One Plus One: A Novel (21 page)

—

Ed had gone about twenty miles before he became aware of quite how tired he was. The combination of three nights of broken sleep, a
hangover, and hundreds of miles of driving hit him like a demolition ball, and he felt his eyes drooping. He turned up the radio, opened his windows, and when that failed, he pulled into a roadside café to get some coffee.

Although it was lunchtime, the cafe was half empty. A couple of suited men sat at opposite ends of the room, lost in mobile phones and paperwork, the wall behind them offering sixteen different permutations of sausage, egg, bacon, chips, and beans. Ed grabbed a newspaper from the stand and made his way to a table. He ordered coffee from the waitress.

“I’m sorry, sir, but at this time of day we reserve tables for those eating.” Her accent was strong enough that he had to think quite hard to work out what she had said.

“Oh. Right. Well, I—”

MAJOR UK TECHNOLOGY COMPANY IN INSIDER TRADING PROBE

He stared at the newspaper headline.

“Sir?”

“Mm?” His skin began to prickle.

“You have to order some food. If you want to sit down.”

“Oh.”

The Financial Services Authority confirmed last night that it is investigating a traded UK technology company for insider trading worth millions of pounds. The investigation is understood to be taking place on both sides of the Atlantic, and involves the London and New York stock exchanges and the SEC, the US equivalent to the FSA.

Nobody has yet been arrested, but a source within the City of London police said that this was “simply a matter of time.”

“Sir?”

She’d said it twice before he heard her. He looked up. A young woman, her nose freckled, her natural hair teased and fluffed into a kind of matted arrangement. “What would you like to eat?”

“Whatever.” His mouth was the consistency of powder.

A pause.

“Um. Do you want me to tell you today’s specials? Or some of our more popular dishes?”

Simply a matter of time.

“We do an all-day Burns breakfast—”

“Fine.”

“And we . . . You want the Burns breakfast?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want white or brown bread with that?”

“Whatever.”

He felt her staring at him. Then she scribbled a note, tucked her pad carefully into her waistband, and walked away. And he sat and stared at the newspaper on the Formica table. Over the past seventy-two hours he might have felt like the whole world had gone topsy-turvy, but that had been a mere taste of what was about to come.

—

“I’m with a client.”

“This won’t take a minute.” He took a breath. “I’m not going to be at Dad’s lunch.”

A short, ominous silence.

“Please tell me I’m hallucinating through my ears.”

“I can’t. Something’s come up.”

“Something.”

“I’ll explain later.”

“No. You wait. Hold on.”

He heard the muffled sound of a hand over a phone. Possibly a clenched fist. “Sandra, I need to take this outside. Back in a . . .”
Footsteps. And then, as if someone had turned up the volume to full blast: “Really? Are you fucking kidding me? Really?”

“I’m sorry.”

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this. Do you have any idea how hard Mum’s worked to pull it together? Do you have any idea how much they’re looking forward to seeing you? Dad sat down last week and worked out how long it had been since they last saw you. December, Ed. That’s four months. Four months in which he’s got more and more sick and you have fucking well failed to do anything useful other than send him some stupid fucking magazines.”

“He said he liked
The
New Yorker
. I thought it gave him something to do.”

“He can barely fucking see, Ed. As you’d know if you’d bothered to come up. And Mum gets so bored reading those long pieces that her brain actually starts to seep through her ears.”

On and on she went. It was like having a hair dryer turned on full blast in his ear.

“She’s actually cooked your favorite food rather than Dad’s for Dad’s birthday lunch. That’s how much she wants to see you. And now, twenty-four hours before the actual thing, you just announce that you can’t come? No explanation? What the hell is this?”

His ears actually grew warm. He sat there, closed his eyes. When he opened them, it was twenty to two. The Olympiad would now be more than three quarters through. He thought of Tanzie in that university hall, her head bent over her papers, the floor around her littered with redundant spectacles. He hoped for her sake that, faced with a pageful of figures, she would relax and do the thing she was so plainly made to do. He thought of Nicky, sloping around outside, perhaps trying to find somewhere for a sneaky smoke.

He thought of Jess, seated on a holdall, the dog at her side, her hands clasped together on her knees as if in prayer, convinced that if she wished hard enough, good things would finally happen.

“You are a bloody disgrace for a human being, Ed. Really.” His sister’s voice was choked by tears.

“I know.”

“Oh, and don’t think I’m going to tell them. I’m not doing your damned dirty work for you.”

“Gem. Please, there is a reason—”

“Don’t even think about it. You want to break their hearts, then you do it. I’m done here, Ed. I can’t believe you’re my brother.”

Ed swallowed hard as she put down the phone. And then he let out a long slow, shuddering breath. What was the difference? It was only half of what they would all say if they knew the truth.

It was there, in the half-empty restaurant, seated on a red leatherette banquette and facing a slowly congealing breakfast he didn’t want, that Ed finally understood how much he missed his father. He would have given anything just to see that reassuring nod, to watch that somehow reluctant smile break over his face. He hadn’t missed his home for the fifteen years since he had left it, yet suddenly he felt so homesick that it overwhelmed him. He sat in the restaurant staring out of the faintly greasy window at the cars whizzing past on the motorway and something he couldn’t quite identify broke over him like the rolling of a vast wave. For the first time in his adult life, even through the divorce, the investigation, the thing with Deanna Lewis, Ed Nicholls found he was fighting back tears.

He sat and pressed his hands into his eyes and tightened his jaw until he could think about nothing other than the feeling of his back teeth pressing against each other.

“Is everything okay?”

The young waitress’s eyes were vaguely wary, as if she were trying to assess whether this man was going to be trouble.

“Fine,” he said. He had meant to sound reassuring, but his voice cracked on the word. And then, when she didn’t seem convinced: “Migraine.”

Her face relaxed immediately. “Oh. Migraine. Sympathies. They’re buggers. You got something for it?”

Ed shook his head, not trusting himself to speak.

“I knew there was something wrong.” She stood in front of him for a moment. “Hold on.” She walked over to the counter, one hand reaching up to the back of her head, where her hair was pinned into an elaborate twist. She leaned over, fumbling toward something he couldn’t see, then walked back slowly. She glanced behind her, then dropped two pills in a foil casing on his table.

“I’m not meant to give customers pills, obviously, but these are great. Only thing that works for mine. Don’t drink any more coffee, though—it’ll make it worse. I’ll get you some water.”

He blinked at her, then down at the pills.

“It’s okay. They’re nothing dodgy. Just Migra-gone.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

“They take about twenty minutes. But then—oh! Relief!” Her smile wrinkled her nose. Kind eyes under all the mascara, he saw now.

She took away his coffee mug, as if to protect him from himself. Ed found himself thinking about Jess. Good things happen. Sometimes when you least expect them.

“Thank you,” he said quietly.

“You’re welcome.”

And then his phone rang. The sound echoed in the roadside café and he gazed down at the screen as he stemmed the sound. Not a number he recognized.

“Mr. Nicholls?”

“Yes?”

“It’s Nicky. Nicky Thomas. Um. I’m really sorry to bother you. But we need your help.”

I
t had been obvious to Nicky that this was a bad idea from the moment they had pulled into the car park. Every other kid at that place—apart from maybe one or two at the most—was a boy. Every single one was at least two years older than Tanze. Most looked like they were not unfamiliar with the Asperger’s scale. They wore wool blazers, bad haircuts, braces, the well-worn shirts of the properly middle class. Their parents drove Volvos. Tanzie, in her pink trousers and denim jacket with the felt flowers that Jess had sewn on, was as out of place as if she had been dropped there from outer space.

Nicky knew Tanzie was uncomfortable, even before Norman had broken her glasses. She had grown quieter and quieter in the car, locked in her own little world of nerves and car sickness. He had tried to nudge her out of it—this was actually an act of epic selflessness, as she smelled pretty bad—but by the time they had hit Aberdeen, she had retreated so far inside herself that she was unreachable. Jess was so focused on getting there that she couldn’t see it. She was all tied up with Mr. Nicholls, the glasses, and the sick bags. She hadn’t considered for a minute that kids from private schools could be just as mean as kids from McArthur’s.

Jess had been at the desk registering Tanzie and collecting her name tag and paperwork. Nicky had been checking out Mr. Nicholls’s phone and had stood off to the side with Norman to keep him out of everyone’s way, so he hadn’t really paid any attention to the two boys who had gone to stand next to Tanzie as she peered up at the desk plan at the entrance to the hall. He couldn’t hear them because he had his earbuds in, and he was listening to Depeche Mode
without really noticing anything at all. Until he caught sight of Tanzie’s crestfallen face. And he pulled an earbud from one ear.

The boy with the braces was staring at her, a slow up and down. “You are at the right place? You know that the Justin Bieber fan convention is down the road?”

The skinnier boy laughed.

Tanzie looked at them with round eyes.

“Have you been to an Olympiad before?”

“No,” she said.

“
Quel
surprise. I can’t say many Olympians bring furry pencil cases. Have you got your furry pencil case, James?”

“I think I forgot mine. Oh, dear.”

“My mum made it for me,” Tanzie said stiffly.

“Your mum made it for you.” They looked at each other. “Is it your lucky pencil case?”

“Do you know anything about string theory?”

“I think she’s more likely to know about stink theory. Or . . . hey, James, can you smell something unpleasant? Like vomit? Do you think someone’s a bit nervous?”

Tanzie ducked her head and bolted past them into the loos.

“That’s the Gents!” they cried, and fell about laughing.

Nicky had been struggling to tie Norman’s lead to a radiator. Now as the boys made to walk into the main hall he stepped forward and put his hand on the back of Braces’ neck. “Hey, kid.
Hey!
”

The boy spun round. His eyes widened. Nicky moved in, so that his voice was a low whisper. He was suddenly glad that he had a weird yellow tinge to his skin and a scar on the side of his face. “Dude. A word. You ever speak to my sister like that again—anyone’s sister—and I will personally come back here and tie your legs into a complex equation. You got that?”

He nodded, his mouth open.

Nicky gave him his best Fisher Psycho Stare. Long enough for the
boy to do one of those massive Adam’s-apple-bobbing gulps. “Not nice being nervous, is it?”

The boy shook his head.

Nicky patted him on the shoulder. “Good. Glad we’re straight. Go do your sums.” He turned and began to walk toward the loos.

One of the teachers stepped in front of him then, one hand raised, his face questioning. “Excuse me? Did I just see you—”

“Wishing him luck? Yes. Great kid. Great kid.” Nicky shook his head, as if in admiration, then headed for the Gents to fetch Tanzie.

—

When Jess and Tanzie emerged from the ladies’, Tanzie’s top was damp where Jess had scrubbed at it with soap and water, her face blotchy and pale.

“You don’t want to pay any attention to a little squirt like that, Tanze,” Nicky said, climbing to his feet. “He was just trying to put you off.”

“Which one was it?” Jess’s expression was flinty. “Tell me, Nicky.”

Yeah. Because Jess going in all guns blazing was going to be exactly the start to the competition that Tanzie needed. “I, um, don’t think I could recognize him. Anyway, I sorted it.”

He kind of liked the words.
I sorted it
.

“But I can’t see, Mum. What am I going to do if I can’t see?”

“Mr. Nicholls is getting you some glasses. Don’t worry.”

“But what if he doesn’t? What if he doesn’t even come back?”

I wouldn’t, Nicky thought, if I were him. They had wrecked his nice car. And he looked about ten years older than when they had set off.

“He’ll come back,” Jess said.

“Mrs. Thomas. We need to start. Your daughter has thirty seconds to take her seat.”

“Look, is there any way we can delay the start by a few minutes? We really, really need to get her some glasses. She can’t see without them.”

“No, madam. If she’s not in her place in thirty seconds, I’m afraid we’ll have to start without her.”

“Then can I go in? I could read her the questions?”

“But I can’t write without my glasses.”

“Then I’ll write for you.”

“Mum . . .”

Jess knew she was beaten. She looked over at Nicky and gave a vague shake of her head that said,
I don’t know what to do
.

Nicky crouched beside her. “You can do this, Tanze. You can. You can do this stuff standing on your head. Just hold the paper really, really close to your eyes and take your time.”

She was staring blindly into the hall. Beyond the door the students were shuffling into place, dragging chairs under desks, arranging pencils in front of them.

“And as soon as Mr. Nicholls gets here, we’ll bring the glasses in to you.”

“Really. Just go in and do your best and we’ll be waiting here. Norman will just be on the other side of the wall. We all will. And then we’ll go and get some lunch. Nothing to stress about.”

The woman with the clipboard walked over. “Are you going to take part in the competition, Costanza?”

“Her name’s Tanzie,” Nicky said. The woman didn’t seem to hear. Tanze nodded mutely and allowed herself to be led to a desk. She looked so damned little.

“You can do it, Tanze!” His voice burst out of him suddenly, bouncing off the walls of the hall, so that the man at the back tutted. “Back of the net, Titch!”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” someone muttered.

“Back of the net!” Nicky yelled again, so that Jess looked at him in shock.

And then a bell rang, the door closed in front of them with a solid
thunk,
and it was just Nicky, Jess, and Norman on the other side, with a couple of hours to kill.

“Right,” said Jess, when she finally tore her gaze away from the door. She put her hands into her pockets, took them out again, straightened her hair, and sighed. “Right.”

“He will come,” said Nicky, who was suddenly not entirely sure he would.

“I know that.”

The silence that followed was long enough that they were forced to smile awkwardly at each other. The corridor emptied slowly, apart from one organizer who murmured to himself as he ran his pencil down a list of names.

“Probably stuck in traffic.”

“It was pretty bad.”

Nicky could picture Tanzie on the other side of the door, squinting at her papers, looking around for help that wouldn’t come. Jess stared up at the ceiling, swore softly, then tied and retied her ponytail. He guessed she was picturing the same.

And then there was the sound of a distant commotion and Mr. Nicholls appeared, running down the corridor like a crazy man and holding aloft a plastic bag that looked as if it might be entirely full of pairs of glasses. And as he launched himself at the desk and started arguing with the organizers—the kind of argument that comes from someone who knows there is no way in the world he is going to lose—the relief Nicky felt was so overwhelming that he had to go outside, slump against the wall, and drop his head to his knees until his breathing no longer threatened to turn into a huge, gulping sob.

—

It was weird saying good-bye to Mr. Nicholls. They stood by his car in the drizzle and Jess was acting all
oh, I don’t care,
even though she obviously did. And Nicky really wanted to thank him for the whole hacking thing, driving them all that way and just being, you know, weirdly decent, but then Mr. Nicholls went and gave him his spare phone and all that came out was this strangulated “Thanks.” And then that was it. And he and Jess were walking across the campus
car park with Norman, pretending they couldn’t hear Mr. Nicholls’s car driving away.

They stopped by the corridor, and Jess stashed their bags in the cloakroom. Then she turned to Nicky and brushed nonexistent fluff from his shoulder. “Well,” she said, “let’s go and walk this dog, shall we?”

—

It was true that Nicky didn’t talk much. It wasn’t that he didn’t have stuff to say. It was just that there was nobody he really wanted to say it to. Ever since he had gone to live with Dad and Jess, when he was eight, people had been trying to get him to talk about his “feelings,” like they were a big rucksack he could just drag around with him and open up for everyone to examine the contents. But half the time he didn’t even know what he thought. He didn’t have opinions about politics or the economy or what happened to him. He didn’t even have an opinion about his real mum. She was an addict. She liked drugs more than she liked him. What else was there to say?

Nicky went to counseling for a bit, like the social workers said he should. The woman seemed to want him to get mad about what had happened to him. Nicky had told her he wasn’t angry because he understood that his mum couldn’t look after him. It wasn’t as if it was personal. If he had been any other kid, she would have dumped him just the same. She was just . . . sad. He had seen so little of her when he was small that he didn’t even really feel like she had anything to do with him.

But the counselor kept saying: “You must let it out, Nicholas. It’s not good for you to internalize what happened to you.” She gave him two little stuffed figures and wanted him to act out “how your mother’s abandonment made you feel.”

Nicky didn’t like to tell her that it was the thought of having to sit in her office playing with dolls and being called Nicholas that made him feel destructive. He just wasn’t a particularly angry person. Not
with his real mum, not even with Jason Fisher, although he didn’t expect anyone to understand. Fisher was just an idiot who didn’t have the brainpower to do anything but hit out. Fisher knew on some deep level that he had nothing, that he was never going to be anything. He was a phony, and nobody liked him, not really. So he turned it all outward, transferred his bad feelings to the nearest available person (see? The therapy had done something useful).

So when Jess said they should go for a walk, a little bit of Nicky was wary. He didn’t want to get into some big conversation about his feelings. He didn’t want to discuss any of it. He was all braced to deflect, and then she scratched her head a bit, and said, “Is it just me, or does it feel a bit weird without Mr. Nicholls?”

—

This was what they talked about:

The unexpected beauty of some of Aberdeen’s buildings.

The dog.

Whether either of them had brought plastic bags for the dog.

Which of them was going to kick that thing under the parked car so that nobody trod in it.

The best way to clean the toes of your shoes on grass.

Whether it was actually possible to clean the toes of your shoes on grass.

Nicky’s face, as in did it hurt? (Answer: no, not anymore.)

Other bits of him, as in did they? (No, no, and a bit, but it was improving.)

His jeans, as in why didn’t he pull them up so that his underwear wasn’t always showing?

Why his underwear was actually his own business.

Whether they should tell Dad about the Rolls. Nicky told her she should pretend it had been nicked. What would he know? And it would serve him right. But Jess said she couldn’t lie to him because that wouldn’t be fair. And then she went quiet for a while.

Was he okay? Did he feel better being away from home? Was he worried about going home? This was where Nicky stopped talking and started shrugging. What was there to say?

—

This was what they didn’t talk about:

What it would be like if they actually went home with five thousand pounds.

If Tanzie went to that school and he left school before sixth form, whether Jess would want him to pick her up from St. Anne’s every day.

The takeaway that they would definitely get tonight in celebration. Possibly not a kebab.

That Jess was plainly freezing, even if she insisted she was fine. All the little hairs on her arms were standing bolt upright.

Mr. Nicholls. Most notably, where Jess had actually slept the previous night. And why they had kept stealing looks at each other like a pair of teenagers all morning, even while they were grumping at each other. Nicky honestly thought she thought they were all stupid sometimes.

But it was kind of okay, the talking thing. He thought he might even do it more often.

—

They were waiting outside the doors when they finally opened at two o’clock. Tanzie walked out in the first batch, her furry pencil case clutched in front of her, and Jess held out her arms wide, all braced for celebration.

“So? How was it?”

She looked at them steadily.

“Did you ace it, Titch?” said Nicky, grinning.

And then, abruptly, Tanzie’s face crumpled. Everyone froze, then Jess stooped and pulled her close, maybe to hide the shock on her face, and Nicky put his arm around Tanzie’s on the other side, and Norman sat on her feet. As the other kids filed past, she told them what had happened, through muffled sobs.