Page 13 of Conviction
She’s short and slim with long fair hair. She’s almost swallowed up by all the other reporters, cameras and boom mics surrounding her. I remember her now, her name’s Brittany or Whitney or one of those all American kind of names. Her eyes are blue, and she gives me a small smile before she asks her question. I remember now why I liked her before, she saw us as humans when she’s interviewed us in the past. We weren’t just a commodity, she seemed genuinely interested. The photographer that was with her that day was a tall skinny girl, covered in tattoos and she introduced her to us as her wife, Charlotte or Charlie, something like that. I’ve no idea why I’m sitting here thinking all of this right now. Maybe it’s better than thinking about anything else.
“Reed, just wanted to say to you and the rest of the boys from Shift how sorry I am for your loss.” I nod my head and try to say thank you, but my mouth is so dry that my lips move, but no sound comes out. “Is it true that it was you that found Jet this morning and that he took his own life?” The image of Jet lying at the bottom of his blood-filled bath suddenly flashes into my head, and I can’t breathe. His eyes were open wide and staring right at me, just like my mum, just like Miles. I look at Gunner, then at Lawson, but I can’t get any words out. I push back on my chair but stand too soon, and the table tilts as my knees hit it. I still can’t breathe. I can breathe out, I just can’t get a breath in. A jug of water and the glasses start sliding to the floor. Cameras start flashing, and the noise, the shouting and the questions start again. I just need to get away from all of it.
Lawson and Gun are at my sides and guide me out of the conference room and straight into the lift. I can hear them talking and asking if I’m okay, but the sound is muffled like I’m underwater. I bend over and stare at the floor, trying to focus on getting some air into my lungs.
“Fuck,” I manage to say as I stand up straight.
The lift door opens, and I hear Lawson say, “I’ve had all your stuff moved to my room, Reed. I didn’t think you’d want to stay in there.” He gestures with his chin toward my old room. I both shake and nod my head, as I’m unsure of what the appropriate answer is. He opens the door to his suite with the key card, and I rush through to the bathroom and hurl into the toilet. The bourbon I drank earlier burns my throat on its way back up. My stomach now feels as empty as my chest and my heart. I splash my face with water and rinse my mouth.
As I step back out into the suite, Gunner, Lawson, Dom, Amanda, Chelsea and Jade are all in the room. Dom passes me a shot glass full of vodka, I knock it back. That’s the last thing I really remember until my feet touchdown in England a week later.
My fork is in frontof my face with a small piece of salmon and rocket sitting on it. I’m not sure if my mouth is open, but it most certainly should be as I stare in disbelief at my husband. I can’t believe the complete and utter bullshit he’s spewing to a potential client right now.
“We’ve thought about it on and off over the last few years.” He turns to me. “Haven’t we darling?” I look at him blankly and place my knife and fork down. The little appetite I had, gone in an instant. “But to be perfectly honest,” Marcus continues, “we like our life the way it is. We have a nice home, we enjoy our jobs and like to be able to take off for a holiday any time we want. Starting a family would change all of that.”
I look down at my plate and swallow past the lump that’s just appeared in my throat for some reason. Actually, the bullshitting virus my husband permanently seems to be suffering from must be spreading, because that’s a big fat lie I just told myself. I know full well why the lump has appeared in my throat. It appears every time a conversation starts up around the topic of having children. The instant the words family, children, baby or pregnant are mentioned around me, it appears, that lump, that tightening in my chest and then it starts. It’s like my blood turns to ice but not liquid ice. No, no, more like little jagged crystals of ice, sharp and pointy. Scratching their way through my veins. It starts at my toes and works its way through my body until the sharp, cold, pointy pieces push through the chambers of my heart. All the while, images of him… of us… of that afternoon and night flash through my mind. Images of when he left me all alone with my fear, my pain and the blood, so much blood.Who would’ve thought that there’d be so much blood?
“So what is it you do for work, Nina?” Charlotte Walters asks me. I pick up my napkin and dab at my mouth and above my top lip, which is probably displaying beads of sweat after my freak out of a few seconds ago. I look up at Charlotte, and her brown eyes meet mine, she gives me a slight smile, and I have the distinct feeling that she knows that I was just now on the verge of a psychological breakdown… I seem to always be on the edge of some kind of breakdown when I’m around my husband or brother, or parents.
“I have a chain of four, hair, beauty and day spa salons.” Her eyebrows raise with a look of surprise, but before she can speak, Marcus interrupts us, “Keeps her busy and out of trouble, doesn’t it sweets?” I don’t even look at him. I know I’ll be in trouble later. I know he’ll throw a little hissy fit about the fact that the conversation has steered to the topic of my career and hasn’t been all about him. My husband is an egomaniacal arsehole sometimes, but I know how to calm him down, I’m an expert at stroking his ego.
“Just one night, just forone fucking night, could the conversation not have ended up being all about you?”
I stare out of the window of the taxi, not bothering to face him as I reply, “Charlotte asked what I did, so I answered. Besides, it was you that mentioned how much we bothloveour careers.” I use air quotes and finally turn around and face him.
“Well, it doesn’t set a good impression telling them the truth. I know Andre Walters, he would see it as a sign of weakness. I want his business, and the last thing I need him to be thinking is that I’m weak.” It’s Marcus’s turn to stare out of the window now.
“Just tell them it’s me. Tell anyone that you need to thatI’mthe one with the fertility problem,I’mthe one that can’t conceive.”
“Well, let’s face it Nina, there’s a bloody good chance thatisthe case.” He remains staring out the window, oblivious to the effect his words have on me. I wipe the tears from under my eyes and stay silent for the rest of the journey home.
Itake off my makeupand clean my teeth. I’ve kept my bra, knickers and hold-up stockings on and hopefully, this will provide enough incentive for my husband to show me some attention. It’s been almost three weeks… three whole weeks since we last made love. Since we had any kind of sexual contact really, apart from the odd kiss on the cheek. Marcus has never been particularly affectionate, but now, now I feel more like his sister than his wife and lover.
I climb into bed and press myself into him from behind. Sliding my stockinged toes, up and down his leg and my hand around his hip trying to reach into his boxers. He grabs my hand, takes it in both of his and brings it up to his mouth and kisses the back of it.
“Go to sleep, Nina. It’s late, I’m tired. I’ll sort you out in the morning before I go to golf.”
My heart sinks and tears once again sting my eyes from his words… ‘He’ll sort me out in the morning?’ Like he was doing me some kind of massive favour? Like being a thirty-one-year-old woman and wanting to have sex with your thirty-five-year-old husband, after a night out together was a ridiculous notion. What was wrong with me? What was it he found so repugnant, that despite the fact that I was lying here next to him, wearing my black, lacy, Victoria’s Secret underwear and stockings, my husband wasn’t even interested in turning around and looking at me, let alone giving me a goodnight kiss, or heaven forbid, fucking me?
Fuck.
Fucking.
Marcus and I have never fucked, that wasn’t his style. Actually, he didn’t really have a style, or rhythm for that matter. In the eight years we’d been married, he’d never once given me an orgasm. I managed them often enough on my own. Either by touching myself or by using my super duper, thrusting butterfly vibrator. But I wanted my husband to make me come. I wanted my husband to take his time, to lick and suck and fuck me to an earth-shattering, leg shaking, clit twitching orgasm. Instead, all I usually got was three thrusts, a squeeze of my tit and a grunt to let me know it was all over.
I know that sex isn’t everything. But if he just paid mesomekind of attention, if he could onlynoticeme as a person, just once, it might help me not to feel so alone and so lonely. All I wanted was to feel loved and desired by my husband. He told me he loved me every day. He told me I was beautiful all the time, but he never showed it, he never made me feel it. He’d chased me for so long before we were together, almost begging me to go out with him and yet, when I finally said yes, it was like all the fight and passion he displayed while trying to convince me to go for a drink or to dinner with him, just vanished.
I should never have married him! It was my own fault, I knew what I was in for. Our sex life was passionless from the very first awkward attempt, and I didn’t love him, not then, and I’m not really sure that I do now. But then my brother stepped in, bringing up my past indiscretion, threatening to take my story to the papers. Knowing full well the damage that might possibly do to my newly flourishing business and my mother’s political career. Then he pulled his trump card. He’d loaned me sixty thousand pounds when I set up the first salon with Sophie, and if I didn’t marry Marcus, he wanted it back, in full.
Much to my parent's absolutedisgust, instead of staying in school until I was eighteen and taking my A levels, I’d left at just sixteen and found myself a job at a local hair salon. I’d never had any desire to be a hairdresser. After the way my life had changed on that New Year’s Eve, and Conner had made the choices he had, never attempting to contact me again despite the letters I’d sent to him, I’d become a little lost and rebellious. I wasn’t really sure what direction to take with my life, I just knew I needed to be on a path that I had a lot more control over. A path where I didn’t need to rely too much on other people.
I was desperately hurt and heartbroken inside, but curling up into a ball and crying all day wasn’t going to change anything. So I left school and took the first job that was offered to me. I did a three-month trial and discovered that hairdressing was what I was born to do. I finished my apprenticeship, did a further two years as a stylist, and then went into partnership with Sophie buying our own salon. Soph’s parents were great. They lent her the money she needed for her share of the setup. My parents quite literally laughed in my face, and the bank did something very similar. My brother then stepped in and offered to lend me the money… as long as I agreed to go on a date with Marcus. Little did I know I was selling my soul to the devil.
Pearce and Marcus worked together at Marcus’s dad’s law firm. When Marcus’s dad retired, Marcus would be put in charge, and Pearce was hoping to be made partner. Me dating the boss’s son would be doing him a massive favour apparently. What I wasn’t expecting was for Marcus to propose just six months later. I was twenty-two at the time, and I didn’t want to get married.
All of my energy was spent on building my business. I explained all of this to him, and at the time, seemed to take it well enough and respected my decision. I didn’t want to hurt him, but I just didn’t love him. It was that simple. I was still numb inside from everything that had gone down with Conner and to make it worse, he was starting to make it big with his band ‘Shift’ and as happy as I was for him, it hurt, it hurt so fucking much.
I’d see his face on the cover of the magazines that we had in the salon, and I’d feel so much pride in the fact that he’d turned his life around and done so well, but I was also a little bitter. We had such plans. I’d really believed that we were so in love, but he just left me lying in that hospital, and despite all of the phone calls that were made, he chose to go out and sell drugs with his brother and had almost gotten himself killed. I don’t know all of the exact details of what went on that night, I was high on the morphine that’d been pumped through my system. When I heard he’d been arrested and then remanded, I sent a couple of letters off to him, just asking for an explanation as to why he’d chosen to do that and to not be with me. He never replied. So I took that as a blatant knockback and decided to move on with my life. I deleted his number from my phone, buried the hurt, the sense of loss and betrayal deep down inside of me and carved out a new life for myself.
