Laura Wilson was brought up in London and has degrees in English literature from Somerville College, Oxford, and UCL, London. She lives in Islington, London, where she is currently working on her twelfth novel. She is the crime fiction reviewer for the Guardian newspaper, and teaches on the City University Crime Thriller Novel Creative Writing MA course.
‘… all these poor bastards, and they keep on finding ’em dead. Months go by, and there’s more and more of ’em, always in this one room that’s off the main ward, and no one knows why. Then they’ve only realised–’ Spicer gave a phlegmy chuckle ‘– they’ve only realised it’s always on a Friday this happens, and that’s when the cleaner goes in, see? She don’t speak a word of English and she’s been plugging in the hoover or whatever – only to do that she has to unplug this other thing, and it’s only—’
‘The life support system,’ Nick finished, eyeing the scratched plastic side of the jug on his bedside locker. The water looked grey, and there were specks of something floating in it.
‘You’ve heard it before,’ Spicer wheezed, disappointed.
‘I guessed.’ Nick pressed the buzzer or bell or whatever it was, but the nurse at the station at the end of the ward didn’t look up from her computer screen. He’d assumed that a light must come on to indicate when a patient needed something, but if it had she wasn’t heeding it. It wasn’t just the water. He wanted to know what was going on. The brisk efficiency of his admission that morning had subsided, after half an hour or so, into unfocussed uncertainty, with talk of procedures being ‘put back’ and notes misplaced. A nurse – the previous one, not the current screen-gazer – had said she’d find out, but that was over four hours ago. Four hours during which he’d had no choice but to receive a thorough grounding in the life and opinions of Tommy Spicer, up to and including his age: 50, three years younger than Nick, although he definitely looked older; his height: 1.82m ‘or 6ft 1 in old money’, the same as Nick; and his current weight: 238kg or ‘down to 17 stone now’. That was about four stone more than Nick, at least at the moment. Before the diagnosis, he’d been pleased to be losing weight. Now, it worried him.
He’d seen quite a bit of Spicer’s 238kg during a display of his children’s names, which were tattooed on his arms and chest. Ryan (‘I was only 18, so he’d be over 30 now’) and Amber (‘always my princess’) on his biceps, Ashley (‘Should be ee at the end, but the muppet got it wrong’) and Briana (‘Different, innit? Brian’s my middle name, see, after my Dad’) above his nipples. Slightly further down, the names of the three mothers of these four had been buried under arrangements of crosses and roses. Judging from his remark about Ryan, Nick suspected that Spicer hardly ever saw his children, much less paid maintenance. Perhaps he thought that having their names engraved on his body was commitment enough. Briana. God Almighty.
Listening to Spicer was worse than being in the back of a cab. At least then you were going somewhere and you knew it would soon be over – and taxi drivers didn’t insist on showing you their body art. He’d seen a photograph of Amber, too, on Spicer’s phone: orange and laminated, with tits out to here. (‘Sent that to me at Christmas. Only run off to Huddersfield or some fucking place with her mum’s new bloke, hadn’t she? Real chip off the old block, she is.’). Not that Nick could afford cabs nowadays. He couldn’t actually remember the last time he’d taken one.
Spicer probably earned far more than he did. Cash only, of course. As he’d talked, Nick had imagined him, a cheerful bodger, causing more damage than he ever repaired and pulling all sorts of strokes on the side – nicked copper, pilfered lead, half-inched garden ornaments. He’d obviously got form. ‘I asked them to give me treatment for it when I was in there, but they never. But it was just, like, normal burglaries,’ he’d added, virtuously. ‘I’ve never took from old people or kids or if they was poor or nothing.’
Presumably, thought Nick, a ‘normal burglary’ meant robbing someone like him. Spicer appeared to think that this was not only all right but actually praiseworthy, which was ironic, given their respective circumstances. Spicer was a council tenant. He rented the house his mum had lived in for £85 a week, and it was secure for the rest of his life. Nick knew the estate. It was one of the older ones, with most of the houses – semi-detached boxes in two-tone pebble dash – sold off to private owners.
They were probably worth a bit, too, because of the location. Nick wondered whether, if push came to shove, if he and Cath could afford one. They still had a mortgage of over £100,000 on their four-bed Victorian terrace, and keeping up with the payments was a struggle nowadays. Christ knew what they’d do when interest rates went up, although that wasn’t supposed to happen for a couple of years. Would he even be around when it did?
Spicer was still talking. Something about unjust persecution by the police for something he couldn’t help (the stealing, presumably). ‘Always at my door, when I ain’t done nothing. I mean, for fuck’s sake, look at me.’ Nick was tempted to comment that perhaps the coppers couldn’t help it, either, but of course he didn’t.
He’d tried to get stuck into the Booker prize winner he’d brought along, but it was impossible. Not that he actually wanted to read the bloody thing, but Cath had been going on about it after her book group and he’d thought it would be nice to show willing. He imagined the two of them talking about it. It would be a topic of conversation that wasn’t how his work had dried up almost completely or how they couldn’t downsize because Holly and Josh were coming back to live at home or why they weren’t talking anymore, just arguing, or where the bloody hell had he been this time or what are we going to do if. That was the worst, because it was blindingly obvious what he was going to do if. He was going to fucking die, wasn’t he? It was also the worst having to listen to Cath oscillating between the pointless recital of ‘potential scenarios’ and bracing statistics accompanied by anecdotal evidence about somebody’s friend or brother or aunt who’d had what he’d got ten years ago and was now completely cured and running marathons or swimming the channel or about to be launched into space. Or something. And then he’d get the of-course-if-you-hadn’t-gone-freelance-we’d-still-have-private-healthcare speech. She’d been all for it at the time – but this was revised, now, to ‘going along with it for your sake.’
What was he lying here pressing the stupid buzzer for, anyway? He wasn’t immobile. Hating himself for being so quickly reduced to querulous dependency, he pushed back the covers and swung his legs out of the bed. He could perfectly well walk down the ward, take the jug thing with him for a refill and ask the nurse what was happening.
‘Don’t worry, mate. She’ll be back.’
‘Who?’
‘You know, the one with the arse. That nurse who said she’d find out what was going on.’
‘She’s probably gone off duty.’
‘Well, you’re here now, aren’t you? They’ll have to do something. You’re entitled.’
‘I’m going to find out.’ Nick reached for his robe. ‘I can’t use my phone in here anyway.’
‘Or,’ Spicer grinned, revealing teeth like rotten fenceposts, ‘is it that girl brought you in this morning?’ His rasping laugh turned into a fit of liquid coughing. ‘Your face!’
‘How …?’
‘Obvious, mate. Give us a minute, and I’ll come with you. I could do with a fag, as it goes.’
‘A fag? You told me you’d got—’
‘Won’t make no difference now, will it?’
‘They’re taking half your—’
‘I’ll still have one, won’t I? That’s all you need. My Dad, he was on the oxygen at the finish. Used to sit there – one puff of that and a puff on the roll up – all day, doing that. And it don’t make no difference. When all this started I told the doctor I’d give up, and every time he’s seen me, he’s only said he can see the improvement now I’ve stopped, so what do they know? Anyway,’ he added, fatalistic, ‘my mum had emphysema, too, so it runs in the family, dunnit?’
‘Did she smoke?’
‘Yeah, course.’ Spicer shook his head at the stupidity of the question. ‘Like a chimney. Mind you, that was my dad. The stress of living with him. Until he done a runner, that is. Come on, give us a hand. And don’t worry about the bird –’ Spicer’s leery, exaggerated wink hailed him as a fellow member of the fraternity of middle-aged adulterers ‘– I won’t tell if you won’t.’
Nick hadn’t intended to go outside the hospital, but found himself standing, slippered, in front of the litter-strewn car park trying to call Cath while Spicer, propped against a bollard, sucked on a Mayfair Kingsize. Cath wasn’t picking up. The meeting, which was the reason why she hadn’t given him a lift to the hospital, was an important one about a new contract – ‘one of us has to earn something’ – and, now he thought about it, she’d said something about lunch afterwards, hadn’t she? No message from her, but a text from Holly wishing him good luck with a line of kisses, and three texts from Natalie as well as four messages. He started listening to the first one – ‘Darling, I haven’t been able to concentrate on anything, I’m so worried for you …’ and then deleted it, and the ones that followed, unheard.
He didn’t want to talk to Nat. He hadn’t wanted her to bring him here this morning, either, but she’d insisted on meeting him outside the tube station in her car. She’d been so tearful and needy when they’d talked about it that he’d agreed, fearing that if he didn’t she might actually turn up at his house. No, he wouldn’t call her. What was there to say? Nothing had happened, and he didn’t have the energy to console her about her feelings when he was the one with the potentially fatal illness.
It was all to do with mortality, of course, even before the diagnosis and before he’d started feeling generally under the weather with the collection of minor symptoms that had given rise to it. Although not, probably, before the cancer itself – Dr Gomberts had told him it could take as much as three years before a single cancer cell divided and divided again until it grew to a noticeable size. If that was right – he thought that was what Dr Gomberts had said, but those first meetings, he hadn’t taken much in beyond the word itself – then that made it around the time he’d noticed his pubes were starting to turn white. He’d been lying in the bath and when he looked down, there it was, a single hair, gleaming palely in the sunlight.
Now, he wondered if his body, knowing that it was not only getting old but also had cancer, had impelled him into Nat’s bed. It certainly hadn’t been a conscious decision, a line deliberately crossed for the first time. Proximity, opportunity, and, yes, quite a few drinks – and it had just sort of … happened. The sex had been mind-blowing, and he’d become a walking, talking, breathing (at least for the time being) cliché: a middle-aged married man having an affair with a woman over twenty years younger than he was, and who had introduced him to moisturiser. A couple of months ago, Nat had started asking when he was going to tell Cath so they could get a divorce. Nick couldn’t afford a divorce even if he wanted one, which he was 99 per cent sure that he didn’t. He’d never seriously contemplated Nat’s proposal that he move in with her and start all over again, whereas she’d begun to talk as though it wasn’t a matter of if, but when. Even breaking the bad news hadn’t stopped her. She’d talked about how they’d ‘get through it together’ and ‘beating it’ and ‘positive thinking’, as though it were a test of character.
At least Cath hadn’t come out with any of that stuff – probably because she thought his character wasn’t up to being tested by anything. This morning, Nat had been coming out with crap about how the stress of his marriage had caused the cancer in the first place. She’d made it sound as if asking Cath for a divorce would cure him. Couldn’t she see he could do without it? After all, he’d played fair with her, hadn’t he? He’d never lied – she’d known he was married from the off. He shoved the phone irritably into the pocket of his robe.
‘Didn’t phone the girlfriend, then?’ Spicer flicked his dog end into the gutter.
‘No.’
‘Left you a few messages though, didn’t she?’
‘A couple.’
‘You like to live dangerously.’ Spicer paused to give a light to a hefty woman in a towelling robe who was hitched up to a drip on a stand. ‘She didn’t look like a bunny boiler to me.’ He wagged his head judiciously. ‘Not that you can always tell, of course. I had a girl once, a real psycho, she …’ Hanging onto Nick’s arm as they walked back inside, he began a complicated narrative about how some woman had slashed his tyres and waylaid Ashlee and Briana’s mum at the school gates to tell her what a shit the twins’ father was, which had led to a cat fight. ‘Wish I’d seen it, though,’ Spicer added wistfully and then, as they were passing the hospital shop, ‘Couldn’t get us a paper, could you? Left me change upstairs, didn’t I?’
‘Look at that.’ Nick didn’t want to look. He didn’t want to look at the rows of cheerful, pastel-coloured cards bookended with buckets of cellophane-wrapped flowers and teddy bears with satin hearts on their chests, or at the headlines. Property prices, fracking, illegal immigrants, more property prices and the one Spicer was pointing at, a tabloid with ‘FOUND DEAD AFTER NINE MONTHS’ on the front in 24-point capital letters beside a headshot of a smiling woman in a party hat captioned ‘Tragic Valerie Wiseman’. ‘Fucking disgrace, that is.’
As they waited for a dishevelled-looking young guy in scrubs to pay for a Mars bar, Nick stared through the reinforced glass partition at the people milling about in the lobby: young mothers trying to pacify shrieking toddlers with junk food, a bloke with a bandage round his head flailing, drunk, between the rows of seats, a scabby-pated tramp arguing with the receptionist and a monstrously overweight man beached in the corner. If he’d still had private healthcare, Nick would be being tended to by sleek nurses in designer uniforms in a tasteful haven of tranquillity. None of these people, Spicer very much included, would be allowed through the door.
‘Poor cow.’ Spicer brandished the paper as they made their slow way to the lifts. ‘It’s not right, her being left like that. Nine fucking months – you’ve got to wonder what the world’s coming to. Where was the social services? Too busy finding homes for all them illegals, that’s where.’
‘How old was she?’ asked Nick.
‘Sixty-nine.’
‘No family?’
‘Don’t look like it.’ Spicer scanned the two short columns of type beneath the headline while they waited for the lift, before grubbing over the page with his thumb and forefinger. ‘Says here it was the housing charity people found her when they come to repossess the place. The telly was still on, though, and the heating.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Yeah, well. Would have been back in November, wouldn’t it?’
‘But surely, if she hadn’t paid the bills …’
‘If it was all direct debit, though,’ said Spicer, ‘then the pension goes in, the bills come out, and she’s not spending it on anything else if she’s dead, is she? So there’d be enough in there. Perhaps she done the rent by cheque or something, and she never answered their letters, so then they’ve sent the bailiffs in.’
‘I suppose so. Is that how she died, watching television?’ Nick imagined the flat: junk mail piling up on the mat, the washing up, never to be done, in the sink, the food, long past its sell-by-date, mouldering in the fridge, the television flickering its way through months of news, soap operas and chat shows in front of Valerie Wiseman’s unseeing eyes until … until what? What did happen to your eyes after you were dead? Did they liquefy entirely before decomposing, or harden and shrink in their sockets, or … For God’s sake, he told himself. Stop it.
‘Yeah …’ Spicer frowned, scanning the rest of the article. ‘They don’t know what killed her, though. Too far gone an’ that. Nine months, Jesus.’
‘Did she have any cats?’
‘Cats? Nah.’
‘Just, you hear those stories … You’d think someone would have noticed the smell, though.’
‘Depends on the neighbours. Their sort–’ Spicer nodded towards the brightly dressed black family emerging from the lift, arguing in some African language or other ‘– they wouldn’t notice nothing. Just think it was normal, wouldn’t they?’
The pretty Asian nurse who’d arrived just in time to hear this raised her eyebrows before following them into the lift. Inside, Nick, not wanting to be bracketed with Spicer as an ageing racist, put as much distance between the two of them as could be managed in thirty square feet. ‘Even if they did notice,’ Spicer continued, ‘them lot don’t bother to learn English so they couldn’t tell no one, could they?’ The nurse’s face twitched. Nick willed her to look at him, so that he could signal his lack of sympathy for this view, but she was staring at the floor. Briana, for fuck’s sake. Spicer was about to enlarge on his previous point when Nick’s phone rang.
It was Cath. ‘I’d have left you a message, love, but there’s been a bit of a mix-up and I’m still not sure what’s—’
‘Nick, shut up. Josh has been arrested.’
‘What?’
‘He’s been dealing drugs.’
‘I can’t eat this, it’s fucking cold.’ Spicer gestured at the tray on the over-bed table.
‘We should have waited.’ Perhaps there’d been a mistake, although Cath had been pretty definite about it. The charge was possession with intent to supply, and Josh had been found with five grams of cocaine as well as ‘a massive amount’ of dope. When Nick had told Cath he’d discharge himself and come straight to the police station, she’d snapped that she’d got enough on her plate without having to look after him as well. When the children were little they’d faced things together – Holly’s meningitis, various issues that had cropped up at the children’s schools, structural problems with the house – and she’d been glad of him. Now, he’d gone from being the main breadwinner, a reliable, solid part of a team, to a dependent, even an encumbrance. It hadn’t happened just now, of course, or even all at once, but gradually, over the last few years.
‘They should have waited till we come back. This is the last meal I’ll get till after my op tomorrow – and you haven’t got nothing.’
‘I’m not supposed to have anything except water.’ What did Josh think he was playing at? Dealing could get you a prison sentence. A proper one, and not a borstal or whatever it was called nowadays, because Josh was twenty-one.
‘Yeah, but if they’re not going to do anything to you today, they’ve got to give you something to eat, haven’t they?’
‘I’m not hungry. Anyway, I don’t know they’re not going to do it.’ The nurses’ station was deserted, and there was no one around to ask. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Course it bleeding matters.’ Spicer jabbed an angry finger at the buzzer and held it there. ‘Hey! Where the fuck is everybody?’
The other patients looked up from their meals. As far as Nick could see, nobody had eaten much. Perhaps Josh would only get a fine. After all, it was a first offence, and prisons were overcrowded, weren’t they? ‘It’s OK.’ He sank onto his bed. ‘I’m not bothered. Honestly.’ Josh would still have a conviction, though, wouldn’t he? Surely you didn’t have to include that on your CV? They might ask specifically, if there was a questionnaire or something – which there probably would be, even for an internship like the ones Josh had been talking about applying for, where they didn’t give you a salary, just travel expenses.
‘Well, I’m bleeding bothered. I mean, look at it! I wouldn’t give that to my dog. Hallo! Nurse!’ Spicer stopped, grasping at breath. ‘Fuck’s sake,’ he wheezed. ‘You have a go.’
‘What’s your dog’s name?’ asked Nick, hoping to distract him.
‘Bronson. Jesus, I can’t fucking breathe.’
‘Why don’t you get into bed?’ Christ, he felt shattered. If Josh got a fine, that could come out of his savings, the money Cath’s mum had left him. Assuming he hadn’t spent it all since his twenty-first birthday, of course. Assuming he hadn’t used it to buy the drugs.
‘What,’ gasped Spicer, ‘about, my, fucking, dinner? And what’s my dog’s name got to do with it?’
‘Who’s looking after him while you’re in here?’
‘Neighbour. Why?’
‘Just interested.’
‘He’s fine, mate. Good as gold.’
Nick pictured a snarling status dog with a studded collar. What if Josh couldn’t pay the fine? Would they send him to prison? Or would they fine him and imprison him? What if he couldn’t get a job and ended up …
‘Fuck’s sake!’ Spicer gave the over-bed table a shove, so that it skidded away, plates clattering as it crashed into the wall, and fell back on his bed.
‘Look,’ said Nick, ‘why don’t I go and find someone?’ He was exhausted, but clearly Spicer wasn’t going to be deflected, and trailing up and down corridors was preferable to being stuck here next to him.
‘It’s their job, not yours. Hey! Nurse!’
‘They’re probably overstretched.’ Nick had just levered himself off the bed when the Asian nurse who’d been in the lift appeared and told Spicer that there wasn’t any more food. Nick, imagining Spicer telling her to fuck off back to Pakistan and take the grub with her, winced in anticipation.
‘What do you mean, no food? This is a hospital, for fuck’s sake. It’s got a fucking kitchen, hasn’t it? And what about him?’
Great, now he’d be bracketed with Spicer as an overly-entitled chav as well as a racist. Nick smiled weakly as the nurse turned to him, her face carefully neutral. ‘I’m fine, honestly. I don’t think I’m meant to eat anything.’
‘Did you fill in your form?’
‘Form?’
‘To choose your meals.’
‘I’m sorry – I might be wrong, but I don’t think I was given one. I was meant to be having a procedure but there was some—’
‘Excuse me!’ said Spicer. ‘I’m still here, you know, and if you can’t get me anything else, this food’s not going to warm itself up, is it?’
‘I’m afraid we can’t re-heat meals.’
‘Why not? Stick it in a microwave, job done.’
The nurse explained about health and safety regulations and Spicer swore at her. Nick wanted to tell Spicer to shut up, but was afraid of incurring his hostility. Why was he scared of him? The man was about to have half his breathing apparatus removed, for God’s sake. What could he possibly do? Other than spend the next few hours – or as much of it as they were both, simultaneously, conscious – swearing at him, of course.
After several minutes’ circular explanation and recrimination, the nurse turned to leave. ‘I’m sorry,’ said Nick, ‘but would you mind finding out what’s supposed to be happening to me?’
‘They haven’t told us,’ said the nurse. ‘We can’t do anything unless they tell us.’
‘I’m not asking you to do anything,’ said Nick. ‘I don’t want any lunch. I’d just like to know what’s going on.’
The nurse, sounding as though she were humouring the whim of a madman, said that she’d try, and left.
‘What a fucking shambles,’ said Spicer. ‘I bet if I’d wanted halal or one of them things, they’d be straight onto it, but heat a bit of food up? No mate, too much bother. Got trouble at home, have you?’
Nick stared at him.
‘That phone call, before. Your missus, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Not found out about the girlfriend, has she?’
Nick shook his head.
‘One of the kids, then?’
‘It was work. We work together.’
‘Oh.’
Nick could imagine, all too clearly, Spicer’s ‘Welcome to the club, mate,’ and the subsequent advice about doing your bird. Or maybe – assuming the man actually knew anything at all about any of his children apart from their names – he’d regale him about when Ryan or Amber or possibly even the eight-year-old twins Ashlee and Briana (God) had got into trouble with the law. He’d almost certainly know all about probable fines and sentences and whether you had to disclose a conviction to a prospective employer, as well.
Nick went and hid in the loo, which was quiet and reasonably clean. He sat down and leant sideways to rest his head on the tiled wall. His phone rang and he answered, assuming it was Cath. It was Natalie.
‘Didn’t you get my messages?’
‘Messages? No. I mean, I didn’t … I had to turn the phone off,’ he lied.
‘So you didn’t hear them? I sent you a couple of texts, too.’
‘I’m sorry. Look, Nat, I’m going to have to cut this short because I’ve got to—’
‘Nick, I’m pregnant.’
Spicer talked all afternoon, various grievances. His bad luck in being easily led, so that he’d skipped school, his bad luck in getting in with the wrong crowd, in not being nabbed earlier, which might have scared him onto the right track, in not finding the right woman …
Had Nat done it deliberately, Nick wondered for the umpteenth time. When he’d hinted at this she’d become tearful and said she thought he’d be pleased. Pleased! Unbelievable … They’d had a row, of course. She’d threatened to ring Cath if he didn’t tell her himself, today. He’d hesitated just a second too long when she’d asked if he loved her, which had made her start crying again. He didn’t love her. He’d never loved her – surely she knew that saying it in bed didn’t count? He just wished she’d go away.
No chance. Her last words, after he’d managed to mollify her, were that he wasn’t to worry because no one would ever love him as much as she did and she and the baby would always be there for him. Remembering this, Nick only just managed to restrain himself from groaning aloud.
This wasn’t how his life was supposed to be. He could cope with the slackening of ambition, the knowledge that his career had already peaked and he’d not been half – well, OK, maybe not half, maybe a third – as successful as he’d hoped, but for Christ’s sake! He’d kept his part of the bargain, hadn’t he? Worked hard at school, and later at his job, saved, got married, bought a house. He was supposed to do better than his parents, and his children, in their turn, better than him and Cath: that was the deal. Except, apparently, it wasn’t. As for the cancer, that was a trick, too. He’d been watching his diet and taking regular exercise since the age of thirty, when he’d also given up smoking and started following the government guidelines on booze. Unlike Spicer, who was even now talking about an almighty piss up in his local when he got out – although that was obviously bravado because the guy had lung cancer, for Christ’s sake – Nick had done nothing to deserve any of this, so why was it happening?
He’d always imagined that, by this point, he’d have made his pile. He’d have the London house, all paid for, and perhaps a country place, too – nothing grand, just the cottage. The children would be successfully launched into the world, and he’d be contemplating early retirement. Nick thought of the adverts showing bright-eyed pensioner couples, always with plenty of silver hair for the wind to ruffle as they stood on the decks of ocean liners and pointed at things on the horizon and smiled with perfect teeth. The way things were going, the only thing he’d be pointing at on the horizon was the bloke in the cloak with the scythe.
His eyes fell on the newspaper on Spicer’s bed. ‘Tragic Valerie Wiseman’. There she was, grinning in a party hat, with no idea that she’d end up dying alone and rotting for nine months before anyone noticed. What a colossal fucking mess. He couldn’t tell Cath. He’d have to persuade Nat. Supposing he couldn’t? Nat might be phoning her right now! Nick imagined his wife picking up the phone in the kitchen, elbows on the butcher block then springing upright as she realised what was being said to her. Except that Cath would still be at the police station trying to sort Josh out, wouldn’t she? Oh, God, Josh …
There was no way Nat would have Cath’s mobile number, was there? She’d had plenty of chances to get it off his phone if she’d wanted to. Cath being at the police station also meant, now he thought about it properly, that she must have missed her meeting this morning, or had to leave it almost as soon as she’d arrived, which in turn meant that the new contract – and, let’s face it, their main source of income for the next two years – had, in all likelihood, gone up in smoke.
Not that Nat knew anything about any of that, of course. He’d always been careful to give the impression that he was, if not exactly flush, then comfortably off. There were two credit cards that Cath, who was in charge of the paperwork, knew nothing about. Then there was Holly, expecting them to finance her while she did an MA in journalism, as if there was any point in that. The fact was, there were more places on journalism courses than jobs in the profession – all of which were, in any case, already filled.
This thing with Nat couldn’t happen. Surely she’d see that. Wouldn’t she? What if … He couldn’t think about it. Any of it. He shouldn’t have to, not now. For Christ’s sake, he was ill, wasn’t he? Probably dying. Why couldn’t he do it in peace?
‘You all right?’
‘Yes, fine.’
‘Just, you looked … Wouldn’t blame you if you was scared, mate.’
‘Are you scared?’
‘Yeah. Yeah, I am, as it goes.’ Spicer leant towards him. ‘I’m fucking terrified.’
‘Me too.’ But, Nick thought, right now, I’m more afraid of living than of dying.
The luminous display on the clock read 02.14. Nick had had the procedure, a day later than scheduled, and the various tissues were now awaiting analysis in the lab. By the time it was finished it had been too late to send him home, so he’d been returned to the ward until the consultant could discharge him – assuming all was well – in the morning. Nick felt physically fine – surprisingly good, in fact – but he didn’t want to be discharged. He’d rather stay here, even with Spicer, who, having had his lung removed first thing yesterday, was now back in the next bed.
He didn’t want to go home. In fact, he no longer had a home to go to. Despite his efforts to dissuade her, Nat had turned up the previous evening, and so, fifteen minutes later, had Cath. The ensuing showdown, which had taken approximately three minutes and during which he had spoken no more than ten words, had resulted in Cath saying that if that was the case then Nat was welcome to him and she’d be in touch via her solicitor. Then she’d left, impervious to Nick’s pleas as he sat in bed, trapped, with Nat clinging onto his arm and Spicer lapping it up from his ringside seat.
He’d always imagined that, in the event of a situation like this one, Cath would fight tooth and nail to keep him. Now, he wondered why he’d thought that. She’d seemed almost relieved, as if he were an item that could now be crossed off one of her to-do lists. She hadn’t even paused long enough to give him an update on Josh’s situation.
Everything was conspiring to push him to the margins of his own life. Natalie’s flat was a few scruffy, boxy rented rooms above a fish and chip shop. She shared it with another twenty-something, who worked in PR and who Nick had only ever seen preparing to go out partying or nursing a hangover. He’d be living – aged 53 and with more than likely terminal cancer – a version of his children’s lives, if they could have afforded the rent. Surely Cath wouldn’t actually start divorce proceedings? After all, if he died, she wouldn’t have to sell the light-filled home they’d spent so long doing up, but if they had to split the proceeds, they’d be lucky if they could each afford something as big as Nat’s place. And what about the children? They could hardly expect Holly and Josh to share a divorce-regulation IKEA bunk bed, could they? And what about when Nat’s baby arrived? After Cath had gone, she’d kept on saying how happy she was and how it was all she’d ever wanted. He hadn’t had the heart – and certainly not the energy – to tell her that he had no money and no prospect of getting any and that the last thing he wanted was another child and as he was probably dying would she please just bugger off.
He sat up, feeling as though he were suffocating. After he’d finally got rid of Nat by making God knows what promises, Spicer had been surprisingly tactful. ‘Don’t worry, your missus’ll come round. You’re a sick man – ain’t going to leave you in the lurch, is she?’ Nick wasn’t at all sure about that. What had he been thinking of? He and Cath had been together for over twenty years. Nick remembered Spicer’s words, ‘Mind you, she’s a good-looking woman, your wife. Don’t mind my saying, she must have been a real knockout when she was that other one’s age.’ That was true. Cath had been a knockout – much better looking than Nat. Christ! Did she have someone else? Was that why she’d told Nat she was welcome to him? He hadn’t thought of that. All this time, while he’d been worrying and feeling guilty, she might have been having an affair of her own. Just because he no longer looked at her that way – or not very often – it didn’t mean … If only there was someone – a friend, a bloke – that he could talk to. As Cath had pointed out a couple of weeks ago, he didn’t have any friends any more. He’d drifted away from people he’d known since school and university because they no longer had anything in common or they’d moved abroad or got too rich or something, and – as Cath had also pointed out – having a bunch of people you kept meaning to have a drink with wasn’t the same thing.
He looked over at the curtains enclosing Spicer’s bed. They’d been like that since he’d been wheeled back at around ten o’clock. Now, there was a faint noise coming from behind them. It sounded like speech, but Nick couldn’t make out any words. Perhaps Cath was even now spending the first night in his – OK, their – house with her lover, who would move in, putting his things in Nick’s drawers and on Nick’s shelves, while his own belongings were stuffed into bin liners and left in the hallway for him to collect ‘at a convenient time’ (the locks having been changed). She couldn’t fucking do this to him! She couldn’t!
Spicer must be awake. Nick could ask him if that was what he’d been hinting. The ward was quiet, and there didn’t seem to be anyone at the nurses’ station. Energised by the injustice of it all, Nick peeled back the bedcovers and swung his legs over the side. He felt a bit wobbly, but he was OK. He could stand all right, and walk. He let go of the bedside locker and poked his head round the end of Spicer’s curtain.
Spicer was lying on his back, his eyes open but unfocussed, spittle at the corners of his mouth.
‘It’s me. Nick,’ he whispered.
Spicer turned his head towards him. He looked confused, and Nick wondered if he remembered who he was. ‘I never meant it,’ he murmured, hoarsely.
‘I didn’t mind. You’re probably right – what you were getting at, I mean.’
‘She wasn’t meant to be there, was she?’
‘Nat? No. I told her not to come. It couldn’t believe it when she—’
‘I didn’t know she was there.’
‘I don’t understand. She was sitting on the bed, right beside me, so—’
‘I thought it was empty.’
‘What?’
‘When I went in. I didn’t think there was anyone there.’
‘Where?’
‘I’m in the middle of it when suddenly she’s standing there. I never had time to think. She was going to phone the police. I couldn’t have that, could I?’
‘What are you talking about?’
Spicer ignored the question. ‘Just get in and out as quick as I can. If it looks like trouble, I don’t want nothing to do with it – if I’d thought she was there …’
‘Who?’
‘That woman.’
‘What woman?’
‘In the paper.’
‘What? You mean yesterday? The woman they found?’
‘She wasn’t supposed to be there, was she?’
‘Wasn’t she?’
‘No. On my life … One minute I’m by myself, next minute she’s there saying she’s calling the police, and my head just went. Next thing I know, the knife’s gone in.’
‘You killed Valerie Wiseman?’
‘I never meant to. It’s like it wasn’t me. After it happened, I just scarpered, and the next thing I know I’m reading about it in the paper, aren’t I?’
‘You were turning over her flat and she surprised you and you killed her?’
‘It’s like I said, I didn’t know what I was doing, did I? I told you, when I was in the nick I asked them to give me some help, but they never. I only ever done normal burglaries, on my life. It wasn’t my fault. I told you, she wasn’t supposed to be there.’
‘So it was her fault?’ Nick felt as if his head were about to burst. He must have raised his voice, because Spicer’s eyes widened in recognition. He had the look of someone who’d been submerged and had just broken up through the surface. Nick wondered who he thought he’d been talking to – a ghost, perhaps, a dream? ‘No,’ Spicer said now, ‘but it wasn’t the real me. Just bad luck, that’s all. It wasn’t supposed to happen.’
This wasn’t supposed to happen to me, either, thought Nick, but it did. He was vibrating, now, gripped by his fury. Spicer went to lay his left hand, drip taped in place, on his arm, but he jerked it away. ‘I’m only what society’s made me,’ Spicer whined. ‘One mistake, I get fucked off to borstal, and all I learnt there was how to commit more crimes. Well, they got what they wanted, didn’t they?’
Nick stared down at the close-cropped head, the glittering eyes. ‘It happens to all of us, mate,’ continued Spicer. ‘Life. You get fucking ambushed.’
How dare you, thought Nick. You’re a murderer. I’m nothing like you. Nothing at all.
‘Women,’ said Spicer. He was wheezing badly now, clutching at breath between the words. ‘Kids. Cancer. Every fucking thing. Load of shit. I tell you, mate, it wasn’t the real me done that. It just happened before I could stop it. If they’d just give me some help when I’d asked. You know what it’s like – things get away from you.’
I don’t know, thought Nick. I’m not like you.
‘You can’t help it. Like you and your missus and that –’ Nick turned away for a moment, re-traced the two steps to his bed, then back again – ‘and before you know it, you’re fucked, aren’t you? And you never meant none of it …’
Spicer’s chest heaved as he tried to refill his remaining lung. Nat had said she wanted to call the baby Willow if it was a girl. In another burst of fury, Nick suddenly imagined the word tattooed on his own chest, the letters in slightly gothic script, curving over one nipple, as Spicer had Ashlee, complete with spelling mistake, and – Christ All Fucking Mighty – Briana.
Nick could never entirely explain it afterwards, but he always told himself – the only person who knew – that that was what had tipped him over. That that was when, as Spicer himself would have said, his head just went. Briana. ‘I’m not like you,’ he’d said to Spicer. ‘Don’t you understand? I. Am. Nothing. Like. You. At. All.’ Then, holding the pillow he’d taken from his own bed over Spicer’s face, he pressed down hard until the struggling stopped.