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 remindingmyself 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.
