Problem is I don’t know what I want.
I wish we could talk properly. I wish you would let me come and see you.
I should just tell her. I’m going to be in New York tomorrow. I’ll meet you at the Plaza, for cocktails. But I don’t.
Have to go, Alex. Talk soon.
I open my resolutions file, yet again.
1.Get in touch with Aidan re job offer Talk to old ? BBC contacts about work Email Aidan to decline ? job offer – ask that he no longer callsIgnore Aidan, talk to old BBC contacts about work
2. Lose half a stone
3.Stop taking the pill – or at least admit to Dom that I’m still taking itTell Dom I’m still on the pill and am not ready for a baby
4.Repaint the kitchenRead more! Read everything on 2011 Booker shortlist. And 2012 shortlist. When it comes out.
5.Sort out things with DadMake an effort to see Dad regularly – monthly dinners?
I hear Dom coming up the stairs, so I close the file, close my Hotmail account and click on the file containing my notes from the meeting with Annie. Have I always been so secretive? Dom pops his head around the door.
‘You want tea, love?’
‘I’m all right, cheers,’ I reply, picking up the half-full wine glass which is on the bedside table.
‘You going to pack tonight?’
‘I was thinking of leaving it until the morning,’ I say.
‘We need to be at the airport at nine, Nic. That means leaving here at seven-thirty.’
‘Eight.’
‘Seven-thirty.’
‘Geez, all right then.’
I pull a chair over to the wardrobe and climb on top of it in order to get the suitcases from the top shelf. As I pull my case out, I manage to shift one of the boxes that we packed back into the cupboard on Boxing Day. It comes crashing to the ground, its contents spilling out onto the floor. As I clamber down to pick everything up, Dom comes running into the room.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Fine, just clumsy.’
He gives me a hand collecting together the papers and photographs. Once we’re done, I notice a little strip of paper under the chair I’d been using as a stepladder. Dom and I both go to pick it up at once, we bang our heads together, we start laughing. He gets to the bit of paper first. It’s the photo strip, the one I noticed on Boxing Day. Me, Julian and Alex in 1999. We got it done at Aldgate East Station, a few days after we moved into the flat off Brick Lane.
‘That’s weird,’ Dom says, placing the strip back into the box.
‘Don’t,’ I say, ‘don’t put it away.’ I take it from him and put it in my bedside table drawer.
‘How cold is it in New York, have you checked?’ Dom asks me as he pulls his own suitcase out of the wardrobe.
‘The BBC claims that it’s quite mild for this time of year – around seven or eight degrees, I think. But their weather forecasts are rubbish, so who knows?’
‘You could always ask someone who lives there. You know, Karl, or maybe … I don’t know … Alex?’ Dom says, giving me a half-smile. I smile back, but I don’t say anything. ‘Are you going to see her?’ he asks. ‘Will she be at the party?’
‘No, Karl didn’t invite her.’
‘But if you’ve forgiven her, Nic, why don’t you let him know? You could see each other again. It’s been … such a long time.’
‘Two years. And I haven’t forgiven her, Dominic. I just can’t live without her. I can’t live without them both.’
Chapter Twelve
New Year’s Eve 2003
London
Resolutions:
1. Pitch three-part series on refugees to BBC
2. Organise killer hen-do for Alex
3. Lose half a stone
4. Organise North Korea research trip
5. Try a relationship with a grown-up. You are too old for bad boys on bikes.
TALKING OF BEING grown up, I was
‘cordially invited’
, the embossed white card read,
‘To a housewarming/New Year’s Eve Party at Number Six, Tabard Wharf, the brand-new and exclusive digs of Messrs Karl Schnelle and Julian Symonds. Drinks from 6.30.’
It was very grown up. Very civilised. Not exactly rock and roll. Particularly as there were only six of us in attendance: the hosts; Mike and Alex; me and my new boyfriend, Dominic.
‘I think we could do with a nice, calm New Year’s Eve,’ Julian said to me when I asked him when we’d become so incredibly boring. ‘Plus, Alex and Mike are skiing in Verbier until the thirtieth, so they’re going to be all partied out. And you must be knackered, too.’ It was true, I’d only just returned from filming in Russia. ‘Plus, I’m off on the third, so …’
‘Off where?’
‘I’ll tell you on the night.’
Julian and Karl, who had been renting a flat together in Camberwell for a couple of years, had finally taken the next step. They had made the big commitment. They had got a mortgage. And it must have been a pretty big commitment, because they used it to buy a warehouse conversion just around the corner from Borough Market with a glimpse, just a sliver of a glimpse, of the Thames. It was the
dernier cri
in urban industrial chic. They even had a lift.
‘It’s like living in Manhattan,’ Alex said as they welcomed us into the flat.
‘That’s the idea,’ Karl replied. ‘Since I can’t persuade him to move to New York, I can at least pretend.’ Karl had been agitating for a move to Manhattan for ages; but Julian, who had always dreamed about New York as a teenager, was refusing to live in a country run by George Bush.
‘Because Tony Blair is so much better?’ Karl argued.
We were sitting on reproduction Corbusier sofas in the middle of Julian and Karl’s vast open-plan living area drinking champagne (‘It’s not a living room,’ Julian told me with a wry little smile. ‘It’s a living space. There are no rooms in this apartment. Oh no. There are spaces.’) Dom, who I’d only been seeing for a couple of months, perched on the edge of the sofa next to me, his back ramrod straight. Alex watched him with an amused expression on her face, every now and again she and Julian exchanged a look. I knew what they were thinking. Well, I could imagine what they were thinking, anyway. They were sizing up the new boy, taking in his sandy blond hair and fair skin, checking out the neatly pressed chinos and the jumper from The Gap (fashion wasn’t really Dom’s thing), judging his diffident manner, comparing and contrasting. At least that’s what was going on in my head.
‘So Jules,’ I said trying to get them to stop smirking at each other, ‘where are you off to? You said you were going somewhere in a couple of days.’
‘Oh yes, where is it this time? Paris? Milan? The Bahamas?’ Alex asked.
‘Monrovia, actually,’ Julian replied.
Alex looked at him blankly.
‘It’s in China,’ Mike told her, patting her on the knee.
‘Not Mongolia, Monrovia.’ Now Mike looked blank. ‘Liberia. West Africa.’
‘Liberia?’ I repeated, stunned. Julian was going to
Liberia?
Julian couldn’t possibly go to Liberia.
‘You’re doing a fashion shoot in Liberia?’ Dom asked, incredulous. ‘Isn’t that a bit … insensitive? I mean, the war’s barely over.’
‘It’s not a fashion shoot,’ Julian said with a smile. ‘I’m doing a reportage piece for
Time
. I’ve wanted to move out of fashion for ages. I’ve done some photojournalism here – I got a really good response to the shots I did on the anti-war demo.’
‘Those were great,’ Alex conceded, ‘but still –
Liberia?
Not Paris? Not Milan? Are you sure? I just don’t think I can picture it …’
‘He’ll do great,’ Karl said, putting an arm around his boyfriend’s shoulders. Julian gave him a peck on the cheek, then looked over at me, smiling reassuringly.
‘I think I’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘I’ve been wanting to do something more challenging for ages, wanting to stretch myself …’
I smiled thinly at him. ‘Well, Liberia’s certainly a stretch,’ I said.
Karl went into the kitchen ‘space’ to finish preparing the starter (Jerusalem artichokes, porcini mushrooms and parmesan ‘hats’, apparently). I volunteered to help. He did a brief double take, but then smiled and thanked me.
‘You’re worried about him,’ he said to me once we were out of earshot of the others.
‘Aren’t you?’
‘Yes, but this is what he wants to do, Nicole. Do you not think he worries about you all the time? A woman, running around filming people traffickers and drug-crazed boy soldiers?’
‘But I’m tougher than he is,’ I said. ‘Plus, I don’t think he really does worry. He’s never said so.’
Karl, who was shaving porcini mushrooms into wafer-thin slices with a mandolin, stopped and looked up at me, an expression of disbelief on his face.
‘You think because he never says anything he doesn’t worry? He never says anything because he doesn’t want to upset you, he doesn’t want to make you feel bad. He’s proud of you. He admires you. He supports you.’ He went back to his mandolin and his mushrooms and – without looking at me – added: ‘You might want to do the same.’
Chastened, I returned to the living space, giving Julian a kiss on the top of the head as I reclaimed my seat.
‘Congratulations, Jules,’ I said, and he beamed up at me.
‘Thanks, Nic. I’m really excited about it. You know I’ve been wanting to do something like this for ages and this opportunity … well, it just came up.’ There was something odd about the way he said this, something in his expression which gave me pause, but I didn’t have time to say anything. ‘You’ve just been doing so well,’ he said, squeezing my hand, ‘and I’m jealous! I want some of that. I want to do be doing something more … meaningful. You know?’
It was true that I had been enjoying a pretty stellar year or two. After the sex trafficking film I’d made for Simon Carver’s firm, I’d lucked out on
Boys’ Club
, an award-winning piece on sexism in the workplace, partly based on personal experience. After that, the work just kept on coming. I’d been to Uganda to produce a film on the child soldiers of the Lord’s Resistance Army, I’d made an Unreported World feature on the futility of the war on drugs, and most recently I’d been in Russia researching a film on Chechen separatists. It had been an exhausting, exhilarating, mind-blowing time; I’d barely stopped to catch my breath.
‘So, what’s the focus of your Liberia story?’ Dom was asking Julian. ‘Do you have a specific idea in mind, or do you just go out there and see what happens? I’m not really sure how this kind of thing works.’
‘There is a specific angle,’ Julian said.
‘Which is?’ Alex prompted.
Julian looked shifty for a moment. ‘I’m going to visit a couple of centres which are helping kids who’ve been traumatised by the war.’
‘That sounds interesting. Is that UNICEF or World Health?’ Dom asked.
‘It’s uh…. with MSF,’ Julian said, swallowing the last part of the sentence so that we could barely hear him.
‘With whom, sorry?’ Dom asked.
‘MSF,’ Julian said again. He was looking at his shoes. So that’s why he looked shifty before.
‘MSF?’ Mike asked. ‘What’s that?’
‘Médecins Sans Frontières,’ I said, getting to my feet. ‘It’s a French medical charity.’
I stood there for a second, not knowing what to do. I wanted to get away from everyone, but I couldn’t leave the room, since there was no room to leave. I couldn’t just go and stand in the corner, so in the end I just went to the loo and sat in there for a while, feeling betrayed.
After about five minutes, there was a soft knock at the door
‘It’s occupied,’ I said.
‘Nic, please come out.’ Julian.
‘Go away,’ I said. I was behaving like a child. I unlocked the door.
‘Come on,’ he said, and took my hand. He led me out of the flat, to the end of the corridor and out onto a fire escape. There was a narrow, iron spiral staircase that led up to the roof.
‘Christ, it really is like New York,’ I said, clinging onto the guard rail, trying not to look down.
Julian and Karl had already colonised their corner of the roof, cordoning it off with pot plants and placing a couple of deckchairs in the centre. He and I sat down, side by side, looking out towards the river. It was a mild night for December, the clouds low and the smell of rain in the air.
‘It’s amazing up here when it’s clear,’ Julian told me. ‘You can see the top of the Eye, Canary Wharf … Not tonight, though.’ He lit a cigarette. ‘It’s not with her,’ he said eventually. ‘She doesn’t even work for MSF any more.’