Nick
Nick
They have three days of paradise on their Maldivian island before he messes up. It’s been so good that he almost forgot about the anniversary of the fire, just as Maggie had hoped.
Three days of pure joy. Of Maggie smiling and laughing and being the sweet, upbeat, intelligent woman he first fell for. Three days of making plans, discussing the future, her taking an interest in his career and planning their next holiday. Three days without even a minor disagreement.
It was perfection.
Maggie hasn’t mentioned Beth – not since she burst in on them in that room at the wedding. Once Beth left, Maggie’s temper miraculously dissipated. He stayed seated on the bed, almost quivering with fear, hardly daring to speak. But she straightened up, sniffed and then threw out just one comment.
‘Her eyes are weirdly far apart aren’t they?’
And he nodded yes, feeling guilty because he’d noticed it but thought it was strangely attractive.
And that was that. No more Beth chat. He hadn’t even seen her to say goodbye – the rest of the wedding had passed in a blur.
The next morning, he and Maggie made love for the first time as husband and wife, and headed straight to the airport to catch their flight to the Maldives.
Maggie had been relaxed, smiley. Everything he always wanted her to be. He felt, for the first time in a long time, that he’d achieved something. His ultimate goal: he’d made her happy. It felt like winning the lottery.
But he knows that he’s walking a tightrope, and that something is bound to knock him off eventually.
‘I’m going to investigate the gym,’ he says, putting down the book he isn’t reading and pushing his sunglasses up his nose. He isn’t used to sitting still for this long, and he doesn’t like it. His skin feels as though it’s crawling with ants.
On the sun lounger opposite him, Maggie glances over the top of her magazine.
‘Oh.’
The tone of voice feels like a bit of a warning, but he had two beers with his lunch so he can’t be sure.
‘Is that OK?’
She cocks her head at him, considering it.
‘I guess so,’ she says, eventually. ‘I don’t know why you want to go and sweat in a gym when we’re somewhere as beautiful as this but…’
‘I don’t want to lose my shape,’ he says, feeling stupid. ‘I want to look good for you. We weren’t all blessed with good genes like yours you know.’
It’s slightly pathetic but it’s also true.
She smiles broadly at him – compliments like that mean a lot to her, and he reaches down to kiss her before going back into their water bungalow and gathering up a towel and a water bottle.
The empty gym is freezing, thanks to the air conditioning, but a few minutes running on the treadmill makes him grateful for it. It’s so good to be moving his body again. To feel some sense of his physicality. At work, he’s constantly moving, buzzing with the fast-paced nature of his job. All this lying around reading, really, it’s just not for him.
More than anything, he’s missed the banter with his colleagues. Maggie doesn’t really do banter. She’s thoughtful, intelligent. Loves to debate politics. Loves to win an argument, to prove how much smarter she is than him.
Because she is. She is so much smarter than him.
He just has to remember how lucky he is to have her. This complicated, beautiful creature. Making her happy is his sole goal. He thinks if he manages it, then his life will truly mean something.
After nearly forty minutes of cardio, he walks over to the weights bench and adjusts the heavy metal discs on the barbell, lying down on his back. As he’s about to lift, someone appears in his line of sight.
‘Hey,’ a voice says.
With difficulty, he lifts his head. An ageless man, wearing only shorts and with an incredible tan, is standing in front of him.
‘Hi,’ Nick says.
‘I’m Bryan,’ the man says, holding out a hand. Nick can hear an accent. Australian or New Zealand? He’s never been quite sure of the difference. Something to do with the vowel sounds but God knows which is which.
‘Nick.’
‘On holiday?’
‘Honeymoon.’
‘Nice.’
Nick goes back to his bench while Bryan takes a seat on the rowing machine.
Nick feels a fleeting moment of happiness. The sense that all is right with his world. That for perhaps the first time in his life, he has achieved something rare and special: contentment.
*
Three hours later, they are sitting at the bar together. Nick has enjoyed Bryan’s company more than he expected.
Bryan downs the rest of his pint and shrugs his apologies.
‘Matt will be waiting for me,’ he says. ‘We’ve got fish dinner on the beach tonight. Candlelight, private butler, the works. Have you and your wife done that yet? You should try it, man, it’s awesome.’
Nick nods.
‘I’ll tell Maggie.’
‘Maggie – that’s right. I’d love to meet her. See if you can tempt her into joining us for the sunrise yoga class. Honestly, it’s a blast.’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Nick says, smiling.
‘Good man. Laters.’
Bryan slaps Nick on the back and strolls off along the sugar white beach. Nick looks back at the barman. He has a ponytail and the kind of relaxed expression that can surely only come from living somewhere like this. He’s never had to worry about missing a train, or whether he’s wearing the right outfit for a dinner party.
‘Another?’
‘Uh, no, thanks. I’d better be getting back.’
‘Ah yes. The honeymooners.’
The barman winks.
Nick wanders back along the sand to their water bungalow, listening to the gentle sound of the waves lapping against the shore. He wonders if in another life he could live here, full-time. Maybe he could learn to surf. Or to cook. He’s never been much of a fan of cooking but the seafood here is incredible.
He rounds the corner of the tiny island and spies their water bungalow ahead. Maggie isn’t lying on the deck where he left her, and it takes a second before he realises that of course she isn’t – that must have been a while ago now. He glances at the sky, noticing for the first time that the sun is low, burning a strange kind of amber.
He doesn’t have a watch on. Maggie bought him a Rolex Submariner as a wedding gift, and she’s insisted he keep it in the hotel safe during the day.
‘You don’t want it to get scratched.’
He was tempted to protest – wasn’t the whole point of the Submariner that it was designed to be worn underwater? – but he knew she wouldn’t take kindly to that.
Anyway, the upshot is that he has no idea what time it is as he strolls lightly up the steps to the bungalow, the beer he drank with Bryan sloshing around inside him.
‘Mags?’ he calls, pushing aside the mosquito curtain.
She’s sitting on the bed in a strange position. Knees drawn up to her chin, arms beside her. Rigid.
‘Have you seen the sunset? It’s amazing.’
‘Where have you been?’
It’s like a stone falling to the pit of his stomach. He swallows. That voice. He knows what it means. The dread rushes in, closely followed by his brain going into overdrive. What’s the best way to minimise the damage? How can he get her back to happy, sweet Maggie, the one he made love to this morning?
‘I… I told you, baby, I went to the gym.’
Playing dumb. It’s a stupid tactic. It doesn’t work. Hasn’t he learnt that yet? It doesn’t work.
It might buy him some time but we’re talking minutes. Seconds.
Fuck fuck fuck .
‘That was three and a half hours ago.’
Her voice is still calm. Calm but deadly. It’s almost more terrifying than the full-on rage. At least when they get to that stage, he knows that things are nearly over.
The anticipation is the bit he hates the most.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, panicking now. Apologies help. He needs to keep them coming. ‘I met this guy in the gym – he wouldn’t leave me alone. He was really annoying. Pushy. But I know what you always say, that I need to practise my small talk.’
He sends a silent prayer of apology to Bryan, poor Bryan who did none of these things and was none of these things, for besmirching his good name. Bryan was great – he worked in advertising, he’d been married to his partner Matt for four years, they were out here to celebrate their anniversary. They had a pug called Domino.
Why did he know all this? Why had he been so keen to talk to him? Why had he put himself in this situation?
Bryan was collateral damage.
‘It’s our fucking honeymoon!’ she hisses. ‘And you just left me here.’
‘I know… but baby, baby…’
But it’s too late. He hasn’t managed to contain the beast and he feels himself zone out as she screams at him – the usual obscenities, plentiful uses of the c-word.
He’s grateful for the isolated position of their bungalow.
As she shouts at him he wonders, as he always does, how someone so beautiful can transform into something so ugly with nothing more than their temper.
‘You stupid fucking arsehole! You ALWAYS do this, you ALWAYS ruin everything good that we have!’
‘Maggie,’ he says, trying to contain his own anger, because sometimes, really, sometimes it does infuriate him. That he has to live like this.
And no, of course it’s not her fault that she’s so sensitive but at the same time he just wishes – for once – she would cut him a bit of slack. No, not even that, he wishes that she would just talk to him calmly about how she’s feeling, wishes it didn’t always have to escalate into this – this insanity. ‘I’m sorry, OK? I lost track of time.’
‘Oh, you’re sorry?’ she sneers at him. ‘Well then that’s OK. Stop the press everyone! Nick Parker is SORRY. So that’s it, is it? Carte blanche, slate wiped clean, all good for Nick Parker until he fucks up again and then rustles up his magic word – sorry – to move on with his life with absolutely zero fucking consequences for his behaviour!’
‘I can’t talk to you when you’re like this,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘You’re being ridiculous. And anyway I need a piss.’
He walks past her, feeling a shiver ripple over him as he does so, involuntarily shrinking away in case she lobs something at him. But there’s nothing to hand, nothing for her to grab, and so he escapes into the bathroom and curses whoever designed these romantic fucking honeymoon bungalows and decided that the bathrooms didn’t need locks.
He sits on the closed toilet lid, head in his hands.
He thinks about what Bryan said earlier, as they sat at the bar together. ‘Yeah we’ve been together four years now. I was such a playboy when I was in my 20s, but then I met Matt and I dunno… how would you explain it? He just makes me feel calm. He makes me feel like I’m in the right place. Does that make sense?’
Outside the bathroom he can hear Maggie pacing up and down, waiting for him. It’s like being stalked by a tiger.
He just makes me feel like I’m in the right place.
Has Maggie ever made him feel like that? Not right now, that’s for fucking sure.
He flushes the toilet even though he hasn’t used it, and washes his hands. Hoping that when he opens the door, she’ll have calmed down a little. After all, what has he actually done? He’s gone for a drink with someone. It wasn’t even a woman.
He opens the door, his brain now on high-alert, speedily processing everything that’s around him. He looks over, and Maggie is sitting back down on the bed, her head in her hands now, sobbing.
The sobbing stage. It’s the worst. It feels as though he’s literally being torn apart from the inside.
‘Mags,’ he begins, tentatively. ‘I honestly didn’t think you’d mind. I thought you’d enjoy some peace and quiet.’
‘You don’t think!’ she says, her head snapping back up. Her face is streaked with tears, mascara running down both cheeks and onto her pristine white sundress. ‘That’s the problem with you. You never think! You never think what it’s like for me. You just live your life, carefree Nick, breezing through it as though nothing matters but it does! It does matter, Nick. It matters to me. And you’re killing me! You’re killing me with this!’
She’s choking again now, barely able to breathe, her face red and contorted with the effort of trying to speak through the emotion.
He feels terrible. She’s right. He doesn’t think. She’s right about everything. He is useless and thoughtless and hopeless and careless and… just ‘less’ in every sense of the word.
He’s known it his whole life and he’s tried to hide it, but it can’t be hidden because it comes out in every fucked-up mistake he makes, in every person who loves him that he hurts and lets down…
Beth, his mother, Maggie… Anna.
‘I’m so sorry, it was just a drink…’
‘How many?’ she spits. ‘How many drinks? I don’t believe it was just one. You reek of alcohol! You absolutely reek of it!’
This is new, another of his faults. Drinking too much. Even though when he met her, she was out drinking with her friends at least four nights a week.
But on the plane over here, she mentioned something about them both cutting back. Something to do with it affecting his sperm.
It hits him like a brick.
He has completely missed what she’s been planning.
She wants a baby with him. Of course she does.
Maggie is right about him. He doesn’t think.