Chapter 23
What I want for my drive back to Hamilton is some pounding indie music on maximum volume that reminds me of being twenty again.
The soundtrack to the last time I remember being free like this, believing anything was possible.
Although ‘anything’ at that time was mainly dry-humping men with long fringes in darkened nightclub corners, hoping they might be the person to save me, and talking about training to be something impressive for a career but never finishing any college course I ever started.
Without my phone I can’t connect to the stereo, and Brian has the digital radio tuned only to stations that talk about football and play no tunes.
Instead of being euphoric, the drive has the energy of a bad date.
All this anticipation, all this excitement, falling flat as some guy drones on about Celtic’s chances at the weekend not being as good as folk make out because their star striker has strained a tendon.
There’s a nice stretch of motorway with hardly any other cars on it.
I put my foot down to work through my adrenaline with pure speed but once I hit eighty mph I bottle it.
I cannae be getting done for speeding in a car I don’t own with a bloodied hammer about my person.
I drop back to two miles below the speed limit until I reach the car’s usual parking spot in an alley behind the office.
Then I press the ignition button on the car and listen to it shut down, the thrum of the engine hums before it stops completely.
I am not ready to switch off, I’m still jangly from all that’s passed.
Closing my eyes, I put my head against the headrest and think what I can do, where I can go to get some release.
What I’d like to do is have sex, but there’s no one I can call and ask round for a shag and it not be humiliating if they say no.
Hamilton isn’t the sort of place you can hang about a bar midweek and find it filled with men you’d want to have inside you.
Anyway, I’m fantastically clear-headed. I can’t dull that by feigning interest in a random man, no thank you.
But going home and watching Malcolm would be the same as every other night.
I need to utilise this sensation, I can’t waste it. Then the answer comes to me.
The buzzer for my flat goes, and I feel so good about myself I’m not compelled to check my reflection in the mirror to make sure I look presentable for my visitor.
After I got in I had a shower, put my clothes in the washing machine, got changed into a pair of dark-wash jeans I’ve had forever – the waistband of them eased out to fit my waist perfectly – and put on a plain grey jumper.
My cheek stings but isn’t bruising, not yet anyway.
I haven’t even dried my hair. Sometimes it frizzes like hell if I leave it to air-dry but today it’s being kind to me.
I listen to his footsteps come up the stairs and only actually open the door when he’s directly outside it and has been for a second or two.
Make him wait for me, just a bit. When I open it, I beckon Nicol in and lock the door behind him.
Put the key in my back pocket. This only ends when I want it to.
‘It’s weird to be back.’ Nicol’s eyes wander the hallway as if it’s been years and not seven weeks. ‘It’s how I remember it but different. You know?’
‘Sort of.’ I am going through a similar thing seeing him up close, waiting for my body to react to him being here, for a pang of something to hit me, but there’s nothing.
Which is weird. I expected once we were reunited in the scene of Nicol’s crimes against me I’d have to quell my desire to injure him.
Maybe what passed with Pete mere hours ago has satisfied those urges.
We walk into the living room. I take the couch and give him the little armchair.
‘Aren’t you going to offer me a drink?’ he asks.
I grab the glass of red wine I poured myself when I got in.
It had been gathering dust at the back of the cupboard.
Red was always his drink, not mine. Even with the strength taking care of Pete has given me, I needed a hit of alcohol before I felt brave enough to text Nicol.
‘No, I’m not.’ Having a prop to hold is nice but I won’t drink much of it in front of Nicol.
One, because I hope he won’t be here very long, and two, because of the way it turns my teeth dark purple.
It’s not the mental image I want to leave him with.
From nowhere, a memory of kissing him and tasting this same wine on his tongue pops into my brain.
It’s curious the way my own body wants to unsettle me in this moment.
To distract myself, I go to shut the curtains, not wanting even the trees surrounding the railway line to know I’ve invited Nicol back into my home.
Outside on the pavement Amara’s pacing backwards and forwards, smoking a cigarette.
When I still knew her, she’d given up for good.
Swishing the curtains shut, I wonder if whatever has driven her back to them is worth the hacking cough they’d started to give her.
‘You rang?’ Nicol is bored of me already.
Where before this would make me speed along to the point I wanted to make, this evening it doesn’t have the desired effect. ‘Well, you got your girlfriend – sorry, my best friend – to follow me for this meeting, did you not?’
‘Not specifically this meeting, but yes, I did want to talk to you. You might not believe me but I’ve missed talking to you.’
‘Why is she outside? Is she worried how you’ll behave when we’re alone? How you find them is how you lose them, that’s the saying, isn’t it? I’m sure it must be hard for both of you to trust one another after all the deceit.’ Forget what I said about staining my teeth, I take a sip of red wine.
‘That’s quite the imagination you’ve developed, Jem.’
‘I don’t think so. You both lied and kept secrets from me. If you can do that to your girlfriend of years and years, if she could do that to her best friend since childhood… Eeek, what else are you both capable of?’ Fuck it, I take another sip of wine here, too.
He corrects his posture, his hands in the prayer position, squeezed between his thighs.
‘I’m not sure what Amara told you but, in short, we need your help.
’ He pulls a bit at the collar of the jacket he’s not taken off, as if it’s restricting his breathing.
The idea of him needing something from me is making him physically uncomfortable.
‘Yeah, so, as you probably gathered me and Amara have really got things moving with the renters union. We’ve helped quite a few people get out of some dodgy situations and push back against their landlords.
It’s been great. You know, Ams was lucky, she had somewhere to go thanks to us. Not everyone else is that blessed.’
‘Remember how you didn’t want to give her refuge and I had to beg you? Where was your care for the housing insecure then?’
He absolutely dinghies me. ‘Anyway, we’ve been dealing with loads of issues around this one landlord.
Her name is Heather Gray. She evicted the person we were protesting about, and we’ve since found out that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
She has migrant workers living like twenty to a three-bed flat in at least two places.
She evicted someone who was experiencing end-of-life care a few years ago.
Chucked a dying woman out onto the street over a few hundred pounds in unpaid rent.
She’s a monster and we want to expose her.
We could do that on our own, obviously, but it would be quicker if you helped. ’
This request is an inevitability. Not that I knew it until this second.
Getting a crap job at the estate agent’s felt like a form of hiding away.
Who gives a shit about estate agents? But with Amara and Nicol and their union and all landlords being horrors, taking a job at PPS was always going to end up with us having to encounter one another.
Without meaning to, I made myself unavoidable and trapped them into needing me.
For that reason, I am going assist them, make their last interaction with me one where I am in charge.
‘How exactly can I help? I do receptionist stuff, I’ve never dealt with her.
I would never have heard of her if it weren’t for your protest.’
‘I remember in your old job you had access to your boss’s emails. I was hoping it was the same here and you could share anything she’s said that we can present as evidence to a court or to the press?’
At another time, in another life, Nicol remembering anything I’d told him about my work would have had me spiralling.
‘I do have access, but he’ll notice if I’m forwarding a lot of emails to someone.
It’ll have to be hard copies I print in the office and then pass over to you or your girlfriend or whoever. ’
Nicol considers my words. The wrinkle at the top of his nose, which makes him look like he’s smelling a fart when he’s actually concentrating, appears.
How many times have I seen that expression for it to be followed by a cutting remark that reminds me of what I am lacking? For once he finds no fault with me.
‘That sounds ideal.’ He says the next bit like he’s confessing to me. ‘I’ll be honest, I didn’t think you’d agree. I was expecting to have to convince you.’
‘And I didn’t think you could care about other people. We all have the capacity to evolve.’
‘Well, you certainly have, you look different.’ He squints, tries to figure out the exact source of my change.
Too stupid to realise what is different is internal.
He shakes his head, not finding it. ‘Whatever it is, you look great. For clarity, so you know, the reason Amara is downstairs is because I thought you might think this was a chance for something more.’ He softens his voice like this is a secret shared between us, then he adds the kicker.
‘I know this is a bit out there, but you’ve already surprised me, so maybe you’re not the person I thought you were, Jem.
You can’t say it’s a coincidence you ended up getting a job where I would find you.
I think you did it for my attention and you’ve got it.
How’d you like me to invite Amara up here and we can maybe act on a few fantasies I’ve had about all three of us together? ’
My fist tightens around the glass. I have the strength in me to smash it with my fury, cut myself, ruin the rug and the sofa, because he thinks I still, still, would want to fuck him.
Even worse, with the woman he left me for.
I take a deep breath before I respond as calmly as is possible given the situation. ‘Pardon?’
‘Come on, are you telling me you’ve never considered it? Not even once? I know I have, and Amara has too because I’ve mentioned it to her in bed. If that’s not too much information.’
Truthfully, I have never thought about me being involved in the sex they have.
Amara is like a sister to me, it would be incest even to conjure up the hint of a thought about it.
‘No, that’s the perfect amount of information, thank you very much.
So we’re clear, I’m agreeing because I think there needs to be systemic change in the housing market in this country, that landlords like Heather should be punished.
But if you think it’s for any other reason, which surprises me, I mean, I haven’t done anything that would make a normal person think I would be interested in group sex with the people who betrayed me.
To prevent this kind of baffling confusion happening again, I’ll meet up with Amara to share the info.
I’ll unblock her number and re-block yours.
You know, so you don’t share any more of your little fantasies I have no interest in hearing about.
’ For Amara to be my point of safety is a reset to how things used to be. It feels both right and wrong.
‘Sure. Sure. She’d like that. She’s missed you.’
All that’s happened tonight and the sips of wine and seeing Nicol back in what was our home is too much. I need him gone.
‘Time to go. Don’t want Amara getting cold on the street, do we?’
‘She could always come up and we could talk about everything, clear the air?’
‘Absolutely not. The air is as clear as I need it to be.’ Retrieving my keys from my pocket, I jingle them like a jailer. Time to release myself of Nicol’s presence.