The Club(68)

It was starting to look a little strange now, Ned’s absence. Last night, after all, he’d been everywhere: spot-checking espresso martinis and sending whole trays back if the crema was patchy, chivvying waiters to keep a constant stream of small plates coming from the kitchen. Was his constant interference necessary? Debatable. Was it helpful? No. A sensible use of a multimillionaire CEO’s valuable time? Absolutely not. But it reminded everyone who was in charge here, whose party this was, whose club, whose company.

She had been walking this way for half an hour, into the wind, noticing little, as the colours of the landscape faded around her, still no closer to having her head together. It was strange, how your perspective on things changed over time, how gradually. Even after all that had happened, she had still felt a secret pride in her relationship with Ron, a certain self-satisfaction that he’d chosen her. She’d felt a little tingle still when she thought of some of his compliments – he had praised her sophistication, she had teased him that he just meant her English accent. Smart, he’d called her, repeatedly, even though she hadn’t seen the inside of a classroom since she was fourteen. ‘Book learning isn’t what life’s all about,’ he had said, batting away her modesty. These were things she had accepted as truths, things that had gone to make up part of her sense of self, a sort of gift from him, she had thought.

And then she got a little wiser maybe, a bit more worldly. And she looked back at some of the things she’d done, and realized she might have tried to act older, but sophisticated was hardly the word. She remembered some of the things she’d said and cringed, clenched her fists in embarrassment, because smart was definitely not the word.

Her feelings towards him had not shifted in one great flash of revelation, but gradually she had come to see it all in a more uncomfortable light. In her twenties she dated properly, men her own age, nothing ever very serious, but still she let stuff slip – no names, no mention of the baby of course – and was always shocked at their reactions to the things Ron used to like her to do. And now, when she looked at photographs of herself back then, she was struck not just by how reed-thin and pretty she was, but by the realization that no one could actually have believed she was the age she claimed to be.

She thought about things that Ron had said – how patronizing to repeat over and over how smart she was, how he must have been chuckling to himself at this child bursting with pride at the compliment. How you wouldn’t do that to someone you thought had half a brain in her silly little head. How the things that had seemed sophisticated at the time – like lying in his suite in bed, drinking champagne and ordering room service and watching black and white movies – came to feel less so when she remembered they had literally never left the building together, that he made her duck out of his room and bolt for the lift after listening out to make sure there was no one in the corridor, that when room service arrived she had to hide in the bathroom, and when he took a call she had to promise not to make a sound.

And often she thought about him, the baby, and the decision she’d made for both of them. And she wondered, with a pang, where he was and what he was doing, and she reminded herself of all those happy families, all those smiling children in the brochures. And sometimes she was absolutely convinced she had made the right decision for everyone, and other times she questioned whether she had just made the right decision for herself. But one thing she had grown increasingly sure of as time passed was that wherever he was, her son, whoever he was growing up to be, was better off not knowing his father, never learning the kind of person his father was.

Then she looked up and saw him.

Her son.

A lone figure, dressed for a run, headphones around his neck, throwing stones angrily at the water, as hard and as far as he could into the waves.

It was as he stooped to pick up another handful of them that he realized she was there.

‘Hi Kurt,’ she said.

He let fly another stone, rubbed at his nose with the back of his sleeve. For a moment she thought he was going to ignore her.

Then he glanced up. Then he spoke.

‘You didn’t know, did you? About the filming?’

Nikki tried to keep her face from crumpling. Shook her head.

‘I never suspected,’ she said. ‘Not until this weekend. Not until you asked me about the package, told me what had happened yesterday. I had no idea. I honestly had no idea. I thought I knew Ned inside out because I had to, for years, for work, for my job. He was someone I respected, someone I trusted. And then you find out—’

She broke off.

Kurt looked across at her. ‘I know exactly how that feels.’

‘You’ve . . . watched it then?’ she asked.

‘Not all of it. But I’ve seen enough, to get the picture. Heard enough. The same lines, the same patter, the same jokes. Dad pouring himself a drink, pouring them a drink, sitting on the bed next to them. And then a jump cut to the next girl, the next Home room . . .’ Kurt took a deep breath, shook his head. She searched Kurt’s eyes, trying to gauge if her own fifteen-year-old face had featured on the film, if he had recognized her.

‘And I guess Ned probably thinks he’s done me a favour with that. Spared me from actually having to watch what happened next.’ Kurt rubbed with two fingers at a point between his eyebrows. ‘But now I’m left imagining it . . .’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Nikki said.