Kate opens her eyes again as Nick turns to her with a radiant smile.
‘Fourteen across, it’s Contiguous!’ he says, holding the paper out to her like a winning lottery ticket.
She smiles and reaches over to ruffle his hair but the plane makes a sudden dramatic lurch and she grabs his hand instead. He gives her fingers a gentle squeeze. She imagines their entwined hands growing into old people’s hands together, their skin getting wrinkled, age-marked. Old age would be more tolerable with Nick by her side.
Last month at a friend’s wedding Nick had drunk a lot and in the cab home had confessed he wanted them to have three children. He’d patted her tummy tenderly, then rested his head in her lap.
‘The only thing you’ll hear in there is wedding cake,’ she’d said, trying not to dwell on the fact that her ovaries were fast approaching their use-by date.
‘I know I’m drunk, Kate Parker, but I utterly love every part of you, I do.’
The feeling is entirely mutual.
*
By the time Kate and Nick reach San Marcel, a tiny village ten minutes from a slightly larger village, the sun is blazingly hot in a deep blue sky. They stop for provisions, drawn to one store by the sweet, buttery aroma of freshly baking brioche. They linger at a counter sampling ripe cheeses, speckled salamis and glistening inky olives, emerging with bags brim full of jars and bottles, fresh herbs and ripe peaches.
They head to Kavita’s place, a simple two-bed farmhouse with a large terrace and, best of all, an icy-cold pool. Nick throws on his trunks and jumps into the water while Kate takes her case to the main bedroom to fish out her H&M bikini. She’s never invested in expensive swimwear – why bother? No feat of wardrobe engineering, no high-cut leg could hide the fact that Kate has a normal female body: a big bottom, cellulite and a relationship with gravity entirely in keeping with her age. Thank goodness she’ll never again have to be naked for the first time in front of a new man.
She checks the mirror again. Insecurity is so boring at her age. Plus there’s not much she can do in the next two minutes about being seven pounds overweight. As Rita always says, ‘Focus on the positives – if you can find them.’ Kate’s hair looks good – caramel brown, shoulder-length and slightly wavy. She takes off her sunglasses. Her eyes, somewhat red from the early start, are still her best feature – greeny-grey and almond-shaped, with an inquisitive look she’s inherited from her father. She wipes a nudge of sleep away, grabs her sarong and wraps it tightly around her.
Nick is sitting in the shade, crossword in hand. ‘Get in the water, babe. It’s amazing.’ And it is. Though the initial shock is intense, within moments it’s bliss. Kate swims a few lengths, climbs out and arranges herself and her new Anne Tyler novel on the lounger beside him, letting her body sink down into the chair as the heat warms her limbs.
As the day ends they eat out on the terrace, enjoying the last of the sun – a simple tuna salad with green beans and a handful of ripe tomatoes, a fresh, crusty baguette with magnificent French butter and a bottle of chilled rosé. Nick looks at her with a smile of pure joy. She reaches out a finger to straighten his unruly right eyebrow. He pulls her close for a kiss, then another.
How lucky is she? Four more days of reading, sunbathing and jumping into an aquamarine pool – four more days of nothing but sheer happiness.
Chapter Three
THEY ARE LYING IN BED on the second night when Nick tells Kate he feels a strong urge to withdraw.
Kate is confused.
They’ve just had sex, and at first she thinks he’s making a rather weak joke, but searching again she cannot find a punchline. The sex that night had been good for her, but she’d felt Nick’s attention drifting. She refuses to take this personally; Nick’s been unemployed far longer than he’d anticipated – it’s natural he’s preoccupied.
‘Um, what do you mean, withdraw?’ she says, trying to sound calm.
‘I don’t know,’ he says sadly and his shoulder blades shift with discomfort. ‘It’s just my gut . . . says retreat.’
‘Retreat . . .?’
He shrugs apologetically, his brow furrowing. ‘I’ve been feeling funny about us . . . for a week or so . . .’
A week or so? Has he?
‘It’s here.’ He touches his solar plexus. ‘When I think about the future it feels . . . weird.’
Hang on, why is he talking like this? He’s not trying to lay the groundwork for a break-up, is he? ‘Maybe you’re anxious about work?’ she says, trying to ignore the sick feeling rising in her own body. ‘Anyone would be anxious about that.’
‘I’m totally relaxed about work.’
Then why were you up half the night last Friday grinding your teeth so loudly you woke me? she thinks.
She pauses. What is going on? ‘Oh Nick, this must be linked to you asking me to move in.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, you’ve never even lived with a woman, apart from that moody flatmate you were obsessed with at college . . .’
‘Jo? You think Jo’s moody?’
Jo is dreary verging on morose, but that’s not the point. ‘It’s that thing you do, Nick! Running away. Just like with Tom Brady.’
‘Tom Brady?’
‘OK, listen,’ she says, holding up her finger in an attempt to hold her line of argument. She can pull this back. ‘You adore American football, you’ve repeatedly tried to explain the dumb rules to me—’
‘Wow, first Jo and now American football?’
‘Look: earlier this year when the Patriots were in the Super Bowl final—’
‘The final is the Super Bowl.’
‘That’s what I just said.’
‘No, I meant it’s only the final that’s called the Super Bowl.’
‘Listen to me: when Tom Brady and your guys were losing at half-time—’
‘Please . . .’ he says, looking pained.
‘Exactly! You thought they’d lose, so even though you’ve been loyal all season, rather than stick by them when it counts, you chicken out and go to bed. It’s the Super Bowl final!’
‘It’s the Super Bowl.’
‘Yes, I know, Nick, do you get my point?’
‘Not really.’
‘Discomfort is something you clearly can’t handle.’ Kate is a master of discomfort; frankly, it’s where she’s most comfortable. ‘Nick, even when you love something, you bolt, you’re not a finisher – seventh season, Game of Thrones? And that book thing? Because the Patriots made the greatest comeback ever and you missed it because you were scared,’ she says, more calmly than she feels, but in her stride now. ‘This is a classic man-wobble because we’re progressing to the next stage in our relationship.’
‘Kate,’ he says, and in the half-light of the moonlit bedroom she can see there are tears in his eyes. ‘I think asking you to move in has made me realise that while I love our time together, I’m equally happy watching TV on my own.’
Oof. It hits Kate in her abdomen as fiercely as if he’d done it with his fist.
‘But I’ve never asked you to choose between me and your TV,’ she says, bewildered. ‘It’s not an either/or, is it?’
‘I guess not . . .’
‘Nick, is this your way of telling me you don’t want us to move in together at all?’
He looks at her with confusion. ‘Definitely not – just at the moment,’ he says with genuine sadness, and while her instinct is to reach out and comfort him, the anger she feels at his feebleness fixes her rigidly in place.
He reaches for her hand and squeezes it apologetically.
She lies in shock for a few minutes, then realises that nothing Nick has said is in any way acceptable to her. She’s about to resume their conversation, but turns to see that Nick has already fallen into a deep, and largely untroubled, sleep.
*
To be fair, Nick does have a great TV. It’s a top-of-the-range Sony HD with a huge clear screen, excellent speakers and Trilumi
nos technology, which sounds like a word marketeers have invented to sell women cosmetics. Kate has lain on Nick’s sofa countless times, cuddled up with him watching that TV in domestic bliss. Now she lies beside him in bed, her skin blazing from sunburn, her insides churning up. She’s hoping he’ll leap up, apologise and say he didn’t mean a word of it. Kate is prone to hoping for things that statistically could happen but definitely won’t.
Realising she’s only getting angrier by the minute, she takes herself off to Kavita’s daughter’s bedroom, places a collection of Peppa Pigs carefully on the bedside table, then crawls into the single bed. She lies in the dark, adrenaline coursing through her. What the actual . . . ? He asked her to move in with him two weeks ago! It had meant so much to her. Kate hasn’t done anything wrong since, has she? And why had she gone on and on about him not being a finisher? He’s just finished with her.
No, that is not what just happened. Nick is having a commitment-wobble, pure and simple. It’s 2.30 a.m. She’s exhausted, confused, stunned, upset. She’ll wait till the morning. Things will look brighter then.
Chapter Four
THINGS DON’T LOOK ANY brighter in the light.
Kate wakes from a fitful sleep, reaches for Nick and instead finds a fluffy toy pig wearing a pink velvet dress.
She tiptoes to the main bedroom. There he is, gently snoring, his elegant feet poking out from the bottom of the sheet. His cheeks are a touch sunburnt, but apart from that he looks as peaceful and content as an eight-year-old who’s passed out after lots of birthday cake and an epic session on a bouncy castle.
She crawls back to the single bed, doubled over in pain.
*
It’s Thursday, 6.50 a.m. They fly home on Saturday. She googles her options. An earlier flight will be four hundred euros, plus she’s not insured on the hire car, and a cab to the airport will be another hundred euros. Five hundred euros to flee, which might be premature and melodramatic anyway?
Should she insist Nick leave? He can’t afford that flight either – not that this should be her concern in the circumstances, but still. Nick is not a bad person. He cannot be dumping her. Not on holiday, not the week they move in together, not when it’s her friend Pete’s insanely glamorous wedding next month, not when she’s turning forty in December. No, no, no – inconceivable that he’d pull this shit right now.
She closes her eyes and tries to calm herself. Nick has never shown any signs of being unreliable. And yet he did do that really flaky thing the other day . . . She’d finally persuaded him to read a Kate Atkinson, but he’d abandoned the novel on page 146 because he didn’t like one minor character. Ridiculous, to get so far and then ditch it. Kate finds it impossible to abandon books, even bad ones – it feels disloyal; maybe the book will improve, maybe the time invested will ultimately not prove wasted.
Nick’s action had bothered her disproportionately at the time. It spoke of a lack of perseverance, an ability to detach too readily. And now, if she looks at his behavioural patterns, his lack of long-term relationships, his refusal to attach to people, the whole Tom Brady fiasco – it makes sense, it’s all the same thing and it’s all his weird parents’ fault!
No, no, no, no, no. Abandoning a book is not a crime, even if it is a Kate Atkinson, and it’s in no way relevant to her current situation. She’s being insane. They are happy, she profoundly believes in their mutual happiness because she has seen and felt it every day. Nick is stable, he is loyal – though perhaps more loyal to his telly than to her . . .
Now the tears are rolling sideways annoyingly into her ears. She mustn’t cry, she’s overreacting, they’re happy, they’re solid, this will be OK.
*
Kate’s problems are now threefold: firstly she worries that anything she says to Nick to point out his insanity will sound like she’s begging. Secondly, an unfortunate part of her psychological make-up means that her instinct is to run towards pain, rather than from it; Nick has hurt her, therefore Nick must mend her. And, finally, she knows she should be ‘breezy’ in order not to freak him out, but when her tears come they come in giant crashing waves.
The strength of her reaction takes them both by surprise. Of course she’s devastated by what he said. She loves Nick. He makes her laugh every day, cooks chorizo burritos as midnight feasts, gets on with all her friends.
Something larger has been triggered, though. She’s not good with sudden abandonment. She thinks this is due to the trauma of her father’s death, though her mother thinks Kate should have reconciled herself to that loss twenty years ago.
But perhaps the reason this pain is so intense is more to do with her future than her past. It’s taken thirty-nine years for Kate to find someone she loves this much – if Nick wants out, will she ever find love again?
It’s unbearable being trapped here with him in the middle of nowhere. She hasn’t smoked for years, she’s not planning to start again, but she desperately needs a cigarette to make it through the next forty-eight hours; just one cigarette. She’s heading out to the village that afternoon to buy a pack but at the front door Nick rushes over and insists on walking with her. He holds her hand there and back, and even brings up the plans for Pete’s wedding. Is Nick pretending last night never happened?
She must tread softly, mustn’t frighten him, but his confusion is making her insane. She gently asks whether he’s expecting her to move in at some later stage, or whether last night was his cack-handed attempt at a break-up, but the minute she asks he shuts down again.
‘All I know is that for now I want to retreat.’
‘To your TV?’ she says in despair.
He looks at her forlornly.
If he thinks she’s going to try to compete with Triluminos, he can think again.
Anger turns to sadness, turns to pain, then back to shock, as the hours get longer and longer.
*
How can he just sit there on the next sun lounger doing his crossword, entirely oblivious?
She sits smoking her way through Friday’s second pack of Gauloises, feeling anger rise again. Still another twenty-two and a half hours before they can leave for the airport, and she’s supposed to just sit here pretending nothing’s wrong? The rage mixes with the smoke; she swallows both and chokes. Her cough makes Nick look up with a questioning smile.
‘Nicholas,’ she says, taking another deep drag. She mustn’t show anger – no, no anger, that’s never allowed. ‘I know you’re not experienced at relationships, but here’s some advice,’ she says, poking her cigarette at him. ‘You’re not meant to pull this confused crap on holiday . . .’ Oh no, a wave of sadness is rising in her throat, making her voice wobble; more tears are imminent.
He puts the crossword down, then reaches over and pats her shoulder that way he does that irritates her. It’s how you’d pat a dog if you were really more of a cat person. ‘It’s fine, Kate, please don’t be embarrassed. In fact, it’s great to see this sort of emotion. It’s not something I’ve ever seen before.’
She stares at him in dismay. Perhaps she’s been going out with a lifelike robot this whole entire time.
*
The day they’re due to fly home, Kate wakes at 2 a.m. She is confused and in pain. Tiptoeing once more to Nick’s room in the hope of discovering him perhaps standing at the window, mournful, his torment finally kicking in, her heart sinks as she sees him again fast asleep, his face untroubled.
But looking more closely, she sees he is hugging his pillow tightly, crushing it to his chest as though clinging on for dear life.
Chapter Five
HOW HAS THIS EVEN HAPPENED? Kate stares glumly out of the plane window, her jaw set tight.
She’s being punished for allowing herself to feel safe. Recently she’s been noticing the amount of unhappy-looking single women her age, always jogging at the weekends, or in jazzily printed yoga gear, and she’s felt . . . not smugness, but a sense of relief that she was finally out of dangerous waters and on dry land.
Well, more fool her.
The thought of life without Nick’s sense of humour, his sweetness, his chicken cacciatore, ices her veins. Her friends are all happily married, or unhappily married but in denial, or divorced and doing half-marathons and online dating. Kate hates running as much as she hates Tinder. Work will provide no respite. Living with Melanie forever, tea bags and wet-porridge clags in the sink, brutal dates with men who cant apostrophise . . .
She has zero appetite for starting over. The thought of going back out there again at her age causes a bubble of self-pity to rise up so violently she almost pukes.
She turns to Nick, but he’s sitting there next to her, eyes closed, headphones on, mouthing along to every word of Springsteen’s Born To Run.
*
Back at Stansted the weather is muggy and overcast. Kate feels sweat forming under her arms.
‘So . . . what now?’ she says with trepidation. ‘Shall I come and get my books tomorrow?’
‘They’re fine where they are.’ He smiles gently.
‘But . . . what are we doing?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Nick, if you don’t want to live with me now, does that mean you don’t want to live with me full stop?’
‘That’s not what it means.’
‘Then what does it mean?’
‘It means . . . I’m confused.’
‘Are we over?’
‘No . . . I don’t know . . .’
‘Well, when will you know?’
He shrugs. ‘I . . . I don’t . . .’
She needs to separate herself from this craziness before she goes mad. ‘I have to get home.’
‘Are you not taking the train with me?’ he says in surprise, swinging his bag over his shoulder.
The Woman Who Wanted More Page 2
