When I Was Invisible (10 page)

‘You wanna watch her,' Uncle Warren declares. ‘She'll have you down at that church in no time if you're not careful. Daily Mass and weekly confession, you mark my words.'

‘I would never do that,' I say. ‘Everyone has to find their own path to God, or their own path without God. I would never force anyone to choose.'

My mockney uncle looks at his watch, the same ostentatious, large gold Rolex he has had since I was a child. ‘Phew! Who had twenty minutes before God was mentioned? Geoffrey? Margaret?' Uncle Warren throws his head back and laughs, his slender hand bashes on to the table –
bang, bang, bang
– to emphasise how funny he is.

‘I'll make a start on the washing-up,' I state.

‘Oh, no, no,' my mother says.

‘It really is no bother at all. Once I've washed up, I'll make you a cup of tea or coffee.'

‘Wow, this is like having maid service,' Uncle Warren chimes in.

‘Yes, I suppose it is,' I reply.

That wave of irritation swells to tsunami proportions and may well engulf him. There was a time, even after I stopped liking him, that I would worry about pleasing him, would panic if I had upset him in any way. I don't feel that way any more. Maybe it's being thirty-six now. Possibly it's my time away. Most likely? It's the obsession I have with Veronika. I keep remembering the first time I saw her and knowing that we were going to be best friends for ever.

My sister runs across the park towards where I am sitting on the bench by the swings. She has a box in her arms, and it bounces as she runs, her straight black hair whipping into her face, the wind clawing at her long black coat. I stand to meet her and she virtually throws the box on to the bench beside my rucksack and guitar case, and barrels into me, clutching me to her.

Slowly, I slip my arms around her. I didn't expect this kind of welcome from her. We'd never been close and I didn't know she'd miss me. ‘Nika, Nika,' she says with each sob, bringing me closer and closer to her. ‘Nika, Nika, Nika. I thought you were dead. I really, really thought you were dead. I thought—' Her words disintegrate into the sobs that fill the tiny space between us. Her grief … it seems huge, it seems unassailable. She clings to me as she cries, as though she has been waiting years to let go like this, years to accept that she may never see me again. I didn't even know. I didn't know anyone would miss me if I was gone.

I sat beside the quiet man in the expensive, well-fitting suit, watching a train gear up to speed off into the distance. I loved to do this on the days I went shopping or to the hairdresser or to the gym twenty minutes away. I loved to take a detour and come and sit here, by the river, on the hood of this black car, watching the trains come and go from London Victoria.

‘What do you think I should do, Frank?' I asked after the train horn had faded into the distance, and we watched another train come crawling towards the station.

Frank was my driver. Todd's last big new signing, which was for so much money it made my eyes water just thinking about it, had meant he was able to splash out a little more: get himself a newer, faster car, more designer clothes, pay off a huge chunk of the mortgage on his flat. And also have a car service on hand for me whenever I wanted to go anywhere. I'd wanted to learn to drive, had brought it up with him, but Todd had thought this would be better for me. Less dangerous, less stressful. The driver would be able to take me to places, look out for me, stop any photographers getting too close. Not that the photographers bothered with me any more. Hadn't since we'd announced the engagement. They bothered with him, were always showing photos of him chatting to various women, spinning the stories to never quite say he was cheating, but hinting at it.

The driver thing was kind of nice because I got to know the drivers: very often they'd let me ride up front with them and we'd have a chat about films, music and books. Frank was my favourite. He drove me the most regularly, and we liked the same books and films, he also
loved
music. We talked a lot about music – not only the albums and singles, the charts and types of music. We talked about the words, the way they were woven into the threads of the music, the way certain ones were chosen, placed here, omitted there. Words and sound were like a dance, we agreed, a duet that had to be carefully managed, always spinning and moving together in perfect motion with each other. He'd confessed, when I asked him, that the song he was embarrassed about listening to over and over was ‘Pride (In the Name of Love)' by U2.

‘About what, Miss Nikky?' he asked. He was a tall, gruff-looking man in his forties. He had shaved his head, he said, when he was younger because he thought it'd make him look tough. As he got older and worked in more respectable jobs, he'd thought about the idea of having hair and it made him look odd whenever he tried to grow it, like he was trying to hide who he was.

‘My name's not Nikky,' I confessed to him.

‘I'm sorry, Miss, have I been calling you the wrong name all this time? I'm ever so sorry.' He was well spoken even though he was wrapped up in that gruff, tough, hairless package.

‘No. I suppose that's part of what I was asking you. See, when I first met Todd, I told him my name was Nika, as in short for Veronika, and he decided he preferred Nikky, so called me Nikky. I never really pushed it with asking him to call me by my name because I didn't want to hurt him. And that's never changed. Because I never want to hurt him, I don't make a big deal of it when things upset me, or when he's hurt me, and now we're here. I'm getting married in four weeks and I don't know what to do. If I don't marry him, then he'll be hurt. And if I marry him …'

Frank remained silent as I talked, but he was listening. I knew he was also listening to the words – how I'd woven them together, what they meant, how they danced through what I was telling him about my life.

‘Do you think I should marry him, Frank?'

‘With all due respect, Miss Nika, I don't know anything about your relationship except what I see when I drive you both in my car, and what you have just told me.'

‘OK. Forget what I've just told you – from what you've seen, do you think I should marry him?'

‘With all due respect, Miss Nika, I think people should marry for love or for money, but never to avoid hurting someone and never to make anyone, not even themselves, feel better.'

I heard what he said without saying the actual words, and I heard how he used my name twice without question. The conversation was like a song: all the words used were ones that danced around what I wanted to ask, what he thought I should do, how I was going to tell Todd I couldn't marry him.

I can't marry him
. The acceptance of that was like a sudden bloom of relief in my chest.
I can't marry him.

Todd hadn't changed in the last six months, he hadn't gone back to being the man I fell in love with, even though I had to think three times before I spoke so I didn't push his buttons, even though I told him every time I left the house where I'd been, who I'd seen and what we'd talked about. He still did it, as well.
Still
did it. We pretended it was no big deal most of the time because I didn't cry any more so he didn't need to scream at me to stop making him feel like a rapist.

Todd had tried, I knew he had, but he couldn't manage it. This was who he was, and it wouldn't be fair to keep on expecting him to be any different. He was who he was. I had to accept that and find a way to explain to him that I had to move on.

‘Thanks for the chat, Frank,' I told him as he held open the back door for me to get out. We always stopped a little around the corner and I would get out and go into the back seat so outside the flat he would be opening the expected door for me. I didn't ever want to cause any trouble for the drivers by being inappropriate.

‘You're welcome, Miss Nika. And remember, only ever marry for love or money.'

‘I will.'

He carried the cardboard bags with long string handles, filled with five different pairs of potential wedding shoes from two expensive shops, to the front door of the flats, and left them on the metal mat.

‘Goodbye, Miss Nika,' he said. ‘And good luck, with whatever you decide to do.'

‘So, which is it?' Todd asked while we ate dinner.

When I'd come in, he'd nipped out to the shops for some extra supplies and had come back to find me in the shower. I'd gone to the shower to think about what Frank had said. I'd turned it over and over in my head like I was moving a coin over and over in my hand. After the shower I'd gone to find him but he was in his office, wearing his thick, padded headphones, listening to music, so I'd gone back to the bedroom, had lain on the bed, thinking and staring at the ceiling.

Before I'd realised it, hours had passed and in that time he'd whipped up one of his amazing creations: spinach and ricotta ravioli with a delicious red meat ragù. He'd put on low lighting and he'd opened a really expensive bottle of red. He didn't have practice any time that week so he had time off, which meant he could cook, we could eat together and talk.

‘Which is what?' I asked.

‘Which is it that you're doing with me? Marrying for love or money? Isn't that what
“Frank”
told you?' he said, adding a sneer on the driver's name. ‘He's fired, by the way, for being overfamiliar. I'd already told them he couldn't drive you any more after today, but then he was calling you Nika, like he knew you, and I realised he was probably in love with you. And I can't have that.'

‘Sorry, I don't understand.' I moved my head up from staring at my food, snatched my mind away from what I was thinking about because it seemed important that I paid full attention to Todd and what he was saying. I had heard it and now I replayed it, I couldn't quite believe what he'd said and needed him to clarify it. ‘What do you mean, Frank's fired?'

‘What do you think fired means?'

‘But why? And how do you know …' My voice trailed away for a moment, not sure I should ask what I was about to ask: ‘Have you been bugging the cars I use?' No one would
actually
do this unless they were on a TV show. Todd and I weren't on a TV show. Although parts of our life were unreal sometimes, and seeing myself on magazines was odd, seeing him play for England was surreal, but we didn't live
that
kind of unreal life.

‘You haven't stuck to our agreement, have you?' he said insouciantly.

Todd was being so casual, so nonchalant, that I wanted to stand up and, in the same manner, upend his glass table. Maybe that would get him to take this a bit more seriously. ‘What?' I asked.

‘I asked you, practically begged you to help me. To not push my buttons, to not give me things to worry about, to reassure me that I was doing well, and you haven't been doing any of it. In fact, you've given me nothing but more worries that you're going to cheat on me. Because of that, because of what you have done, I had to be sure what was going on when I wasn't with you. And from what I heard, I've a right to be worried.'

‘
You
have a right to be worried?
You?
I'm not the one being photographed with a different woman draped over me every night. With little digs from “anonymous sources” that these women have intimate knowledge of your tattoos and birthmarks. If anyone has the right to be worried, it's me.'

‘Don't try and turn this on me. You're the one who's been having cosy little chats with the drivers.'

‘I talk to people. That's what most normal human beings do. I talk to people. And you've had someone fired for it? You're sick. I can't believe you had me recorded. Who does that?' I stopped talking and moving. Slowly, the only things that moved about me were my eyes, darting around the room, trying to spot them, trying to see if they were there. ‘Have you bugged this place as well so you can listen to me during the day? Is that why you're always listening to stuff on your headphones? Have you been recording me? You're
sick
.'

‘What's sick is having to listen to you talking about music and love songs with another man.' In other words, yes – he had bugged the flat. ‘You never talk to me like that.'

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. ‘Todd, I never talk to you like that because you have no interest in talking to me. I try to chat to you and you always dismiss it, or tell me I'm frying your brain. You have no interest in me whatsoever. And you don't like me having friends – some of your friends' wives try to be friendly but you make such a big deal every time I talk to them or make arrangements to go out I don't bother. You don't like me calling people, you huff and puff every time I speak on the phone. You don't like me emailing – and have to check all the time who I'm messaging and what I'm saying. So, you know what, yes, when I get the chance to speak to real people, I do.' I shake my head at him. ‘I can't believe you convinced those people to let you record me in the car.'

‘It didn't take any convincing. The owner of the company understood my worries about what you might do given your drugs history.'

‘I HAVEN'T GOT A DRUGS HISTORY!' I screamed at him. I was on my feet, my whole body burning with rage. ‘
You
are the drug taker,
you
are the drug user, I've never taken drugs in my life!'

The shock on his face was real. Partly because I'd never shouted at him before, and partly, too, because he'd genuinely forgotten that I never actually took drugs, that I only allowed him to say I did to save his reputation and his career.

‘Look, let's forget all this, calm down.' He indicated to the chair behind me. ‘Sit down. Talk about this rationally.'