Page 85 of Big Nick Energy
I wait until he disappears then head down to the basement office again. I don’t know what to do. I can’t stay. I don’t doubt that Nick upstairs likes me. We’ve had sex, he’s been generous and reasonable company, but I know now he doesn’t love me. I think I may have been a rebound, someone to fill a gap and possibly make Neve jealous. The ballet, eh? At least that was fun though. I’d never been to the ballet. And it’s then I suddenly think of the other Nick. And I realise I shouldn’t refer to him now as the other Nick. Maybe he was always the only Nick.
I need to get out of here, don’t I? I hear the doorbell upstairs and more guests being greeted. I don’t think I would be too conspicuous slipping out now, but then I also don’t want to cause a scene at somebody else’s party. It should be a quiet departure, I should slink out of here. I look around. There’s a window that leads out onto the street. Through there maybe? I look at the angles of it to see if I would fit. That could work.
I grab a chair from the desk and step onto it, holding the window open as I push my coat out first. This will be easy, just push myself up and slide through, like some Cirque du Soleil contortionist. Girl, you’ve fit through a Christmas tree netting machine before, you can do this. I suck in my stomach and hoist myself up, putting my head through the window, the cold air prickling my face. But something’s wrong. Is it the angle? Is it my boobs? I try and push myself through. Please. No. I kick my legs like a small child. You’re not underwater, you don’t need propulsion, you need a crowbar. And just like that, a shrill alarm suddenly sounds in my ear, and I hear footsteps down the stairs to the basement.
Shit.
THIRTY-SIX
Eight years may have passed but it seems that they’ve still not updated the carpet in Nick’s room. It’s still a deep blue, a shade that resembles the colour of the deepest part of the sea. I look down at it and my bare feet. Yes, they had to remove my shoes as three grown men from the Christmas party hoisted me out of a downstairs window. I sit on the edge of Nick’s bed, waiting because I also tore my jumpsuit so to really compound all my embarrassment, I will likely have to leave here wearing his mother’s clothes. The door opens and Nick returns with a pile of clothes in his hands.
‘So we have options,’ he tells me. ‘We have pyjamas, yoga pants, a tracksuit and a sweatshirt that I once bought her that has the Statue of Liberty on.’
Oh great, a souvenir from New York. I point to the sweatshirt quietly and he throws it in my direction. I put it over my shoulders and let the fleece lining hug my skin.
‘I also brought us some supplies,’ he says, pulling out some canapés and a half-full bottle of champagne from out of his underarm. He comes to sit down next to me and puts a hand on top of mine.
‘Was it my Uncle Phil? I know he’s handsy,’ he says.
I’m still bathing in the shame of my failed escape but the shock of what I heard upstairs still overwhelms. ‘It was actually your cousin, Sean.’
‘Was he lechy?’
‘Nick, he told me all about Neve. Maybe a bit too much about Neve,’ I say pretty directly.
The mirth drops from Nick’s face and he stares down into his inky-blue carpet, trying to find the words. ‘Oh… Kay, look…’
‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ I ask, less angry, more incredulous that he wouldn’t share news that monumental with me. ‘That’s a horrible thing to happen to anyone, Nick. When was the wedding?’
‘May,’ he whispers. ‘She didn’t show up. She sent her dad with a note. I didn’t even get an apology.’
‘Nick…’ I say quietly. ‘I can see why you thought she was up her own sphincter then.’ He doesn’t laugh. ‘That’s incredibly awful of her and I’m sorry that happened to you.’
He still can’t make eye contact with me and I can sense he feels guilty that he never told me about any of it, that in the last month or so, our relationship, which I thought felt safe and easy, lacked some truth.
‘I have a question,’ I say, trying to break the silence. ‘Was itherscrunchie?’
He nods. I hope he didn’t do strange things with the scrunchie as he was obsessing over her.
‘I have thrown that away now though.’
‘Good.’
‘And at the Natural History Museum, when you disappeared, was it something to do with her?’
He side-eyes me. The thing about me, Nick Coles, is that I’m not just a pretty face with a ridiculous head of hair. I’m sometimes Jessica fucking Fletcher. ‘Possibly,’ he says sheepishly. ‘She saw me there with you and she got angry. I’mnot sure why when she was the one who didn’t want me, but we had it out by the blue whale.’
‘Sean filled me in about the ballet.’
He sits there in a place between shame and fear that I’m eventually going to kick off about all of this. ‘I didn’t know she was going to be there.’ I pull a face. ‘Well, I had an inkling.’ He returns the same face to me, one of ick and sadness. ‘I enjoyed the ballet though with you. And the bar with all the plants. It was a nice evening.’
I stare at a point on the wall. It was a lovely memory until about two minutes ago.
‘We weren’t stalking her at ice skating? Harrods?’ I ask him tentatively, trying to work out if all of this was a huge charade to follow another woman around London.
He sits up immediately and looks at me. ‘Christ, no. I’m sad but not that sad. Some of it was very genuine. I remembered you liked ice skating, Harrods felt like a big gesture for someone who I thought deserved it. I mean, we also had excellent sex and I wasn’t pretending about any of that. I do like you, Kay. A lot.’
‘I like you too. It’s just not…’
