Nick
Nick
Nick flies home ten days later. Vaughan is back on his feet – not literally, but metaphorically. Nick restrains himself from thanking Vaughan for having a heart attack. After all, if he hadn’t had one, then Nick would never have come over to LA and everything would be different.
Of course, he had to tell Maggie that he had gone away for a bit. She’d been sending messages threatening to call the police and report him as missing, but he didn’t tell her where he’d gone.
He thought if he did, she might just jump on a plane herself, and more than anything, he realised, he just really, really didn’t want to see her again.
It’s strange , he thinks, as he sits in the lounge at LAX waiting to board his flight. It’s strange how a change of scenery, a drastic jerking-out of your normal life, can affect your mindset . But he feels as though the scales have fallen from his eyes, and finally he knows what he has to do.
He has to be brave. He has to end it. He can’t fix Maggie, any more than he can fix his mum. And he doesn’t owe Maggie anything.
He takes his phone out of his rucksack, checks for messages. For the first few days after he arrived he kept his phone switched off. And when he did turn it on, the messages loaded like an avalanche: voicemails and texts ranging from abusive to manipulative to desperate.
There were a handful of messages from colleagues who’d heard he’d been fired too.
He ignored them all.
On the plane, he takes out a book – the first novel he’s read in years – and he tries to make a plan. First, he’ll go to the flat, gather up some things, and then, he’ll go back to his mum’s.
And start his life over. Again.
*
He takes the train from Heathrow instead of catching a taxi. Unfortunately, his flight landed in the afternoon, which means he’s going to arrive home about the same time as Maggie.
Unless she’s out tonight.
He prays she’s out tonight.
Home. It’s a joke. It was his home once: his peaceful, empty, sanctuary, but as soon as they got engaged she moved in and started filling it with her things, none of which he would have chosen.
When he emerges at Canary Wharf tube station, he feels a bitter churning in the pit of his stomach. An almost visceral reaction to the place that once held so much wonder. Now, it feels toxic – to him, at least – representing everything that’s wrong with the world.
He thinks about his grandad’s tomatoes.
There are no tomatoes growing in Canary Wharf. The only greenery grows in carefully controlled concrete grids. There’s not even a scruffy hanging basket anywhere.
He walks the familiar route across Cabot Square, heading in the direction of Marsh Wall and his apartment.
In the lobby, the concierge, Bobby, greets him with a huge smile.
‘Mr Nick!’ he says. ‘It’s been a long time, dude. You look well, been on holiday?’
‘Something like that,’ he replies. ‘Nice to see you, Bobby.’
It’s not all bad, this place, he thinks as he takes the elevator. But then again, he knows nothing about Bobby’s personal life. Where he lives, who he lives with, how much he even earns. He puts a smile on for Nick, but that’s because it’s his job to do so.
It all feels like artifice now.
Outside the door to his apartment, he pauses, keys in hand. He puts an ear to the heavy black door, but of course, he can’t hear anything. It’s a fire door, they cut out almost all sound.
Right. Enough procrastinating. Time to move.
He turns the key in the lock, wondering briefly if she’ll have had it changed, but it opens and he pushes down the heavy handle.
Inside, the room is dark. Has he gotten away with it? He exhales.
The flat is a tip. Takeaway boxes litter the island unit, there are two empty wine bottles open beside them, a pair of glasses in the sink. The living room is strewn with bits of Maggie’s clothing.
He doesn’t have time to tidy up. He looks again at the large painting on the wall, remembering when Maggie gave it to him. Feeling grateful that he never felt any real affection for it. For anything in this place.
His fingers run across the cool worktop and he feels the sharp crevice in the corner. He can’t remember now what caused it. What was it she had thrown at him that had been so hard it had shattered the stone?
The sooner he gets out of here the better.
He opens the large storage cupboard in the hall, and pulls out his second suitcase. Then, he pushes open the door to the bedroom.
It takes him a few seconds to process the sight in front of him.
Maggie’s back, naked and arched as she kneels on the bed, a sheet covering her calves and feet. She is writhing, tossing her head from side to side. Oblivious.
And beneath her, someone else. Someone he can barely see.
Wow.
How fucking obvious. How fucking predictable.
‘Don’t mind me,’ he says, feeling a rush of something. ‘I’ve just come to get the rest of my stuff.’
Maggie screams and he feels a stab of satisfaction to have caught her doing this, with – oh, now he can see better – the new graduate in her department.
She always did like them young.
Still, a slightly desperate move on her part.
‘Oh my God, Nick!’ Maggie screams, frantically gathering the sheet up against her naked flesh, although it’s far too late for that. He’s seen it all before anyway. She was always inordinately proud of her body, and took great pleasure in walking around naked.
The boy underneath her is practically trembling with fear.
He turns away from them both, marches to the huge built-in wardrobe and yanks open the door.
‘Nick!’ she squeaks away behind him. ‘Stop! Listen, I didn’t know… I didn’t know you were coming back today… I…’
‘Clearly.’
‘Please! Stop, let’s just…’
He shoves the shirts and suit trousers into his suitcase, trying to block out the thought of her and the smell in the room, which is a revolting mix of massage oil and sweat.
‘Just give us a minute… Fuck off will you?’ She’s shouting at the boy now. Her voice lowers to a hiss.
Nick finishes shoving things into his bag. He has worked so hard, for a decade and yet he has so little to show for it. Just a bunch of expensive suits he’ll hopefully never have to wear again.
He never had any time to spend the money he was earning. But it wasn’t about the money. It felt like a game – a stupid, intoxicating game and at the end of the day all that mattered was that you won.
What a waste of life.
He turns around, reluctantly, and zips up the suitcase.
Maggie has a dressing gown on now. The boy has disappeared – perhaps into the en suite. Never mind, he can live without his old shower gel.
‘Please, Nick,’ she says. ‘You left me! I didn’t know what… You don’t know how hard it’s been for me!’
‘Can we just get the divorce done and dusted as easily as possible? That’s all I want. Truly.’
‘What? What are you talking about?!’
‘Maggie, for God’s sake, I just found you shagging some twenty-one-year-old.’
‘No, Nick, I just… you walked out!’
‘Maggie,’ he says, feeling exhausted in her presence. He’s had ten days without this exhaustion, and he hasn’t missed it. ‘I want a divorce. Don’t worry, I don’t want any of your money. I want my life back.’
‘Where have you been?’ She sniffs. ‘You look tanned.’
‘It’s none of your business.’
‘Why are you being so cruel?’
‘I’m cruel?’ he hisses, feeling his temper slip away from him. ‘ I’m cruel!? You broke my fucking nose and then ten days later I come home to find you’ve been having sex with some boy in our bed, but I’m the one who’s cruel?’
‘I didn’t know if you were coming back!’
‘For fuck’s sake, Maggie.’
‘You’ve been with her, haven’t you? Beth. Oh don’t look so surprised. I know there’s something between you! Despite all your protestations. I heard about her partner having a heart attack. Bit of a coincidence that at the same time my husband disappears for almost two weeks isn’t it? Then comes back with a Californian tan. What larks. How coincidental.’
‘I don’t have to explain myself to you.’
‘No, you don’t. But let me explain myself to you, shall I? Mr Innocent. Do you have any idea what it’s been like for me, all these years? Living with you – loving you with every ounce of my being – but knowing all the time that I’m your second choice? That the person you really loved was her …’ She practically spits the word. ‘That weedy, bug-eyed actress with the screwed-up lips and shitty hair? That socially impotent retard? Do you have any idea how many nights I sat there, when you were out getting coked up with your mates, looking at pictures of her and watching boring interviews with her droning on about her craft and wondering – what is it about this freak that my husband finds so attractive? What does she have that I don’t have? Knowing that the second she clicked her fingers you would go running? Wondering what kind of weird spell she has on you?’
‘You’re embarrassing yourself, Maggie,’ he says, but there’s a lump in his throat.
‘I’m embarrassing myself? Oh no, darling, I think that’s you. I think you’re the one who’s been embarrassing yourself all these years. She doesn’t love you, you know that don’t you? You’re nothing to her, just a fanboy she uses to bolster her insatiable fucking ego when it takes a dip. It’s humiliating. It’s pathetic.’
‘Shut up,’ he says. ‘Shut the fuck up!’
But she won’t. He knows that. She has smelt the blood and now she’s a hound, determined to drag as much of it out of him as possible.
The en suite door opens and the boy appears, fully dressed now and looking as though he’s about to go to a job interview. He looks straight at Nick.
‘I’m really sorry,’ he says, shrugging. ‘She told me you had split up.’
‘We have.’
The boy nods, glancing back at Maggie.
‘I’ll call you,’ he says, a boy trying desperately to behave like a man. In response Maggie glowers at him, and he slinks out of the room, slamming the front door behind him as he leaves the flat.
‘Nick,’ Maggie says, tears filling her eyes. This is what she’s like: this exhausting oscillation between anger and apology. ‘Please! I’m sorry…’
‘Maggie,’ he says. ‘Nothing you say will make any difference to me so save your breath. I just want to get my life back.’
She pulls in her bottom lip, shaking her head as though she can’t – or won’t – believe it.
‘No,’ she says. ‘You can’t do this to me! You’re killing me.’
He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath. Thinks about his grandad’s tomatoes, the way his granny would always take him out a slice of ginger cake, and a cup of tea in his favourite mug. Thinks about the fact he never once heard them raise their voices to one another.
‘It’s over, Maggie,’ he says. ‘Deal with it.’
And just like that, the spell is broken. He has liberated himself. So many times in the past he’s come to this point but she’s managed to reel him back in, but now, as he searches for some sense of guilt or sadness at the end of his marriage, he realises that there’s nothing there. She has burnt all his feelings to the ground.
He knows what usually comes next, and he feels his body tense in anticipation of some grenade or missile being flung in his direction.
But as he walks past her, she sinks onto the bed, and he realises that for the first time in a long time – perhaps for the first time ever – she has actually listened to him.
*
He catches a cab from outside the tube station. He doesn’t care how much it will cost. He has two heavy suitcases, and his severance pay, so sod it. He can afford it.
In the taxi, the adrenaline keeps him awake.
He thinks about what Maggie said – even though he tries, really, really hard not to. About Beth keeping him around as someone to massage her ego when she needs it. About her not loving him.
Fuck Maggie. Fuck Maggie and her poison.
Anyway, he and Beth are better as just friends. He’s spent the last ten years telling himself that; he’s spent the last ten years believing that, and there’s no way Maggie is going to change his mind.