One Minute to Midnight Read online

  We talked about art, which I didn’t really know anything about, and music, which I knew a bit more about, and books and films and the fact that Kathy Slattery had given James Tompkins a blow job in the boys’ loos at school. Midnight drew nearer. I started to wonder, when twelve o’clock came, would it happen? Would I get a kiss? (I would never have admitted this, not even to my closest friends at school, but at the grand old age of thirteen, I had still never been kissed. Not with tongue, anyway.) I tried not to think about it. Thinking about it was making me sweat.

  ‘Do you make New Year resolutions?’ I asked Julian, a little timidly. I was worried he might think New Year resolutions were stupid, or pointless, or bourgeois, or something like that.

  ‘Oh yeah, a list of five. Always five. Ten’s a bit ambitious. You?’

  ‘I have five, too.’

  ‘Well, okay then, Miss Nicole,’ he said, giving me that heart-stopping smile again, ‘let’s hear them.’ He was leaning towards me, his face only a few inches from mine. I could feel the colour coming to my cheeks.

  ‘You first,’ I said, looking away. Oh god oh god oh god. Why did I start this conversation? Why did I tell him I had five resolutions? Why the hell didn’t I tell him I only had four?

  ‘All right,’ Jules said, lighting yet another fag and settling back against the window sill, ‘number one: get As for my art, English and French GSCEs. That’s very important. I’m not all that bothered about the other subjects, but I want to do well in those ones. Two, cut down on the cigarettes. They’re very bad for your health.’ He grinned and took a drag. ‘Three, get to London to see as many art exhibitions as possible. At least ten. Four …’ He hesitated. ‘No, hang about. This isn’t fair. I’ve done three, now you do three. Then we’ll do the other two.’

  I was starting to panic.

  ‘I should probably make an appearance downstairs,’ I said to him. ‘They might have noticed we’re missing.’

  ‘Bollocks!’ Jules replied, laughing. ‘They’re all pissed by now.’ As I got to my feet he grabbed my hand. ‘You’re not going to get away with it that easily.’ He pulled me back onto the bed. For a second neither of us said anything. He was looking right into my eyes, he was still holding my hand. ‘Come on then,’ he said, softly, ‘what are you going to do next year?’

  And in that moment, I thought, I can tell him. I can tell him that I want to kiss him. This is the right time to tell him, it’s the perfect time, and I opened my mouth to speak, but I never said anything because in that moment the bedroom door burst open and there stood my father, red-faced and angry-drunk. I snatched my hand from Julian’s and got to my feet.

  ‘What the fucking hell is going on?’ He crossed the room and grabbed the mug of brandy and Coke from Julian’s hand, took a sniff and threw it straight out of the window. An almost-empty pack of Silk Cut sat on the sill. ‘You’re drinking and smoking with my daughter? You little piece of shit. Get the fuck out of this room. Now!’ As Julian got to his feet, my father grabbed his arm and yanked him towards the door.

  ‘Dad!’ I cried out, horrified, leaping to my feet. ‘We were just talking. It’s okay, we weren’t doing anything …’ He clipped me over the back of the head with his hand. I felt the tears spring to my eyes and through them I could see the look of shock on Julian’s face, I’d never felt so humiliated.

  ‘You sit back down, girlie. I’ll deal with you later.’

  I didn’t sit back down, I followed him and a worried-looking Julian down the stairs into the living room where Dad started shouting again.

  ‘Please, Dad,’ I called out, but he wasn’t listening.

  ‘Sheila!’ he was yelling, he was looking for Julian’s mum. ‘Where the bloody hell are you? Where the fuck is that woman?’ Someone turned off the music, everyone was staring at him: a raving, foul-mouthed tyrant, he was a sobering sight. Sheila and Mum came rushing out of the kitchen.

  ‘What on earth’s going on, Jack?’ my mother demanded.

  ‘You!’ Dad yelled at Sheila, ignoring Mum’s question. ‘You can just piss off out of my house and take this little shit with you.’

  Sheila stared at him, open-mouthed.

  ‘Jack,’ Mum was shouting now, ‘don’t you dare speak to our guest like that. What is going on?’

  ‘Yeah, you don’t know what’s going on, do you?’ Dad yelled, rounding on her. ‘You don’t know what the fuck’s going on in your own house. You don’t know that your thirteen-year-old daughter is upstairs in bed with a boy, drinking and smoking, because you’re too busy flirting with anything in trousers down here.’

  That’s when I lost my temper. ‘That is not true!’ I screamed at him, descending the last few steps into the living room. ‘We weren’t doing anything and neither was Mum! Why do you have to do this? Why do you have to be like this?’

  I felt a hand on my arm; it was Julian, standing at my side. ‘I was drinking and smoking,’ he announced, his voice loud and even. ‘Nicole didn’t do anything. And we weren’t in bed, we were sitting on top of it. Fully clothed.’

  ‘You shut your mouth, boy,’ Dad sneered at him.

  ‘I will not,’ Julian said, his head held high, a look of contempt on his beautiful face. I don’t think I’ve ever loved anyone as much as I loved him in that moment. ‘And you, I really don’t think you are in a position to criticise other people’s parenting skills. A drunk who hits his own daughter? What kind of father is that?’

  There was a collective sharp intake of breath around the room. Dad opened his mouth to reply but nothing came out; the shock of someone talking back in that manner struck him dumb. Mum, on the other hand, was roused to fury.

  ‘You hit her?’ she shrieked at him, pushing him in the chest. ‘You hit Nicole?’

  ‘It was nothing,’ he retorted. ‘I gave her a smack for being cheeky.’

  Mum pushed him again, harder. She was starting to cry now. ‘You bastard,’ she was saying, ‘you bastard.’

  And then he smacked her, just once, very hard, in the mouth, with a fist, not an open hand. She toppled backwards and split her head open on the edge of the coffee table.

  Mum and I spent the early hours of New Year’s day in A&E. She had a mild concussion and needed seven stitches in the back of her head. Despite plenty of encouragement from her friends, the police were not called.

  ‘You just make sure he is not in this house when I get back,’ Mum had said to Uncle Chris as she was helped into the ambulance. He nodded gravely. He was white with shock – he knew his brother had a temper but I don’t think he could possibly have imagined, as I couldn’t have up to that point, that Dad would actually punch Mum.

  A couple of Mum’s nursing friends stayed with me in A&E until she was ready to go home at around four o’clock in the morning. As we passed through the main waiting room, I noticed that Charles was sitting in a corner, drinking a cup of coffee. He watched us go, but didn’t say anything.

  Chapter Three

  Boxing Day, 2011

  I’M SUPPOSED TO be working. And if I’m not working I ought at least to be cleaning the house. I’m doing neither. I’m sitting at my desk in my tiny attic office, composing polite replies to my father’s email, explaining that, while I’m terribly sorry to hear that he had been diagnosed with cancer, I’m not able to come and visit him before his operation. I just don’t have the time.

  How extraordinarily callous that sounds. It is extraordinarily callous. It’s also true. I don’t have time. I have three days in which to do a million things before we leave. And why should I change my plans for him anyway? What, to paraphrase Janet Jackson, has he done for me lately? It’s just so bloody typical of him to come to me now he’s vulnerable and feeling low. Where was he four years ago, when my whole life fell apart? And the language of his message! ‘… this is a matter of great regret for me …’ – it sounds like he was resigning from a job, not writing to the daughter he’s barely seen in twenty years.

  Then again, I am going to be in Oxford tomorro
w to carry out the interview that I ought to be preparing right now. And Ledbury is only about an hour and a half’s drive from Oxford. I could always drop by after the interview. Show some generosity of spirit, a bit of kindness to an old man struck down by illness, even if he is a miserable old bastard who doesn’t deserve it.

  I should talk to Dom about it. Dom will know what to do. I wonder, briefly, whether I should contact my mother and let her know. We almost never speak about him; he’s the elephant in all of our rooms. I can’t tell her. Not now, she’s in Costa Rica on holiday, having fun with friends. I’m not going to spoil that, not for him, not after everything he’s put her through.

  I pick up my phone and ring Dom’s mobile.

  ‘Nicole,’ he says when he picks up. ‘This is a ridiculous waste of money.’

  ‘I’ve got five hundred free minutes,’ I protest. ‘I never use them.’

  Dom is downstairs, in his study, a little annex off the living room on the ground floor of the house. Yes, it may sound like I’m being lazy and profligate but it’s actually not that easy getting in and out of my office. Access is via a step ladder which has a tendency to slip and slide about, posing considerable risk to life and limb, not to mention fingers, which are liable to get jammed in the hinge as it moves. Despite its inaccessibility, I love my office. It’s tiny, you can barely move in here, but from the Velux window there is the most amazing view across the common, a view that changes month to month, week to week, a view that never bores me. Also, even though Dom’s not exactly towering in stature, he’s still too tall to stand up in here, so it’s the one place I retreat to and he can’t follow me. And sometimes you just need that.

  ‘What’s up?’ Dom asks.

  I want to tell him about my dad, I want to ask his advice, but for some reason I just can’t. I can’t bring myself to say the words because I know that when I say them out loud I’m going to cry. And I don’t want to cry over him. I’ve done more than enough of that over the years.

  ‘I think we should make a start on the Christmas decorations,’ I say instead.

  ‘You phoned me to tell me that?’ Dom asks, incredulous. ‘You do realise that if you’re going to help me take down the decorations you are going to have to leave your study and come all the way downstairs? Or are you just phoning me to issue instructions?’

  ‘I’ll be down in a sec,’ I say, hanging up.

  Some people find the taking down of the Christmas decorations to be a depressing ritual, but I can’t say that I do. If I’m honest, I’ve always preferred New Year’s Eve to Christmas. Christmas is cosy and familial; New Year’s Eve is thrilling, filled with possibility, the scent of pastures new, the opportunity to start afresh, to push the boundaries. And to wipe the slate clean, of course. To put yesterday away, somewhere it can be forgotten.

  Dom and I pack lights and decorations into boxes and ferry them upstairs to the wardrobe in the spare room, which was specially cleared for the arrival of Dom’s parents. Its usual contents – books, papers, files full of old credit card and bank statements, notebooks from Dom’s old cases and my old assignments – have been temporarily transferred to our room, where they were hidden under the bed so that his mother doesn’t realise how disorganised we are. Dom stows the decorations on the top shelf, I start bringing the rest of the junk through.

  ‘We really ought to sort through all this stuff,’ Dom says, ‘I’m sure a lot of it can be thrown away.’

  ‘Not this week, Dom. We don’t have time. When we get back.’

  ‘Let’s just do it now. May as well now we’ve got it all out. Won’t take a minute.’

  I sigh, plumping my lower lip out. ‘It’ll take forever.’ He gives a little shrug, the way he does when he thinks I’m being difficult. ‘Oh, all right then,’ I say. ‘You get started, I’ll make the tea.’

  By the time I get back upstairs, Dom’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, two boxes at his side, their contents strewn around him. He’s flicking through a notebook, shaking his head.

  ‘What is it?’ I ask, handing him the tea.

  ‘No bloody idea, your handwriting’s illegible.’

  I glance at the notebook over his shoulder. ‘Look at the front, it’ll have a date on it.’

  ‘November 2004. Madrid? Does that say Madrid?’

  ‘Yeah, that one can go. Anything up to about 2008 can go.’ I grab a third box and flip open the lid. It’s full of papers. Letters, postcards. I close it again.

  ‘What’s in that one?’ Dom asks.

  ‘Just stuff. Nothing I want to throw away.’

  Dom is looking at me quizzically but he doesn’t say anything. I pick up the box and am about to place it at the back of the wardrobe when a slim slip of paper which has been caught in the folds of cardboard at the base of the box falls out. It drifts to the floor and Dom picks it up. He looks at it, gives a sad little smile and hands it to me. It’s a photo strip, one of those ones you get from booths, four little pictures in a row. Me, Julian and Alex, a tangle of arms around necks, beaming at the camera, gurning, pulling stupid faces, hysterical with laughter. On the back is written ‘London, 1999’. I put the strip back into the box.

  ‘I think I’ll put this one in the cupboard in the bedroom,’ I say. I can feel Dom’s eyes searching for mine.

  ‘I’m going to Oxford tomorrow,’ I tell him in an effort to direct the conversation away from dangerous ground as quickly as possible, ‘I have to talk to Annie Gardner, see if I can get her to do the interview for the Betrayal series.’

  Dom sips his tea. ‘Nic,’ he started, tentatively. I know he wants to say something about the pictures, and I don’t want to hear it.

  ‘We also have to think about the dogs. Shall I take them to Matt’s, or do you have time to do it?’

  ‘Nicole …’

  ‘I could do it on Wednesday.’

  ‘Subject closed then?’ he asks.

  ‘Do you know what?’ I say, ignoring his question. ‘I actually think I feel like coffee. Do you want some?’

  ‘I’m fine with tea,’ he says softly, and goes back to sorting through the notebooks from my previous life.

  I leave Dom to sort out the mess in the guest bedroom and decide to tackle cleaning the kitchen instead. There’s nothing I hate quite so much as the thought of domestic drudgery, but actually once you get into it it’s weirdly cathartic. And because it’s so mindless, your thoughts can drift elsewhere. So while I’m scouring surfaces I sketch out a mental plan of the days ahead. Tuesday: interview in Oxford. Wednesday: to Selfridges to find dress for party; hair appointment and manicure in the afternoon; take dogs to Matt and Liz. Thursday: New York, New York …

  The final traces of muddy paw prints have just been erased from the kitchen floor when Dom appears, a bulging orange recycling sack in each hand.

  ‘Right, these are all the work notebooks and papers up to 2008,’ he announces. ‘Yours and mine. You sure you’re happy for me to chuck it?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  He takes the bags into the utility room, the dumping ground for recyclables awaiting collection. Mick and Marianne, spotting an opportunity, burst past him into the kitchen, bits of dried mud flying from the paws as they scamper happily into the warmth of the kitchen. I pretend not to notice.

  ‘Do you want to go out to dinner tomorrow night?’ Dom calls out to me. ‘I was thinking we could invite Matt and Liz? They could stay the night and then take the dogs back with them on Wednesday. Save us having to make the trip.’

  I hesitate. The email. I should tell him about the email. This is the perfect moment to discuss Dad’s email.

  ‘Ummm … Yeah. I’ll be back by four-ish I expect,’ I say. So that’s that. I won’t have time to get to Oxford and Ledbury and back to London by dinner. Dad will just have to wait. And in the meantime, his email can be added to the list of secrets, just one of many, that I am keeping from my husband.

  ‘So I’ll book something shall I? Local? How about that Lebanese place in the v
illage?’

  ‘That’s fine, darling.’

  I glower at the flecks of mud on the floor, now being trodden on and mashed up and smeared across the tiles. There’s a reason I hate housework: it’s so bloody futile. And I remember that I haven’t cleaned the oven, which I probably should have. It’s seen a lot of action over the past few days.

  ‘Nicole?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘Is everything all right?’

  Oh, bollocks to the oven. ‘Yeah, sorry. I was just thinking of Quentin Crisp.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘You know: there’s no need to do any housework, because after the first four years, the dirt doesn’t get any worse.’

  ‘Leave it then,’ Dom says, giving the room the once over. ‘Looks fine to me.’ There could be rats taking residence in the sink and Dom would say the place looks fine. ‘Come and listen to my speech instead.’

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘The limitations of the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act.’

  ‘Sounds fascinating,’ I reply.

  ‘Well, you can listen to me or you can clean the loo. It’s your choice.’

  ‘I’ll just get the Harpic …’ I say with a grin, but I’m already following him into the living room to listen to his speech.

  And the extraordinary thing? It actually is fascinating. Dom can make the dullest, driest, most tedious subjects interesting. He has a way of explaining complex concepts, of illustrating his points with everyday examples, which brings his subject to life. And his subject – labour law – does need livening up.

  ‘It’s great,’ I say as he finishes, getting up off the sofa to give him a kiss. ‘Really good.’

  ‘You don’t think that section in the middle on codes of practice goes on too long?’