The Banker's Niece 29: New Year's Day

New Year’s Day 1980

Rick burst into the flat, bringing with him a gust of frigid air. The back of  Jane's neck tightened as it did before one of her ‘heads’.

    Quickly she turned the gas off and moved the pan of mince to the back of the cooker where flailing arms would be less likely to knock it (whether accidentally or deliberately). She pushed the tea-towel with its concealed knife to the back of the worktop where it would be less conspicuous, just in case Rick suddenly decided he needed a tea-towel. (Unlikely, but you never knew.)

    ‘It’s buggered,’ he said, throwing what looked like the Mini’s cassette player on to the table.

    ‘Oh dear,’ said Jane staying by the cooker at least twelve feet away from Rick and keeping her voice as neutral as possible. She had to stop herself becoming angry too. She had to be invisible. ‘What happened?’

    ‘I buggered it,’ he said. ‘All by myself.’

    ‘Oh dear,’ said Jane again.

    This was bad. Rick never lost his temper when dealing with the inanimate, not even recently. Repairs were his trade. He took pride in them. He cared for machines as if they were alive. He mourned them when they died. He could work for hours with the tiniest of components, picking them up between his nails when his fingers were too clumsy. He pored over circuit diagrams as if they were paintings by Old Masters.

    He advanced towards the fridge and Jane tried to stop herself taking a step backwards. Not that there was much point stepping backwards, unless she could pass through walls.

    He wrenched open the fridge and hauled out a bottle of lager, then rummaged in a drawer for the opener.

    Leaving cap and opener on the worktop, he threw himself on to the sofa and switched on the television.

    He used to offer to pour her something when getting a drink for himself. He used to clear up after himself. He used to ask if she minded the television being on.

    Murder, war and lying politicians filled the air. Jane wanted to block her ears. She hated the News. As if it wasn’t difficult enough keeping one’s own life together. But she’d long since given up objecting.

    ‘I could do you some mince mixture,’ she said brightly. ‘Are you hungry?’

    Rick grunted.

    Jane ladled some food into two bowls and took them over to the coffee table with two spoons. The meal needed carbohydrate, but she didn’t think she was capable at that moment of sorting any out.

    Rick ignored the bowl and kept his eyes on the television. Jane sat at the far end of the sofa and tried not to look at him.

    She picked up one of the bowls and lifted a spoonful of mixture. Then she stopped with the spoon halfway to her mouth. She knew that if she tried to swallow anything she would choke.

    Of the last eleven days, they’d spent nine alone together and not one moment had worked out right. Something had to change. The thought of a whole new year the same was unendurable.

    ‘You don’t love me any more,’ she said.

    It wasn’t what she intended to say - she didn’t know what she intended to say – but it was what came out.

    She’d said something similar before many times but it had always been a sort of game, a prelude to protestations from Rick and to making up, or – more likely these days - to one of those arguments when whatever either of them said only made matters worse and they went down and down until they could have killed each other but by some miracle didn’t.

    This time, it wasn’t provocative. It was a question phrased as a statement so as to give Rick the chance to answer or not as he chose and, if he did answer it, to do so truthfully. She could hear it in her voice.

    Rick switched the television off and turned to look at her and it was like seeing the face of some god of the underworld with deep dark eyes full of ancient pain.

    ‘There’s someone else isn’t there,’ she said.

    As soon as she spoke, she knew she was stating a fact.

    And now that she’d said those words everything over the last year made sense.

    Rick’s unexplained absences. His half-truths. The feeling she had every time he looked at her that she was being compared, that there was another woman standing next to her. Band conversations she’d overheard. Dougie’s strange looks. Rick’s niceness every time she came back from weekends with her parents, when Rick didn’t do ‘nice’. The current disaster that was their relationship.

    She’d never admitted it to herself before. She’d always told herself that Rick wasn’t like that. That such things didn’t happen to her.

    But now they had.

    He nodded.

    ‘Is it . . . is it . . . Chris?’ she said, trying to remember the name of the postgraduate who’d transformed Rick’s working life.

    He nodded again.

    ‘And have you . . . ?

    ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

    In an instant, she saw everything. Her collapse under the onslaught of her parents’ letters. Her backing out of marriage. Her persuading Rick that they could live together instead – that it wasn’t so different really.

    Of course it was different. It was different in every way. For them.

    ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve failed you. I’ll go.’

She made her way to the bedroom, holding on to the walls, telling herself she had to pack, repeating the instruction to herself like a mantra.

    In the bedroom, the cupboard door stuck, as it always did. Even with everything that had been happening, Rick always arrived to help her.

    Only this time, he wasn’t there.

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