Chapter Five
Fox
“And how did that make you feel?” Sally Bridgers looked at me over her notepad.
“Vulnerable.” I’d been seeing Sally for a few weeks now, and had become rather good at using different words to encapsulate my feelings of distress.
I needed help. I knew that. Italy had sparked my downward spiral.
I didn’t feel in control of my life anymore.
The transition from family of three to family of four was joyous, wonderful, debilitating, and exhausting.
Our house was a mess. My mind was a mess.
Some nights I woke up in a cold sweat, the smell of oranges would fill the room, and I’d deep-breathe until my heart rate returned to normal. Sometimes Haze would roll over and hold me tight. I never knew if she was awake or doing it in her sleep.
Sally’s office was painted completely yellow: the walls, the ceiling, the skirting boards.
She’d clearly wanted it to feel like a warm, inviting place, but sometimes it felt like you’d stepped inside the sun.
The minimalist white furniture formed little clouds.
The two chairs we’d sit in facing each other were deep and comfortable.
She sat in front of a wall of her diplomas.
The only item on her white desk was a large plug-in water fountain shaped like a tree.
It was also a diffuser, so as well as the permanent sound of trickling water, it also emitted cinnamon-smelling steam.
It was a strange sensory overload. I was sure it was all part of some psych trick to make you open up more. Or maybe she just had really bad taste.
“Do you have any worries about going abroad again?”
I pitched Sally’s age at somewhere between mine and Haze’s. Sally had blond hair and a hardened face that was difficult to age. My best guess being she was maybe a couple of years younger than me. She wore large tortoiseshell glasses that I had a strong feeling were just for appearance.
“No, not at all. I understand it could’ve happened anywhere. My only worry now would be traveling with two young children instead of one.”
Sally nodded. I didn’t know if she had children.
Haze had often complained about sitting next to a man at a neighborhood dinner who only talked about himself and never asked questions.
It had made me extra vigilant in my social interactions, which meant that only talking about myself with Sally had taken a little adjusting to.
Now that I had got used to it, there was no denying that it was also quite enjoyable.
“Your second child is only a few months old. It can’t be easy handling a toddler and a newborn. How are you coping with that pressure?”
“It’s not been easy. Juggling it all with work.”
“But you’re managing?”
“Oh my god! Oh, god! Bibi! No!” Haze was shouting.
I’d rushed into the kitchen to find Reggie, our sweet baby, sitting in his bouncy chair, seemingly unfazed by the duct tape wrapped round his whole head.
“I just went for a pee! How are we going to get it off? It’s going to rip out his baby hair!”
Bibi was smiling next to him, gripping the roll of tape. Where had she got it from? We only kept duct tape in…our kill kit. I scanned the kitchen, and there was the familiar black case, open on the floor. We could at least be grateful she hadn’t used the rope, bleach, or industrial bin bags.
“There are moments where it feels…too much. If I was feeling better, then maybe things would be easier. It’s why I’m so desperate to go back to normal, to how I was.”
Sally tilted her head. “Nathaniel, I feel like we still haven’t got to the crux of why you’re here.”
I blinked at her. “I’ve told you. Many times. I was the victim of a violent mugging, and it’s been hard for me to move on from it.”
I’d told Sally this fabricated mugging had occurred in Italy. I’d been vague about where. Ivrea was a small town in the northwest. What had happened there had been covered on the news for a couple of days.
Sally leaned forward. “What’s the rush? You know that getting over trauma takes time, but you’re clearly wanting a quick fix. Why?”
It was comforting to know she was a good enough therapist to spot this. She was right: I was in a rush. I couldn’t carry on like this. My mental health could affect our physical health, and that’s why I needed to fix this. Fix me.
I took a deep breath. “I was having a moment with my wife, and I found it difficult to…” I trailed off.
“An intimate moment?” Sally tapped her pen against her notepad.
The two of us, standing over a squirming Clark Dixon.
“Very intimate.”
“And you had trouble performing?”
Gripping the knife in my hand: a hand that wouldn’t move.
I dropped my head. “I couldn’t get it up.”
Sally nodded. “Impotence is a common side effect post-trauma. How did Haze react?”
“She pretended she hadn’t noticed.”
Haze gently taking the knife from my hand and walking toward Dixon.
“I felt bad that I wasn’t there for her. That I let her down. I hate her doing it alone.”
Sally dropped her pen. “There is nothing shameful about masturbation.”
“Mastur—What? Oh. Right. No, I’m all for it. Of course. I just meant I felt bad that I let her down.”
Sally snorted. “Women usually find masturbation more satisfying. More likely to get the job done.” She looked up to see me staring at her.
What on earth? Was that true? Did all women think that?
“Sorry,” she said. “I mean, interesting you feel that way.” She cleared her throat. “Anyway, thank you for telling me. I understand how important this is for you to resolve. I’m sure with all the good work we’re doing here, we’ll soon have you back at it in no time.”
“I just want to be back to what I once was.”
I left Sally’s office feeling a little better. I wasn’t totally sure how much pretending my issues were a mugging and impotence would affect her ability to help me—but it wasn’t like I could horrify her with the truth. There was no little pill that could cure killer-instinct dysfunction.
I caught a glimpse of myself as I passed a shop window.
Forty-five.
Did I look it? Did I look like I was losing it? Like I was past my peak?
I had to fight it. Train harder. Sweat more.
Do what I could to compensate for my advancing years.
Haze kept telling me to get a grip, to just be grateful that my hairline hadn’t receded and that I didn’t wobble when I jogged.
But I had higher standards for myself. I had to be better than okay. I had to be invincible.
I tried to work out every day. Running. Weight training. Boxing. Whatever free time I had was spent working on myself.
It was tough fitting it all in, especially on pitiful amounts of sleep. But every time I thought back to last year, it gave me the kick I needed.
Haze observed this new me with the same tact and understanding my wife was so famous for. “Will you just chill the fuck out and have a drink?”
She was right. But winners didn’t give in to the easy option. I had stopped drinking. I couldn’t afford the extra body fat. Empty calories.
And it wasn’t just my body I was trying to shake up.
It was my mind too. I had started writing poetry.
I was trying to philosophize on life, to make sense of it all.
I was trying to believe that I could be creative too, not just the practical, spreadsheet-filling list-maker that kept our lives ticking over.
I hadn’t shown the poetry to anyone. Especially not Haze.
She was the type to make retching noises whenever there was a sappy part in a movie.
She loved hard, but there was no softness.
No space for grand gestures and over-the-top declarations.
And definitely not for my rhyming couplets debating the meaning of our existence.
I was doing everything I could to keep us safe. I had to protect myself. I had to protect my family. I knew firsthand how easily we could be attacked. Ambushed.
I had a fear now that had never been there before.
My children. My sweet, innocent, small children.
I loved them so much it hurt. Dropping Bibi at the school gates each morning tore at me.
How could I protect her if I wasn’t right by her side?
We were meant to be okay with letting them navigate the world without us—but how?
How could we do that when bad things could happen at any moment?
And now I’d lost my power. I’d had a bad man before me, and I couldn’t finish the job. I’d had my knife in hand, but I hadn’t been able to use it. What use was I to my family if I couldn’t protect them? How long until Haze thought the same? Maybe she already did?
When I thought of the me before last year, I realized I’d been living my life with blinkers on.
Strutting around, feeling powerful, oblivious to just how quickly things could go wrong.
I’d had my eyes forcefully opened—and I hated it.
This bottled-up fear I carried around with me now, weighing me down, affected everything.
If a bad thing could happen to me, it could happen to them.
I wanted to believe that kids were tough.
I kept reminding myself of what Haze had gone through when she was young—and she’d come out the other side the best woman I’d ever known.
Even looking back on my own childhood, I knew I had managed to survive “affluent neglect.” Yes, I had a name for it now.
Sally Bridgers had helped me understand the abuse my brother Julian and I had experienced at the hands of our incredibly wealthy parents.
They had over-provided for every material need, forced us into extensive tutoring, and used us as show ponies—all while being cold, emotionally distant, and devoid of morality.
We weren’t children to them, just assets and heirs.
I knew it obviously wasn’t the same as what Haze had gone through—I could still barely control myself when I thought of all she’d suffered—but, as Sally had pointed out, my trauma was valid too.
Confronting it and reacting to it was part of the healing process.
I did this by making absolutely sure I would never repeat any of my parents’ mistakes.
I made sure my children felt loved. I laughed with them.
I played with them. I was present for them.
Not just because I knew I should be, but because I wanted to be.
They were magnificent and they were mine.
Every beautiful moment we’d ever shared had made me think about how devoid of regular humanity both mine and Haze’s parents had to have been to walk away from us—literally in Haze’s case, emotionally in mine.
Was this experience of abandonment the reason why we could disassociate from murder?
Or had this innate ability to take a bad life with no guilt always been within us?
The nature-or-nurture debate could perhaps be answered by what our children grew up to do.
They might have inherited our killing genes, but we were going to give them the most goddamn boring upbringing we could and see if we could normal the bloodlust out of them.
If they, too, ended up killing with abandon, the only trauma they could blame it on was that of being forced to eat broccoli.
Calming the demons within myself. Hunting the demons out in the world. It was no wonder I’d been feeling so tortured and unsure of myself. Maybe this was my equivalent of a midlife crisis. Maybe because I’d had it all and done it all, it was always going to hit me harder.
I was Nathaniel Foxton Cabot II. A tall, attractive, well-dressed white man with a platinum credit card.
When I walked into a room, women looked at me and men nodded at me.
I’d traveled the world, stayed in the finest hotels, eaten at the very best restaurants.
And I’d killed a large slew of men, all of whom had deserved it.
I’d done everything I’d ever wanted to do. Things had always come easily to me.
Until they hadn’t.
I’d got out alive—but at what cost?
Now I couldn’t appreciate everything I had, as I was scared of what could go wrong next.
I knew I had to fight this insecurity. Fight my fears. I wanted to be the best me I could be. But how could I do that when my body was on a downward incline? Middle age was not kind.
Haze was more than six years younger than me.
She had barely aged a day since the night we’d first met in Paris twelve years before.
She still had that red dress. She still looked incredible in it.
Did she look at me differently now? Could she see that I wasn’t infallible? Did that make her love me less?
Sometimes, my thoughts could be my biggest enemy. And I couldn’t escape from myself. When I was trying to drift off to sleep at night, they shouted the loudest.
I was getting older, slower, weaker.
I’d always thought I had it all figured out: kill bad guys, raise good kids. But recently it was all becoming a little more shaky.
In the months leading up to Italy, we’d upscaled our operation.
Using Jenny’s police resources, we’d aimed higher than we ever had before: tearing apart sex-trafficking rings by eliminating their key supplier; going after an influential bad man who’d used his embassy contacts to escape prosecution for putting several women in the hospital.
For a while, we were really making an impact.
No more chance encounters with drunken would-be rapists.
No more just flirting with being superheroes; we were bona fide gamechangers.
And then everything had fallen apart.
I thought of the postcard from Ivrea that was still pinned to our fridge. It had arrived a year ago, the day after we got back. In case it wasn’t enough of a warning that they had our home address, the scrawled “Stay out of our business” made it clear.
We’d gone from being our most efficient, our most effective, to only fitting in one bad man in a year.
And I couldn’t even perform for that one.
My wife had to do it for me. No wonder I was feeling crushed and overwhelmed.
I was tired all the time. I wasn’t putting in enough time at the office, so my investment fund wasn’t where it should be.
And then there was the nagging guilt that Reggie was not getting the same level of attention Bibi had.
Just because he was the second born didn’t mean he should be a second-class citizen.
Where was his perfectly put together baby book with marked milestones and photo evidence?
But then, when was the last time I’d run through phonics with Bibi?
And Haze, when had we last had a proper date night, time to reconnect, rather than just rowing over whose turn it was to get up for Reggie?
Father of two. Husband. Killer. I wasn’t having it all. I wasn’t killing it. I wasn’t killing anyone.
A full house of failure.