‘The two of you scare each other, that’s your problem.’
‘Is it?’ I said, wearily.
‘Yes. You remind each other of what you lost.’
‘I don’t need reminding of that.’
‘No, you don’twantreminding. That’s a very different thing.’ She gave me a pained frown. ‘Have you considered how you and Nick are even going to cope together on this shoot?’
‘It’s crossed my mind.’
‘An entire month together, acting out someone else’s love story … ’
‘We’ll get through it.’
‘Will you?’
‘We will, Mum.’
‘Have you talked about it?’
‘We don’t need to. We know what we’re doing.’
Her frown deepened. ‘I hope you’re right.’
So do I, I thought.
So do I, I think again now, looking sideways at Nick as he turns the wheel, negotiating a rut in Doverley’s driveway. Mum wasn’t exaggerating when she said we’ve barely seen one another lately. Until now, other than for the fortnight we spent rehearsing in September, we haven’t been together since May, when I got home from my shoot in South Africa. Even then, I was only in LA for a few days before I left again for Sicily, where Felix Jade, not Nick, played my love interest on a steamy HBO series that ran well over schedule, obligingly consuming my every waking moment for all of June, then July, and a goodchunk of August, too. (Mum’s wrong: you absolutely can run from grief.) Nick, meanwhile, spent the summer doing some running of his own, going full kelter on preparation for this movie: travelling back and forth to this estate, dressing every day in uniform, eating from an RAF canteen menu, drinking warm beer. He’s even learnt to fly a Lancaster, for God’s sake.
The tabloids have been all over his exploits, and our long separation, too, speculating as to whether we’reon,oroff, and reprinting all their gut-wrenching paparazzi shots of me at the start of the year,before South Africa, with red circles drawn around my curved stomach. Was I ever pregnant, they’ve demanded. (Yes, I was. Twenty weeks, in fact.) Badly bloated? (Possibly that, too.) Can I even have children? (Apparently not any more, no.) They ran plenty of other photos, besides: of Nick, whenever he hit a bar, reliving his twenties, surrounded by crowds of gorgeous women; then just as many of me, in a bikini in Sicily, entangled with Felix – filming, but what does that matter to them?
And have Nick and I talked about those photos?
Yes, we actually have. I’ve tried to convince him that there was nothing in the Sicily shots, just like he’s tried to convince me that he never gave a second look to any of those women he was pictured with.Surely you believe that.I haven’t known what to believe. I’m not sure Nick has either. For the first time in our three-year relationship, I’ve lost faith in the trust between us, and I hate it.
I let out a sigh.
Nick hears. I see that, from the way his eyes flick towards me.
He doesn’t ask me what’s wrong though. He hasn’t said much the entire way up from London, and we’ve been driving for almost four hours.
He stayed over at Mum and Phil’s in Highgate last night. I wasn’t planning to see him. He’s been holed up here again thispast week,immersing.But Phil suggested I invite him down,he’s probably just waiting for you to, and in fairness, Nick did agree to come pretty much instantly when I called him. He took Phil and my sisters out flying yesterday afternoon whilst Mum and I were up on Parliament Hill. Lisa, fifteen and painfully shy, was sick, but Hannah, eighteen and loudly loving life, adored it. Phil did too. They were buzzing when Mum and I got back to the house. We found them in the kitchen, opening a bottle of wine, whilst poor Lisa was hiding in her bedroom, mortified because she’d vomited in front of Nick Turner.
‘You don’t always have to use his surname when you talk about him, you know,’ I said, when I took her up some tea.
‘It’s impossible not to,’ she said. Then, peeking out from beneath her duvet, ‘Did he tell you I got sick on his shoe?’
‘No,’ I lied. ‘And he’s had worse, believe me.’
In the end, Nick came up too, and was the one to cajole Lisa into resurfacing, fabricating a story about how sick he’d been on his first flight, all over the instructor. It really made Lisa laugh.
He made an effort all night: helping Phil cook dinner, asking Mum about her work; even remembering the name of the school she’s a counsellor at. Hannah, heading out to a club, was thrilled because he not only played taxi to her and her mates, but he got them into the club without queuing, then opened a tab for them at the bar.
‘It was so good, Claude,’ Hannah slurred, when she stumbled back into the kitchen at three, a half-eaten kebab in hand. Nick was out for the count upstairs, but I, sincerely jetlagged, was on my laptop at the table, conducting another fruitless search for a picture of Iris. She hasn’t left anything of herself behind. Not even a death certificate. ‘He’s a keeper. Don’t forget that, will you?’
I told Nick she’d said that as we were walking out to the car this morning. He’d been trying so hard, I wanted to give him something to make him happy.
‘You’ve got a super fan,’ I said.
