One Plus One: A Novel (23 page)

And that was when Jess’s heart actually broke.

“She . . . she has
kids
?”

He swallowed. “Two.”

Her hands went to her face, and then her hair. She turned and walked blindly back down the path. “Oh, God. Oh, God.”

“Jess, I never set out to—”

She spun round and flew at him. She wanted to smash his stupid face and his expensive haircut. She wanted him to know the pain he had put his children through. She wanted him to pay. He ducked behind the car, and almost without knowing what she was doing, she found she was kicking at it, at its oversized wheels, its gleaming panels, the stupid bright white shiny stupid immaculate stupid car.

“You lied! You lied to all of us! And I was trying to protect you! I can’t believe . . . I can’t—” She kicked and felt the faint satisfaction as the metal gave, even as the pain shot up her foot. She kicked again and again, not caring, her fists raining blows on the window.

“Jess! The car! Are you fucking mad?”

She rained blows down on that car because she could not rain the blows on him. She hit with her hands and her feet, not caring, sobbing with fury, her rasping breath loud in her ears. And when he wrenched her off it, wedging himself between her and the car, his grip tight on her arms, she felt a momentary flicker of fear that her life had spun utterly out of control. And then she looked into his eyes, his coward’s eyes, and there was a loud buzzing in her head. She wanted to smash—

“Jess.”

Mr. Nicholls’s arm was around her waist, easing her backward.

“Get off me!”

“The kids are watching. Come on now.” A hand on her arm.

She couldn’t breathe. A moan rose up through her whole body.
She allowed herself to be pulled a few steps back. Marty was shouting something she couldn’t hear through the din in her head.

“Come . . . come away.”

The kids. She looked at the car, and saw Tanzie’s face, wide-eyed with shock, Nicky a motionless silhouette behind her. She looked to the other side, at the house where two small, pale faces watched from the living room, their mother behind them. When she saw Jess looking, she lowered the blind.

“You’re mad,” yelled Marty, staring at the dented panels of the car. “Completely effing mad.”

She had begun to shake. Mr. Nicholls put his arms around her, and steered her into his car. “Get in. Sit down,” he said, closing the door once she was inside. Marty was walking slowly down the pathway toward them, his old swagger suddenly visible now that she was the one in the wrong. She thought he was about to pick a fight, but when he was about fifteen feet away he peered into the car, stooping slightly as if to check, and then she heard the rear door open behind her and Tanzie was out and running toward him.

“Daddy!” she cried, and he swept her up in his arms and then Jess had to look away because she no longer knew what she felt about anything.

—

She wasn’t sure how long she sat there, staring at the footwell. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t feel. She heard murmuring voices on the pathway, and at one point, Nicky reached forward and touched her shoulder lightly. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice cracking.

She reached behind and gripped his hand fiercely. “Not. Your. Fault,” she whispered.

The door opened finally and Mr. Nicholls put his head in. His face was wet, and rain dripped from his collar. “Okay. Tanzie’s going to stay here for a couple of hours.”

She stared at him, suddenly alert. “Oh no,” she began. “He doesn’t get to have her. Not after what he’s—”

“This isn’t about you and him, Jess.”

Jess turned toward the house. The front door was slightly ajar. Tanzie was already inside. “But she can’t stay there. Not with them . . .”

He climbed into the driver’s seat, then he reached across and took her hand. His was ice cold and damp.

“She’s had a bad day and she asked if she could spend some time with him. And, Jess, if this really is his life now, then surely she has to be part of it.”

“But it’s not—”

“Fair. I know.”

They sat there, the three of them, staring at the brightly lit house. Her daughter was in there. With Marty’s new family. It was as if someone had reached in, gripped her heart, and ripped it out through her ribs.

She couldn’t take her eyes from the window. “What if she changes her mind? She’ll be all alone. And we don’t know them. I don’t know this woman. She could be—”

“She’s with her dad. She’ll be okay.”

She stared at Mr. Nicholls. His face was sympathetic, but his voice was oddly firm. “Why are you on his side?”

“I’m not on his side.” His fingers closed around hers. “Look, we’ll all go find somewhere to eat. We’ll be back in a couple of hours. We stay close by and we can come back for her anytime if she needs us.”

“No. I’ll stay,” said a voice from behind. “I’ll stay with her. So that she’s not by herself.”

Jess turned. Nicky was gazing out of the window. “Are you sure?”

“I’ll be fine.” His face was a blank. “Anyway, I sort of want to hear what he says.”

—

Mr. Nicholls saw Nicky to the front door. She watched her stepson, his long, lanky legs in his skinny black jeans, his diffident, awkward way of standing as the door opened to let him in. The blond woman tried to smile at him. She peered surreptitiously past him at the car.
It was possible, Jess observed distantly, that the woman was actually frightened of her. The door closed behind them. Jess shut her eyes, not wanting to imagine what was going on behind that door.

And then Mr. Nicholls was in the car, bringing with him a blast of cold air. “Come on,” he said. “It’s okay. We’ll be back before you know it.”

—

They sat in a roadside café. She couldn’t eat. She drank coffee and Mr. Nicholls bought a sandwich and just sat there, opposite her. She wasn’t sure he knew what to say. Two hours, she kept telling herself. Two hours and then I can have them back. She wanted to be back in the car with her children, away from here. Away from Marty and his lies and his new girlfriend and pretend family. She watched the clock hands edge round and let her coffee cool. Every minute felt like infinity.

And then, ten minutes before they were due to leave, the phone rang. Jess snatched it up. A number she didn’t recognize. Marty’s voice. “Can you leave them with me tonight?”

It knocked the breath clean out of her.

“Oh no,” she said when she could find her voice. “You don’t get to keep them, just like that.”

“I’m just . . . trying to explain it all to them.”

“Well, good luck with that. Because I’m damned if I understand it.” Her voice lifted in the little café. She saw the people at the nearby tables turn their heads.

“I couldn’t tell you, Jess, okay? Because I knew you’d react like you did.”

“Oh, so it’s my fault. Of course it is!”

“We were over. You knew it as well as I did.”

She was standing. She wasn’t aware of having got to her feet. Mr. Nicholls, for some reason, stood, too. “I couldn’t give a flying fuck about you and me, okay? But we’ve been living on the breadline since you left, and now I find out you’re living with someone else,
supporting her kids. Even as you said you couldn’t lift a finger for ours. Yes, it’s just possible I’m going to react badly to that one, Marty.”

“It’s not my money I’m living on. It’s Linzie’s money. I can’t use her money to pay for your kids.”

“My kids?
My
kids?” She was out from behind the table now, walking blindly toward the door. She was dimly aware of Mr. Nicholls summoning the waitress.

“Look,” said Marty, “Tanzie really wants to stay over. She’s obviously upset about this maths thing. She asked me to ask you. Please.”

Jess couldn’t speak. She just stood in the cold car park, her eyes closed, her knuckles white around the phone.

“And I really want to sort things out with Nicky.”

“You are . . . unbelievable.”

“Just . . . just let me sort things out with the kids, please? You and I, we can talk afterward. But just tonight, while they’re here. I’ve missed them, Jess. I know it’s all my fault. I know I’ve been rubbish. But I’m actually glad it’s all out there. I’m glad you know what’s going on. And I just . . . I want to move forward now.”

She stared ahead of her. In the distance a police car’s blue lights flashed. Her foot had begun to throb. Finally she said, “Put Tanzie on.”

There was a short silence, the sound of a door. Jess took a deep breath.

“Mum?”

“Tanze? Sweetheart? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Mum. They’ve got terrapins. One has a gammy leg. It’s called Mike. Can we get a terrapin?”

“We’ll talk about it.” She could hear a saucepan clash in the background, the sound of a tap running. “Um, you really want to spend the night? You don’t have to, you know. You just . . . you do whatever makes you feel happy.”

“I would quite like to stay. Suze’s nice. She’s going to lend me her
High School Musical
pajamas.”

“Suze?”

“Linzie’s daughter. It’s going to be like a sleepover. And she has those beads where you make a picture and stick it together with an iron.”

“Right.”

There was a brief silence. Jess could hear muffled talking in the background.

“So what time are you picking me up tomorrow?”

She swallowed, and tried to keep her voice level. “After breakfast. Nine o’clock. And if you change your mind, you just call me, okay? Anytime. And I’ll pick you up straightaway. Even if it’s the very middle of the night. It doesn’t matter.”

“I know.”

“I’ll come anytime. I love you, sweetie. Anytime you want to call.”

“Okay.”

“Will you . . . will you put Nicky on?”

“Love you. Bye.”

Nicky’s voice was unreadable. “I’ve told him I’ll stay,” he said. “But only to keep an eye on Tanze.”

“Okay. I’ll make sure we’re somewhere close by. Is she . . . the woman . . . is she okay? I mean, will you all be okay?”

“Linzie. She’s fine.”

“And you . . . you’re all right with this? He’s not—”

“I’m fine.”

There was a long silence.

“Jess?”

“Yes?”

“Are you okay?”

She screwed her eyes shut. She took a silent breath, put her hand up, and wiped at the tears that were running down her cheeks. She hadn’t known there were that many tears in her. She didn’t answer Nicky until she could be sure they hadn’t soaked her voice, too. “I’m fine, lovey. You have a good time and don’t worry about me. I’ll see you both in the morning.”

Mr. Nicholls was behind her. He took his phone from her in silence, his eyes not leaving her face. “I’ve found us somewhere to sleep where they’ll let us take the dog.”

“Is there a bar?” Jess asked, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand.

“What?”

“I need to get drunk, Ed. Really, really drunk.” He held out an arm and she took it. “And I think I may have broken my toe.”

S
o once upon a time Ed met a girl who was the most optimistic person he had ever known. A girl who wore flip-flops in the hope of spring. She seemed to bounce through life like Tigger; the things that would have felled most people didn’t seem to touch her. Or if she did fall, she bounced right back. She fell again, plastered on a smile, dusted herself off, and kept going. He never could work out whether it was the single most heroic or the most idiotic thing he’d ever seen.

And then he stood on the curb outside a four-bedroom executive home somewhere near Carlisle and watched as that same girl saw everything she’d believed in stripped away until nothing was left but a ghost who sat in his passenger seat gazing unseeing through the windscreen. The sound of her optimism draining away was audible. And something cracked open in his heart.

He booked a holiday cabin on the side of a lake, twenty minutes from Marty’s—or rather his girlfriend’s—house. He couldn’t find a hotel within a hundred miles that would take the dog, but the last receptionist he had spoken to, a jovial woman who called him “duck” eight times, told him of a new place she knew, run by her friend’s daughter-in-law. He had to pay for three days, their minimum stay, but he didn’t care. Jess didn’t ask. He wasn’t sure she even noticed where they were.

They picked up the keys from Reception, he followed the path through the trees, they pulled up in front of the cabin. He unloaded Jess and the dog and saw them inside. She was limping badly by then. He remembered suddenly the ferocity with which she had kicked the car. In flip-flops.

“Have a long bath,” he said, flicking on all the lights and closing the curtains. It was too dark outside by now to see anything. “Go on. Try to relax. I’ll go get us some food. And maybe an ice pack.”

She turned and nodded. The smile she raised in thanks was barely a smile at all.

The closest supermarket was a supermarket in name only—sitting under flickering strip lights were two baskets of tired vegetables and shelves of canned food with brand names he hadn’t heard of. He bought a couple of ready meals, bread, coffee, milk, frozen peas, and painkillers for her foot. And a couple of bottles of wine. He needed a drink, too.

He was standing at the checkout when his phone beeped. He wrestled it out of his pocket, wondering if it was Jess. And then he remembered that her phone had run out of credit two days previously.

Hello darling. So sorry you can’t make tomorrow. We do hope to see you before too long. Love Mum. PS Dad sends his love. Bit poorly today.

“Twenty-two pounds eighty.”

The girl had said it twice before he registered.

“Oh. Sorry.” He fished around for his card, and held it out to her.

“Card machine’s not working. There’s a sign.”

Ed followed her eyes. “Cash or check only,” it said in laboriously outlined ballpoint letters. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“Why would I be kidding you?” She chewed, meditatively, at whatever was in her mouth.

“I’m not sure I’ve got enough cash on me,” Ed said.

She gazed at him impassively.

“You don’t take cards?”

“It’s what the sign says.”

“Well . . . do you not have a manual card machine?”

“Most people round here pay cash,” she said. Her expression said it was obvious that he was not from around here.

“Okay. Where’s the nearest cash machine?”

“Carlisle.” She blinked at him slowly. “If you haven’t got the money, you’ll have to put the food back.”

“I’ve got the money. Just give me a minute.”

He dug around in his pockets, ignoring the barely suppressed sighs and rolled eyes from those behind him. By some miracle he was able to scrape up cash for everything but the onion bhajis. He counted it all out and she raised her eyebrows ostentatiously as she rang it up, and shoved the bhajis to one side. Ed, in turn, shoved it all into a carrier bag that would give way even before he reached the car, and tried not to think about his mother.

—

He was cooking when Jess limped downstairs. Or rather, he had two plastic trays rotating noisily in the microwave, which was about as far as he had ever immersed himself in the culinary arts. She was wearing a bathrobe and had her hair wrapped in a white bath-towel turban. He had never understood how women did that. His ex had done it, too. He used to wonder if it was something women got taught, like periods and hand washing. Her bare face was beautiful.

“Here.” Ed held out a glass of wine.

She took it from him. He had started a fire, and she sat down in front of the flames, apparently still lost in her thoughts. He handed her the frozen peas for her foot, then busied himself with the rest of the microwave meals, following the instructions on the packaging.

“I texted Nicky,” he told her as he stabbed the plastic film with a fork. “Just to tell him where we were staying.”

She took another sip of her wine. “Was he okay?”

“He was fine. They were just about to eat.” She flinched slightly as he said this, and Ed immediately regretted planting that little domestic tableau in her imagination. “How’s your foot?”

“Hurts.”

She took a huge swig of her wine and he saw she’d downed the glass already. She got up, wincing, so that the peas fell onto the floor
and poured herself another. Then, as if she’d just remembered something, she reached into the pocket of the robe, and held up a clear plastic bag.

“Nicky’s stash,” she said. “I decided this qualified as an appropriate moment for appropriating his drugs.”

She said it almost defiantly, waiting for him to contradict her. When he didn’t, she dragged a tourist guide from the glass coffee table onto her lap, on which she proceeded to roll a haphazard joint. She lit it, and inhaled deeply. She tried to smother a cough, then inhaled again. Her towel turban had started to slide and, irritated, she tugged it off, so that her wet hair fell around her shoulders. She inhaled again, closed her eyes, and held it out toward him.

“Is that what I could smell when I came in?”

She opened one eye. “You think I’m a disgrace.”

“No. I think one of us should be in a state to drive, just in case Tanzie wants picking up. It’s fine. Really. You go ahead. I think . . . you need—”

“A new life? To pull myself together? A good seeing to?” She laughed mirthlessly. “Oh no. I forgot. I can’t even do that right.”

“Jess—”

She raised a hand. “Sorry. Okay. Let’s eat.”

They ate at the little laminated table beside the kitchen area. The curries were serviceable, but Jess barely touched hers.

As he put the plates on the side and prepared to wash up, she faced him. “I’ve been a total idiot, haven’t I?”

Ed leaned back against the kitchen units, a plate in his hand. “I don’t see how—”

“I worked it all out in the bath. I’ve been blathering to the kids all these years about how if you look out for people and do the right thing, it will all be okay. Don’t steal. Don’t lie. Do the right thing. Somehow the universe will see you right. Well, it’s all bullshit, isn’t it? Nobody else thinks that way.”

Her voice was slightly slurred, its edges frayed with pain.

“It’s not—”

“No? Two years I’ve been flat broke. Two years I’ve been protecting him, not adding to his stress, not bothering him about his own children. And all the while he’s been living like that, with his new girlfriend.” She shook her head in wonder. “I didn’t suspect a thing. Not for one minute. And I worked it out, while I was in the bath . . . that whole ‘do as you would be done by’ thing? Well, it only works if everyone else does it. And nobody does. The world is basically full of people who couldn’t give a shit. They’ll tread all over you if it means they get what they want. Even if it’s their own kids they’re treading on.”

“Jess . . .”

He walked through the kitchen until he was inches from her. He couldn’t think what to say. He wanted to put his arms around her, but something about her held him back. She poured herself another glass of wine and lifted it in a salute.

“I don’t care about that woman, you know. That’s not it. He was right—the two of us were over a long time ago. But all that crap about not being able to help his own kids? Refusing even to think about helping Tanze with school fees?” She took a long gulp of her drink and blinked slowly. “Did you see that girl’s top? You know how much a Hollister top costs? Sixty-seven pounds. Sixty-seven pounds for a child’s sweatshirt. I saw the price tag when Druggie Aileen brought one round.” She wiped angrily at her eyes. “You know what he sent Nicky for his birthday in February? A ten-pound gift certificate. A ten-pound gift certificate for the computer games shop. You can’t even buy a computer game for ten pounds. Only secondhand. And the stupid thing is we were all really pleased. We thought it meant that Marty was getting better. I told the kids that ten pounds, when you’re not working, is actually quite a lot of money.”

She started to laugh. An awful, desolate sound. “And all the time . . . all the time he was in that executive home with his immaculate new sofa and his matchy-matchy curtains and his bloody boy-band haircut. And he didn’t even have the balls to tell me.”

“He’s a coward,” he said.

“Yup. But I’m the idiot. I’ve dragged the kids halfway around the country on some wild-goose chase because I thought I could somehow better their chances. I’ve put us thousands of pounds into debt. I’ve lost my job at the pub. I’ve pretty much destroyed Tanzie’s self-confidence by putting her through something I should never have made her do. And for what? Because I refused to see the truth.”

“The truth?”

“That people like us never get on. We never move upward. We just rattle around at the bottom.”

“That’s not how it is.”

“What do you know?” There was no anger in her voice, just confusion. “How could you possibly understand? You’re being done for one of the most serious crimes in the City. Strictly speaking, you did do it. You told your girlfriend what shares to buy so that she would make herself a heap of money. But you’ll get off.”

He stopped lifting his glass somewhere near his mouth.

“You will. You’ll get a couple of weeks inside, maybe a suspended sentence even, and a big fine. You’ve got expensive lawyers who will keep you out of any real trouble. You’ve got people who will argue for you, fight for you. You have houses, cars, resources. You don’t really need to worry. How could you possibly understand what it’s like for us?”

“That’s not fair,” he said gently.

She turned away, and inhaled, closing her eyes and exhaling upward, the sweet smoke drifting toward the ceiling.

Ed sat down beside her and took it from between her fingers. “I think maybe that isn’t such a good idea.”

She snatched it back. “Don’t tell me what’s a good idea.”

“I don’t think this is going to help.”

“I don’t care what you—”

“I’m not the enemy here, Jess.”

She shot him a look, then turned and stared at the fire. He couldn’t tell whether she was waiting for him to get up and leave.

“I’m sorry,” she said eventually, and her voice was stiff, like cardboard.

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine.” She sighed. “I shouldn’t . . . I shouldn’t take it out on you.”

“It’s okay. It’s been a crappy day. Look, I’m going to have a bath, and then I think we should just get some sleep.”

“I’ll be up when I’ve finished this.” She inhaled again.

Ed waited for a moment, then left her staring at the fire. It was a mark of how tired he was that he didn’t think any further than the bath.

—

He must have nodded off in the water. He had run it deep, pouring in whatever unguents and potions he could find, and sinking in gratefully, letting the hot water ease out some of the tensions of the day.

He tried not to think. Not about Jess, downstairs, staring bleakly into the flames, not about his mother, a couple of hours away, awaiting a son who wouldn’t come. He just needed a few minutes of not having to think about anything. He lowered his head into the water as far as he could and still breathe.

He dozed. But some strange tension seemed to have crept into Ed’s bones: he couldn’t quite relax, even as he closed his eyes. And then he became aware of the sound; a distant revving noise, uneven and dissonant—a whining chain saw, or a driver learning how to accelerate. He opened an eye, wishing it would just go away. He had assumed that this place, of all places, might offer the tiniest bit of peace. Just one night with no noise or drama. Was it really so much to ask?

“Jess?” he called when it became too irritating. He wondered if
there was a music system downstairs. Something she could turn on to drown it out.

And then he realized the source of his vague discomfort: it was his own car he could hear.

He sat there, bolt upright, for a split second, then leaped from the bath, wrapping a towel around his waist. He ran down the stairs two at a time, past the empty sofa, past Norman, who lifted his head quizzically from his spot in front of the fire, and wrestled with the front door until he had it open. A blast of cold air hit him. He was just in time to see his car bunny-hopping its way forward from its place in front of the cabin, along the curved gravel drive. He leaped off the steps and as he ran he could just make out Jess at the wheel, craning forward to see through the windscreen. She didn’t have any headlights on.

“Jesus Christ.
Jess!
” He sprinted across the grass, still dripping, one hand clutching at the towel around his waist, trying to cross the lawn to block her before she could get round the drive to the road. Her face turned briefly toward him, her eyes widening as she saw him. There was an audible crunch as she wrestled with the gears.

“Jess!”

He was at the car. He threw himself at the bonnet, thumping it, then at the side, wrenching at the driver’s door. It opened before she could fumble for the lock, sending him swinging sideways.

“What the hell are you doing?”

But she didn’t stop. He was running now, unnaturally long strides, braced against the swinging door, one hand on the wheel, the gravel sharp under his feet. The towel had long since disappeared.