One Plus One: A Novel (25 page)

“Where’s he been, anyway?”

“Dad, this is Jess.”

His father’s eyes slid toward her, his eyebrow lifting a quarter of an inch. “And what the hell happened to your face?” he whispered to her.

“I had an argument with a car. My fault.”

“Is that what happened to him?”

“Yes.”

He regarded her for a moment longer. “You look like trouble,” he said. “Are you trouble?”

Gemma leaned forward. “Dad! Jess is Ed’s friend.”

He dismissed her. “If there’s one small advantage to having very little time left, then surely it’s that I can say whatever I like. She doesn’t look offended. Are you offended? I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name. I don’t seem to have any brain cells anymore.”

“Jess. And no, I’m not offended.”

He kept staring.

“And, yes, I probably am trouble,” she said, holding his gaze.

His smile was slow to arrive, but when it came, she could imagine, fleetingly, how he must have looked before he got ill. “Glad to hear it. I always liked girls who were trouble. And this one has been head down in front of a computer for far too long.”

“How are you, Dad?”

Bob Nicholls blinked. “I’m dying.”

“We’re all dying, Dad,” Gemma said.

“Don’t give me your social-worker sophistry. I am dying uncomfortably and rapidly. I have few faculties left, and very little dignity. I will probably not make the end of the cricket season. Does that answer your question?”

“I’m sorry,” Ed said quietly. “I’m sorry I haven’t been by.”

“You’ve been busy.”

“About that . . . ,” Ed began. His hands were thrust deep in his pockets. “Dad. I need to tell you something. I need to tell you all something.”

Jess stood up hurriedly. “Why don’t I go and get us some sandwiches? Leave you to talk.”

Jess could feel Gemma studying her. “I’ll get drinks, too. Tea? Coffee?”

Bob Nicholls’s head turned toward her. “You’ve only just got here. Stay.”

Her eyes met Ed’s. He gave a tiny shrug.

“What is it, dear?” His mother put a hand out to him. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Well. I’m sort of fine. I mean I’m healthy. But . . .” He swallowed. “No, I’m not fine. There’s something I have to tell you.”

“What?” Gemma said.

“Okay.” He took a deep breath. “Well, here it is.”

“What?” said Gemma. “Jesus, Ed. What?”

“I’m being investigated for insider trading. I’ve been suspended from my company. Next week I have to go to a police station where I will in all likelihood be charged and I may go to prison.”

To say the room fell silent was an understatement. It was as if someone had come in and sucked out all the available air. Jess thought she might pass out.

“Is this a joke?” said his mother.

“No.”

“I really could go and get some tea,” Jess said.

Nobody paid her any attention. Ed’s mother sat down slowly on a plastic chair.

“Insider trading?” Gemma was the first to speak. “This—that’s serious, Ed.”

“Yeah. I do get that, Gem.”

“Actual insider trading, like you see on the news?”

“That’s the one.”

“He’s got good lawyers,” Jess said.

Nobody seemed to hear.

“Expensive ones.”

His mother’s hand had risen halfway to her mouth. She lowered it slowly. “I don’t understand. When did this happen?”

“A month or so ago. The insider-trading bit, anyway.”

“A month ago? But why didn’t you tell us? We could have helped you.”

“You couldn’t, Mum. Nobody can help.”

“But prison? Like a criminal?” Anne Nicholls had gone quite pale.

“I think if you’re sent to prison, you pretty much are a criminal, Mum.”

“Well, they’ll have to sort it out. They’ll see that there’s been some kind of mistake, but they’ll sort it out.”

“No, Mum. I’m not sure it’s going to work out like that.”

There was another long silence.

“Are you going to be all right?”

“I’ll be fine. As Jess said, I have good lawyers. I have resources. They have already established that there was no financial gain for me.”

“You didn’t even make money out of it?”

“It was a mistake.”

“A mistake?” said Gemma. “I don’t get it. How do you do insider trading by mistake?”

Ed straightened his shoulders and looked at her. He took a breath, and his gaze flickered toward Jess. And then he looked up at the ceiling. “Well, I had sex with a woman. I thought I liked her. And then I realized she wasn’t who I thought she was and I sort of wanted her to go away without it all getting messy. And what she wanted to do was travel. So I made a snap decision and told her a way I thought she could make a little extra money to pay off her debts and go traveling.”

“You gave her inside information.”

“Yup. On SFAX. Our big product launch.”

“Jesus Christ.” Gemma shook her head. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”

“And my name hasn’t come out in the press yet. But it will.” He
put his hands into his pockets and looked steadily at his family. Jess wondered if only she could detect that his hand was shaking. “So . . . um . . . that’s why I haven’t been home. I was hoping I could keep it from you, maybe even sort it out so that you didn’t have to know anything about it. But it turns out that’s going to be impossible. And I wanted to say I’m sorry. I should have told you right away, and I should have spent more time here. But I . . . I didn’t want you to know the truth. I didn’t want you to see what a mess I’d made of everything.”

Jess’s right leg had begun to jiggle involuntarily. She concentrated on a really interesting floor tile and tried to make her leg stop. When she finally looked up, Ed was staring at his father. “Well?”

“Well what?”

“You’re not going to say anything?”

Bob Nicholls lifted his head slowly from his pillow. “What do you want me to say?”

Ed and his dad stared at each other.

“You want me to say you’ve been an idiot? I’ll say you’ve been an idiot. You want me to say you’ve ballsed up a brilliant career? I’ll say that, too.”

“Bob . . .”

“Well, what do you—” Abruptly, he started to cough, a hollow, rasping sound. Anne and Gemma lurched forward to help him, handing over tissues, glasses of water, fussing and clucking like a pair of hens.

Ed was standing at the foot of his father’s bed.

“Prison?” his mother said again. “Actual
prison
prison?”

“Sit down, Mum. Deep breaths.” Gemma steered her mother into a chair.

Nobody moved toward Ed. Why didn’t somebody hug him? Why could they not see how alone he felt right at that minute?

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

Jess could bear it no longer. “Can I say something?” She heard her
voice, clear and slightly too loud. “I just want to tell you that Ed helped my two children when I couldn’t. He drove us the length of the country, because we were desperate. As far as I’m concerned, your son is . . . wonderful.”

They all looked up. Jess turned to his father. “He’s kind, smart, and clever, even if I don’t agree with all the things he does. He’s nice to people he barely knows. Insider trading or no, if my son turns out as half the man your son is, then I’ll be very happy. More than happy. I’ll be ecstatic.”

They were all staring at her.

She added: “And I thought that even before I had sex with him.”

Nobody spoke. Ed stared fixedly at his feet.

“Well,” Anne gave a faint nod, “that’s, er, that’s—”

“Enlightening,” said Gemma.

Anne’s voice trailed away. “Oh, Edward.”

Bob sighed and closed his eyes. “Let’s not get all Hollywood about this.” He opened them again and signaled for the head of the bed to be raised a little. “Come here, Ed. Where I can see you. Wretched eyesight.” He motioned for the glass again and his wife held it to his lips.

He swallowed painfully, then tapped the side of his bed, so that Ed sat down on it. He reached out a hand and rested it lightly on his son’s. He was unbearably frail. “You’re my son, Ed. You might be idiotic and irresponsible, but it doesn’t make the slightest difference to what I feel about you.” He frowned. “I’m pissed off that you could have thought it would.”

“I’m sorry, Dad.”

His father gave a slow shake of his head. “I’m afraid I can’t be much help. Stupid, breathless . . .” He pulled a face, then swallowed painfully. His hand tightened around Ed’s. “We all make mistakes. Go and take your punishment, then come back and start again.”

Ed looked up at him.

“Do even better next time. I know you can.”

It was at that point that Anne started to cry, helpless tears that she buried in her sleeve. Bob turned his head slowly toward her. “Oh, darling,” he said softly. And that was when Jess opened the door silently and slid out.

—

She put some credit on her phone in the hospital shop, texted Ed to say where she was, and waited in A and E to get her foot looked at. Badly bruised, said a young Polish doctor, who didn’t bat an eyelid when she told him how she had done it. He strapped it up, wrote a prescription for painkillers, handed her back her flip-flop, and advised her to rest. “Try not to kick any more cars,” he said without looking up from his clipboard.

Jess hobbled back upstairs to Victoria Ward, sat on one of the plastic chairs in the corridor, and waited. It was warm and the people around her spoke in whispers. She may have nodded off briefly. She woke abruptly when Ed emerged from his father’s room. She held out his jacket and he took it without a word. A moment later Gemma appeared in the corridor. His sister put her hand gently to the side of his face. “You bloody idiot.”

His head dipped, hands shoved deep in his pockets, like Nicky.

“You stupid bloody stupid idiot. Call me.”

He pulled back. His eyes were red rimmed.

“I mean it. I’ll come with you to court. I might know some people in probation who could help get you into an open prison. I mean, you’re not going to be category A, as long as you haven’t done anything else.” Her eyes flickered toward Jess and back to him. “You haven’t done anything else, right?”

He leaned forward and hugged her, and maybe it was only Jess who noticed the way his eyes closed really tightly when he pulled away.

—

They emerged from the hospital into the luminous white of a spring day. Real life, inexplicably, seemed to have continued regardless.
Cars reversed into spaces too small, strollers were disgorged from buses, a workman’s radio blared as he painted a nearby railing. Jess found herself taking deep breaths, grateful to be away from the stale, medical air of the ward, the almost tangible specter of death that hung over Ed’s father. Ed walked and looked straight ahead. He paused when they reached his car and unlocked it with an audible clunk. Then he stopped. It was as if he couldn’t move. He stood there, one arm slightly outstretched, staring blankly at his car.

Jess waited for a minute, and then she walked slowly around it. She took the key from his hand. And finally, when his gaze slid toward her, she slid her arms tight around his waist and held him until his head came slowly down to rest, a soft deadweight upon her shoulder.

N
icky actually started a conversation at breakfast. They had been eating around the table like a television family—Tanzie had multigrain hoops, and Suze and Josh had chocolate croissants, which Suze said they had every day because it was their favorite—and it was a bit weird sitting there with Dad and his other family but not actually as bad as she’d thought. Dad was eating a bowl of bran flakes because he said he had to stay trim now, as he patted his stomach, although she wasn’t sure why because it wasn’t like he had a job. “Things in the pipeline, Tanze,” he said whenever she asked what he was actually doing. She wondered if Linzie had a garage full of air-conditioning units that didn’t work, too. Linzie didn’t seem to eat anything. Nicky was toying with some toast—he rarely ate breakfast; until this trip Tanzie wasn’t sure he had ever been up for breakfast—when he just looked at Dad and said, “Jess works all the time. All the time. And I don’t think it’s fair.”

Dad’s spoon stopped halfway to his mouth, and Tanzie wondered whether he was going to get really angry, like he used to if Nicky said anything he felt was disrespectful. Nobody said anything for a minute. Then Linzie put her hand on Dad’s and smiled. “He’s right, love.”

And Dad went a bit pink and said, yes, well, things were going to change a bit from now on and we all made mistakes, and because she felt a bit braver then, Tanzie said, no, strictly speaking, not all of us did make mistakes. She had made a mistake with her algorithms and Norman had made a mistake because of the cows and breaking her glasses, and Mum had made a mistake with the Rolls-Royce and getting arrested, but Nicky was the one person in their family who
hadn’t made any mistakes. But halfway through her saying it, Nicky kicked her hard under the table and gave her that look.

What? her eyes said to him.

Shut it, his said to her.

Grrr,
don’t tell me to shut it, hers said to him.

And then he wouldn’t look at her.

“Would you like a chocolate croissant, love?” Linzie said, and put one on her plate before Tanzie had even answered.

Linzie had washed and dried Tanzie’s clothes overnight, and they smelled of orchid and vanilla fabric conditioner. Everything in that house smelled of something. It was as if nothing were allowed to just smell of itself. She had little plug-in things dotted around her baseboards that released “a luxurious scent of rare blossoms and rain forests” and bowls of potpourri and about a billion candles in the bathroom (“I do love my scented candles”). Tanzie’s nose itched the whole time they were indoors.

After breakfast Linzie took Suze to ballet. Dad and Tanzie went to the park even though she hadn’t been to the park in about two years because she had sort of grown out of it. But she didn’t want to hurt Dad’s feelings so she sat on the swing and let him push her a few times. Nicky stood and watched, with his hands stuffed into his pockets. He had left his Nintendo in Mr. Nicholls’s car and she knew he really, really wanted a cigarette, but she didn’t think he felt brave enough to smoke one in front of Dad.

There were chip-shop chips for lunch (“Don’t tell Linzie,” Dad said, patting his stomach again), and Dad asked questions about Mr. Nicholls, trying to sound all casual: “Who is he then, that bloke? Your mum’s boyfriend?”

“No,” said Nicky, in a way that made it hard for Dad to ask another question. Tanzie thought Dad was a bit shocked at how Nicky spoke to him. Not that he was rude, exactly, it’s just that he didn’t seem to care what Dad thought. And Nicky was now taller than
him, but when Tanzie pointed it out, Dad didn’t seem to think that was amazing at all.

And then Tanzie got cold because she hadn’t brought her coat, so they went back and Suze was already home from ballet so they played some games and Nicky went upstairs to the computer. Then Tanzie and Suze went to her room and Suze said they could watch a DVD because she had her own DVD player and she watched a whole one by herself every night before she went to sleep.

“Doesn’t your mum read to you?” Tanzie said.

“She doesn’t have time. That’s why she got me the DVD player,” Suze said. She had a whole shelf of films, all her favorites, that she could watch up there when they were watching something she didn’t like downstairs.

“Marty likes gangster films so they watch those,” she said, her nose wrinkling, and it took Tanzie a few minutes to realize she was actually talking about her dad. And she didn’t know what to say.

“I like your jacket,” Suze said, peering into Tanzie’s bag.

“My mum made it for me for Christmas.”

“Your mum actually made it?” She held it up, so that the sequins Mum had sewn into the sleeves glinted in the light. “Oh, my God, is she like a fashion designer or something?”

“No,” Tanzie said. “She’s a cleaner.”

Suze laughed as if Tanzie’d been joking.

“What are all those?” she said when she saw the maths papers in her bag.

This time Tanzie kept her mouth closed.

“Is that maths? Oh, my God, it’s like . . . squiggles. It’s like . . . Greek.” She giggled, flicking through them, then holding them from two fingers, like they were something horrible. “Are they your brother’s? Is he, like, a maths freak?”

“I don’t know.” Tanzie blushed because she was not very good at lying.

“Ugh. What a brainiac. Freaky. Geeky.” She tossed them to one
side, while she pulled out Tanzie’s other clothes. “Does everything you own have sequins on it?”

Tanzie didn’t say anything. She left the papers there on the floor because she didn’t want to have to explain. And she didn’t want to think about the Olympiad. And she just thought maybe it would be easier if she tried to be like Suze from now on because she seemed really happy and Dad seemed really happy here. And then, because she really didn’t want to think about anything anymore, Tanzie said that maybe they should watch television downstairs.

They were three quarters of the way through
Fantasia
when Tanzie heard Dad calling, “Tanze, your mum’s here.” Mum stood on the doorstep with her chin up like she was ready for an argument. When Tanzie stopped and stared at her face, Mum put a hand to her lip as if she had only just remembered it was split, then said, “I fell over.” Tanzie looked behind her to Mr. Nicholls who was sitting in the car, and Mum said, quick as anything, “He fell over, too.” Even though she hadn’t actually been able to see his face and she had just wanted to see whether they were getting in the car or if they were going to have to get a bus after all.

And Dad said, “Does everything you come into contact with these days suffer some kind of injury?” Mum gave him a look and he muttered something about repairs, then said he’d go and get her bag, and Tanzie let out a big breath and ran into Mum’s arms because although she’d had a nice time at Linzie’s house, she’d missed Norman and she wanted to be with Mum and she was suddenly really, really tired.

—

The cabin that Mr. Nicholls had rented was like something out of an advertisement for what old people want to do when they retire, or maybe pills for urine problems. It was on a lake and there were a few other houses, but they were mostly set back behind trees or at angles so that no single window looked directly at any other house. There were fifty-six ducks and twenty geese on the water, and all but three
were still there by the time they’d had tea. Tanzie thought Norman might chase them, but he just flopped down on the grass and watched.

“Awesome,” said Nicky, even though he didn’t really like the outdoors at all. He inhaled deeply, then took two pictures on Mr. Nicholls’s phone. She realized he hadn’t smoked a cigarette for four days.

“Isn’t it?” said Mum. She gazed out at the lake. She started to say something about paying their share, and Mr. Nicholls held up his hands and made this “
no no no no
” noise like he didn’t even want to hear it, and Mum went a bit pink and stopped.

They had dinner on a barbecue outside—even though it was not really barbecue weather—because Mum said it would be a fun end to the trip, and when did she ever get time to do a barbecue, anyway? She seemed determined to make everyone happy and just chatted away about twice as much as anyone else, and she said she’d blown the budget because sometimes you had to count your blessings and live a little. It seemed like it was her way of saying thank you to Mr. Nicholls. So they had sausages and chicken thighs in spicy sauce and fresh rolls and salad, and Mum had bought two tubs of the good ice cream, not the cheap stuff that came in the white plastic cartons. She didn’t ask anything about Dad’s new house, but she did hug Tanzie a lot and said that she’d missed her and wasn’t that silly because it was only one night after all.

They each told jokes, and even though Tanzie could only remember the one that went “What’s brown and sticky?” (answer: a stick), everyone laughed, and they played the game where you put a broomstick to your forehead and the other end on the ground and run around it in circles until you fall over. Mum did it once, even though she could barely walk with her foot all strapped up and kept saying,
Ow, ow, ow,
as she went round in a circle. And that made Tanzie laugh because it was just nice to see Mum being silly for a change. And Mr. Nicholls kept saying, No, no, not for him, thanks, he would just watch. And then Mum limped over to him and said something really quiet in his ear and he raised his eyebrows and said, “Really?”
And she nodded. And he said, “Well, all right, then.” And when he crashed over, he actually made the ground vibrate a little. And even Nicky, who never did anything, did it, his legs sticking out like a daddy longlegs, and when he laughed, his laugh was really strange, like this
huh huh huh
sound, and then Tanzie decided she hadn’t heard him laugh like that for ages. Maybe ever.

And she did it about six times until the world bucked and rolled beneath her and she collapsed on her back on the grass and watched the sky spin slowly around her and thought that was a bit like life for their family. Never quite the way it was meant to be.

They ate the food, and Mum and Mr. Nicholls had some wine, and Tanzie took all the scraps off the bones and gave them to Norman because dogs die if you give them chicken bones. And then they put their coats on and just sat out on the nice wicker chairs that went with the cabin, all lined up in a row in front of the lake, and watched the birds on the water until it got dark. “I love this place,” said Mum into the silence. Tanzie wasn’t sure anyone was meant to see it, but Mr. Nicholls reached over and gave Mum’s hand a squeeze.

Mr. Nicholls seemed a little sad most of the evening. Tanzie wasn’t sure why. She wondered if it was because they’d reached the end of the little trip. But the sound of the water lapping against the shore was really calm and peaceful and she must have fallen asleep because she vaguely remembered Mr. Nicholls carrying her upstairs and Mum tucking her in and telling her she loved her. But what she mostly remembered about that whole evening was that nobody talked about the Olympiad, and she was just really, really glad.

—

Because here’s the thing. While Mum was getting the barbecue set up, Tanzie asked to borrow Mr. Nicholls’s computer and looked up the statistics for children of low-income families at private schools. And she saw within a few minutes that the probability of her actually going to St. Anne’s had always been in single-figure percentages. And she understood that it didn’t matter how well she had done in
that entrance test; she should have checked this figure before they had even left home because you only ever went wrong in life when you didn’t pay attention to the numbers. Nicky came upstairs, and when he saw what she was doing, he stood there without saying anything for a minute, then patted her arm and said he would speak to a couple of people he knew at McArthur’s to make sure they looked out for her.

When they were at Linzie’s, Dad had told her that private school was no guarantee of success. He’d said it three times.
Success is all about what’s inside you
, he said.
Determination
. And then he said Tanzie should get Suze to show her how she did her hair because maybe hers would look nice like that, too.

Mum said she would sleep on the couch that night so that Tanzie and Nicky could have the second bedroom, but Tanzie didn’t think she did because when she woke up really thirsty in the middle of the night and went downstairs, Mum wasn’t there. And in the morning Mum was wearing Mr. Nicholls’s gray T-shirt that he wore every single day and Tanzie waited twenty minutes watching his door because she was curious to know what he was going to come down in.

—

A faint mist hung across the lake in the morning. It rose off the water like a magician’s trick as everyone packed up the car. Norman sniffed around the grass, his tail wagging slowly. “Rabbits,” said Mr. Nicholls (he was wearing another gray T-shirt). The morning was chill and the wood pigeons cooed softly in the trees and Tanzie had that sad feeling like you’ve been somewhere really nice and it’s all come to an end.

“I don’t want to go home,” she said quietly, as Mum shut the boot.

She flinched. “What, love?”

“I don’t want to go back home,” Tanzie said.

Mum glanced at Mr. Nicholls and then she tried to smile, walked over slowly, and said, “Do you mean you want to be with your dad, Tanze? Because if that’s what you really want, I’ll—”

“No. I just like this house and it’s nice here.” She wanted to say,
And there’s nothing to look forward to when we get back because everything is spoiled, and besides, here there are no Fishers,
but she could see from Mum’s face that that was what she was thinking, too, because she immediately looked at Nicky and he shrugged.

“You know, there’s no shame in having tried to do something, right?” Mum gazed at them both. “We all did our best to make something happen, and it didn’t happen, but some good things have come out of it. We got to see some parts of the country we would never have seen. We learned a few things. We sorted it out with your dad. We made some friends.” It’s possible she meant Linzie and her children, but her eyes were on Mr. Nicholls when she said it. “So all in all I think it was a good thing that we tried, even if it didn’t go quite the way we’d planned. And, you know, maybe things won’t be so bad once we get home.”