attempts to excuse what he has done. But there is no excuse. No justification. No feasible defence for the way he has behaved.
It is less than twenty-four hours since Nicole looked at Andrew’s tear-stained cheeks as he sat hunched over the steering wheel outside the cemetery and suspected what he was about to tell her, as though his grief were a Greek chorus, impelling her to understand this abhorrent twist in the narrative. Less than twenty-four hours, and yet Nicole understands that their lives have pivoted onto a different axis, that there are no means by which to restore any semblance of the status quo. She cannot unlearn what she knows. Cannot be unharmed by what he has done. She cannot pretend that his actions have not lacerated the safety and security of their family.
The Garmin on her wrist vibrates and her eyes graze its screen. There is a moment’s disbelief that it is only eight a.m., that the day has barely begun. She had not managed to sleep at all last night, had watched the clock march inexorably from two a.m. to three a.m. and onwards towards dawn. She had lain awake, alone in bed, having exiled Andrew to the spare room, flabbergasted that he imagined for one second she would be willing to sleep under the same duvet as him, breathing the same, intimate air, after what he had told her.
Recalling it now, she does not understand how they managed to endure the rest of yesterday’s funeral, how she and Andrew succeeded in convincing everyone that their marriage had not just imploded. How she managed to speak to Abby – to support her, console her, grieve with her – given all she knew, when the same few words were revolving round and round in her head: I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry for what my family has done to you .
‘How can I make this better? I want to make it better.’ Andrew’s voice slices into the silence.
‘There’s no making this better .’ Derision curdles Nicole’s voice. ‘What do you think we’re going to do? Take a trip to the Maldives, have a second honeymoon, rekindle our romance?’
‘So what are you saying? You’re going to give up on nineteen years of marriage because of one error of judgement?’
‘An error of judgement ? You sleep with a seventeen-year-old girl who just happens to be the daughter of our best friend, and you call it an error of judgement? Jesus, Andrew, it’s not just disgusting, it’s immoral. She’s barely over the age of consent, for god’s sake. This is Isla we’re talking about. You’ve known her since she was a child – since she was a baby. Do you really not understand how deplorable it is, what you’ve done? It’s practically abuse.’
‘Keep your voice down. The boys will hear you.’
The boys . Nicole’s heart stutters at the thought of them, at the thought of how Andrew’s actions have upended their lives in ways he does not even comprehend.
She thinks about Jack, asleep in bed. At fifteen, he is in that strange hinterland between childhood and adulthood, in the throes of adolescence and yet still so young in so many ways: his failed attempts at shaving, his face resembling that of the youngest member of a boy band, the one prepubescent girls flock towards because he poses no sexual threat. She thinks about how much Jack has had to contend with recently even before the events of the past fortnight; about his weekly sessions with a psychologist to manage the diagnosis of ADHD that Jack seems to feel is a label from which he will never escape.
She thinks about Nathaniel, about his crush on Isla, about how completely devastated he will be if he ever finds out that his dad had been sleeping with her. She recalls Sita’s words to her yesterday morning in the cemetery garden: It’s just that Nathaniel seems to have been... slightly frozen out lately .
The thought slips into her mind that perhaps Isla had been excluding Nathaniel because she wanted to keep him at arm’s length, to protect the secrecy of her relationship with Andrew. Perhaps the reason her son has been socially isolated is entirely due to the selfish, immoral, destructive behaviour of her husband.
‘Does Nathaniel know?’
Andrew stares at her, forehead puckered. ‘What?’
‘About you and Isla. Does Nathaniel know?’
Andrew frowns, shakes his head. ‘Of course not. I was really careful.’
Nicole does not know whether to feel relieved or sickened. The thought of Andrew creating an intricate web of deceit – to deceive her, their sons, their best friend – is like stepping into a parallel world where everything is upside down.
She berates herself for her own stupidity. For not knowing, not guessing something was wrong. For not being alive to her husband’s dishonesty. All those small, seemingly insignificant moments when she felt Andrew was being distant, which she discounted as nothing more than the ebb and flow of a long marriage. All those times she has wrapped her arms around him only to find his body stiffen, placated with a platonic pat on the shoulder and an explanation of tiredness. All the times she has spoken and known he is not really listening. She realises there must have been weeks – months – when Andrew was sleeping with both her and Isla at the same time. The idea is nauseating.
She recalls Andrew’s sudden suggestion, not long before Isla died, that perhaps they should consider moving house, moving neighbourhoods. He’d mooted the possibility of relocating north of the river – Islington, perhaps, or Hampstead – his sudden enthusiasm for a change febrile, intense. He’d even contacted some estate agents, showed her the details of a few houses, despite her having explained that they couldn’t possibly move now, at this point in the boys’ education. At the time, she’d thought it was just another symptom of Andrew’s general restlessness: always looking for something new to buy, something else to acquire, something different to try. Only now does she suspect there was another reason altogether: to get them away from Abby and Isla, to limit the possibility of detection, to remove them from the scene of his deplorable betrayals.
So many fleeting moments she chose to view in their singularity, to treat as isolated incidents. Failing to view them collectively, ignoring their cumulative impact, overlooking their possible meaning.
Wilful blindness. Woeful na?vety. Misplaced trust. They are the only explanations she has. And now, her acute sense of foolishness is almost as painful to her as Andrew’s treachery.
‘Nicole, please. Try to understand. It was stupid and irrational, I know. It was just a moment of madness.’
Nicole stares at him, dumbfounded. ‘A moment of madness? A moment of madness that lasted four months . Don’t you dare try to belittle what you’ve done.’
She sees the clench of Andrew’s jaw, perceives the regret that he confessed the length of his relationship with Isla, told her it began last April, while Nicole was no doubt packing his underwear for their family skiing trip to Zermatt, and that it ended seven weeks ago, just five weeks before Isla was killed.
Even now, Nicole has no way of knowing if he is telling the truth. No way of knowing whether it was still ongoing at the time of Isla’s death, or whether it had begun long before he claims.
‘I’m not trying to belittle it. But I think you’ve got an image in your head and it’s not how it was. It wasn’t premeditated. It just... happened.’
Fury seethes in the pit of Nicole’s stomach. ‘It doesn’t just happen that you start sleeping with a girl young enough to be your daughter. It doesn’t just happen that you continue sleeping with her for four months. You chose for it to happen. You had a choice , Andrew. You had a choice about whether to prey on our best friend’s daughter, a child – don’t look at me like that, she was a child – you’ve known since she was born. You had a choice about whether to do it a second time, and a third time, god knows how many times.’ The thought of it – of how many times her husband may have slept with Isla – is momentarily destabilising. ‘This wasn’t an accident, Andrew. You didn’t accidentally have a sexual relationship with Isla. You chose to do it. So don’t you dare try to deny responsibility for it.’
She glares at him, refuses to give way to whatever misplaced self-justification he has afforded himself.
‘So what are you saying? You want me to move out?’
Exasperation claws at Nicole’s throat. ‘Of course you can’t move out. Don’t be stupid.’
He blinks at her, confused, and she cannot believe she is having to spell it out for him. ‘If you move out, people will ask questions. They’ll want to know the reason why. I presume you’re no keener than I am to tell them the truth.’
Fear passes like a shadow across Andrew’s face, and Nicole experiences a moment of satisfaction that – for a few seconds, at least – he seems to understand a small fraction of the damage he has caused.
‘So what do you want to do? What do you want to happen?’
Nicole studies the lamentable face of the man she believed, for the past two decades, to be strong, decisive, purposeful. She is aware of her respect for him rushing away from her like meltwater from a glacier. ‘Honestly? I don’t care what you do. Just move your stuff into the spare room. I don’t want you in here.’
There is a moment’s hesitation before Andrew stands up, turns to her with a self-pitying expression. ‘What will we tell the kids?’
‘What about?’
‘About why I’m sleeping in the spare room.’
For a few seconds, Nicole does not respond, astounded that he should think her responsible for all the decisions – all the lies – they will have to employ to conceal his duplicity. ‘I don’t know. But deception seems to be a forte of yours, so I’m sure you’ll come up with something.’
He gazes at her for a second before shaking his head – as though he, somehow, is the wronged party – and walks past her towards the bedroom door.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I need some air.’
His hand is already opening the door when words begin to tumble from Nicole’s lips. ‘I hope you never have to fully understand the damage you’ve done to our family. To our children. I hope for your sake – for all our sakes – you never have to truly comprehend that.’ She thinks of Jack, of Nathaniel, of all the potential repercussions of Andrew’s actions. But the thoughts are too unwieldy, too overpowering, and she has to shut them down, like a metal grille at a shop window.
Andrew doesn’t respond before heading out of the bedroom, and she listens to the sound of his feet padding down the stairs, to the quiet click of the front door that tells her he is gone, for now at least.
Exhaling the tension gathered in her lungs, she lowers herself onto the sofa beneath the window, allows the minutes to tick by in silence.
The bedroom door opens again, and Jack stands in the doorway in bare feet, boxer shorts and a t-shirt, as if awaiting permission to enter. His face is pale, two red nicks on his cheek, the result of his latest attempt at shaving.
‘Have you just woken up?’ Nicole tries to keep her voice calm.
He nods, rubbing his eyes as he enters the room. Sitting down beside her, he allows her to put her arm around him. It is unusual, this early-morning affection, and she waits for him to speak, gives him the space to say whatever is on his mind.
‘What were you and Dad arguing about?’
She hesitates, represses a knee-jerk reaction to tell him it’s nothing, to brush it under the carpet. ‘We’re both just pretty tense at the moment, what with everything that’s been going on.’ The partial explanation hangs in the air between them, and she has no desire to elaborate.
Jack lifts his head from her shoulder, and she sees it in his expression: the understanding that Nicole has not divulged the whole story, and the tacit agreement that Jack will go along with it, for now, to make all their lives easier.
‘I’m going to have a shower.’
‘Okay. Do you fancy pancakes for breakfast?’
Jack shakes his head. ‘I’m fine, thanks.’
She watches him slope out of the room, wishes she had the words – the courage – to say all that needs to be said. Instead, she must content herself with the hope – the belief – that there will come a time when they are both ready.
Blinking against the dehydration in her eyes, scenes play out in her mind from yesterday’s funeral. Abby, at the wake, seemingly frozen in shock, as though her body were protecting her from the enormity of what had happened. Nathaniel standing alone, on the periphery of every group, as though an invisible barrier prevented him from getting too close. Jack, when they got home, quiet, watchful. Nicole so preoccupied with Andrew’s revelation that she could not fully attend to how the boys might be feeling.
But today is different. Today – and from this day forth – all her energies will be focused on her sons. Whatever happens in the future between her and Andrew, it is only Nathaniel and Jack’s wellbeing she cares about now.