Nick
Nick
One month later
‘Listen mate, when I say you’ve fucked up here. I mean, you’ve really fucked up. You know that, right? I’ve got no choice.’
A voice pipes up in his head. Well, you can’t blame them. You’ve had a good run. Took the ball and got as far as you could with it before everyone worked out that you’re shit.
He’s not sure who it belongs to – his PE teacher at school perhaps? He always told it like it was.
But Marty is still talking.
‘And look, you know, I like you. I’ve always liked you, kid. You’re a good guy, and you’re smarter than you realise. But…’ Marty gave a great sigh, as though he felt personally responsible for Nick’s performance. ‘But don’t take this the wrong way. I’m worried about you. You look…’
Nick glances up at Marty.
‘… like shit, to be quite frank.’
Nick blinks, nods. Marty is looking at him with eyebrows raised, waiting for some kind of explanation.
‘I’ve been having trouble sleeping,’ he says, eventually.
‘Mate, that doesn’t explain the busted nose.’
‘It was an accident.’
‘You know, if you’re mixed up in something… bigger than you can deal with, I might suggest you get some help with it. And if it’s something really serious, then, let’s just say I know some people who know some people. But in the meantime, I think perhaps you should take a holiday with your wife. And take a month off with your severance pay and work out what the fuck you actually want to do with your life, because I can tell that working in this industry isn’t it, and I can tell you now that I’ve seen dozens, if not hundreds, of guys like you, and they all end up the same way. And fuck me, it’s a waste of life. It’s a waste of so much potential. There’s more to life than finance, son, there really is.’
Potential. Nick’s not sure he ever had that.
‘I’m sorry, pal,’ Marty says now, softening. ‘I’m really fond of you. I am. But you know. This stuff, it’s not a joke. We’re owned by our investors and data breaches are serious. It’s not something I can make disappear.’
‘I know,’ Nick says, trying to work out why he doesn’t feel anything.
‘I don’t think this world is for you,’ Marty says, and Nick suddenly does feel something: a deep desire for his boss to shut up with his patronising advice. ‘You’re too emotional for it. You’ve got to let things go. I see you and I worry… I’ll be frank with you. I worry you’ll go the same way as Vincent.’
Vincent. The guy who threw himself off the rooftop garden after his wife left him. They pretend not to be, but they’re all still haunted by it. Nick will never forget the mess in the lobby. Nothing like in films, when it’s all contained in one neat little area.
No. There were tiny pieces of Vincent coating every single wall of the building: north, south, east and west.
The firm’s response was to offer free counselling sessions to all those who felt they needed it, but no one had any time to attend them, so it was just a PR exercise really.
‘I’m sorry mate,’ Marty says.
Nick looks at him.
‘And I’m going to have to take your lanyard. And your phone. I can trust you to leave quietly can’t I? I won’t make security walk you out. But don’t go back to your desk. I’ll get Lisa to send your things on.’
Nick nods, taking off the frayed bit of cord from around his neck. He glances down one last time at the photo on the front – taken on his first day, when he couldn’t believe his luck, that he had blagged his way into this job. He looks young. Fresh-faced. Optimistic.
Unrecognisable.
Jesus, is this really it? Is this it for him? Washed up at twenty-nine?
He hands over the lanyard and his work mobile.
Marty sighs.
‘You know Nick, you’re a really smart guy. One of the smartest I know. You just need a rest. And you need to figure out what you really want to do with your life. Go save some orphans or something – that feels more up your street.’
Nick nods. From somewhere, he manages to utter a short thanks, and then he turns to leave Marty’s office for the last time. As he makes his way towards the elevators, he tries to work out what IT might find when they get round to wiping his computer.
Then it comes back to him: the last thing he was looking at.
A website called Abuse Has No Gender.
The humiliation is real. He imagines them sniggering. He’s never liked the IT guys. They’re jealous of the investor team. Jealous of their commission.
His nose is killing him.
How the fuck is he going to tell Maggie?
He gets into the elevator, feeling strangely naked without his lanyard. He looks at the rows of buttons in front of him. The L for lobby. But then, the twenty-four. His last chance to see the top floor.
He presses the button.
He walks through the seating area and out onto the terrace. It’s a beautiful, clear summer day. He looks out at all the buildings, impossibly huge for such a tiny footprint of land. He thinks of all the people, just like him, working inside them.
There’s hardly anyone else up here. It’s not even 10 a.m. Everyone will be in meetings.
He takes a deep breath and goes back inside, to the corner that overlooks the atrium. This is where Vincent jumped from. He takes a step forward, until his toes are in line with the barrier, and looks down. He imagines how Vincent must have felt at this moment, as he stood on this exact spot.
But he doesn’t want to die.
He thought marrying Maggie was the solution. That it would make her happy, make the constant feeling of unease go away. But it hasn’t. Somehow, inexplicably, it’s made everything worse.
He begins to cry. He can’t remember the last time he cried, but the tears gush forward, salty and uncontrollable, spilling out across his sore nose and down the front of his blue Prada shirt. How has his life gone so very wrong, without him even realising?
He knows now that he must leave Maggie. He thinks of last night, the pure venom in her eyes as she smacked him across the face with her clutch bag. There was a twang as the metal logo attached to the front of the bag connected with his nose. And then, searing pain.
She looked at him with such immense and complete hatred that he felt less-than-human. His crime? Eating supper without her. He’d got confused, didn’t realise she’d had to work late, and when she didn’t come home, he thought she’d gone out for dinner with a friend.
Her temper isn’t normal. And now he has a broken nose. He knows it’s broken, because he’s broken it once before when he was at school and he got clouted in the face during rugby. He remembers the pain, the way it felt as though his nose was three times its normal size, and the fact he couldn’t breathe.
But there’s nothing much you can do for a broken nose. Just ice and painkillers. Eventually, it will heal. But what will it leave behind? Not a visible scar, but something worse: a scar on his soul.
He has lived like this for three years now. Walking on eggshells, as they say. Terrified that the slightest thing might set off her rage.
But also feeling so sad for her. So sad for them both that he can’t seem to be what she needs, that sometimes his very existence seems to infuriate her.
He doesn’t want to die.
No, he wants to start over – to go back to that night all those years ago and do things differently. To be different. More grown up.
To have coped with that fucking fire.
The benefit of hindsight, they say. But it’s not a benefit. It’s a curse.
Because he can’t go back. He can only go forward.
He didn’t manage to save Anna that night. But he so wanted to save Maggie. He was determined to make her happy, and yet he’s failed, again.
Not through lack of trying at least.
He steps away from the barrier. The last time he tried to leave Maggie, she threatened to kill herself.
So, he won’t leave her. He’ll just disappear instead.
After all, the alternative is worse: going home and telling her that he’s lost his job, the one thing she actually liked about him.
He sighs, closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. This is something that he has picked up from working here – from his assistant, Lara, in fact, who showed him how to use the power of breath to centre himself. He thought it was a load of old shit until she sent him some scientific articles about it, about how it can affect the parasympathetic part of the nervous system and basically rid your body of stress.
He’s midway through his third deep breath when his phone rings, undoing any of the positive benefits he’s just experienced.
He pulls it out of his pocket as though it’s a grenade that might explode in his hand. Looks down at the name on the screen.
He’s expecting it to say ‘The Wife’, for her to be full of remorse and apologies, but it doesn’t.
Instead it says simply ‘B’.
‘Oh… hey!’ he says, his voice catching. He’s stopped crying, thankfully, but his face is still sore from the tears.
‘Nick?’ She sounds faraway, scared. What time is it in LA? It must be the middle of the night. Why is she calling him?
‘Yes?’
‘I’m sorry to ring you out of the blue like this… I just didn’t know… I didn’t know who else to call.’
Her voice sounds strangled.
‘What’s the matter?’
She takes a sharp inhalation of breath.
‘It’s Vaughan. Vaughan’s had a heart attack.’