‘About what, Miss Nikky?’ he asked. He was a tall, gruff-looking man in his forties. He had shaved his head, he said, when he was younger because he thought it’d make him look tough. As he got older and worked in more respectable jobs, he’d thought about the idea of having hair and it made him look odd whenever he tried to grow it, like he was trying to hide who he was.
‘My name’s not Nikky,’ I confessed to him.
‘I’m sorry, Miss, have I been calling you the wrong name all this time? I’m ever so sorry.’ He was well spoken even though he was wrapped up in that gruff, tough, hairless package.
‘No. I suppose that’s part of what I was asking you. See, when I first met Todd, I told him my name was Nika, as in short for Veronika, and he decided he preferred Nikky, so called me Nikky. I never really pushed it with asking him to call me by my name because I didn’t want to hurt him. And that’s never changed. Because I never want to hurt him, I don’t make a big deal of it when things upset me, or when he’s hurt me, and now we’re here. I’m getting married in four weeks and I don’t know what to do. If I don’t marry him, then he’ll be hurt. And if I marry him …’
Frank remained silent as I talked, but he was listening. I knew he was also listening to the words – how I’d woven them together, what they meant, how they danced through what I was telling him about my life.
‘Do you think I should marry him, Frank?’
‘With all due respect, Miss Nika, I don’t know anything about your relationship except what I see when I drive you both in my car, and what you have just told me.’
‘OK. Forget what I’ve just told you – from what you’ve seen, do you think I should marry him?’
‘With all due respect, Miss Nika, I think people should marry for love or for money, but never to avoid hurting someone and never to make anyone, not even themselves, feel better.’
I heard what he said without saying the actual words, and I heard how he used my name twice without question. The conversation was like a song: all the words used were ones that danced around what I wanted to ask, what he thought I should do, how I was going to tell Todd I couldn’t marry him.
I can’t marry him. The acceptance of that was like a sudden bloom of relief in my chest. I can’t marry him.
Todd hadn’t changed in the last six months, he hadn’t gone back to being the man I fell in love with, even though I had to think three times before I spoke so I didn’t push his buttons, even though I told him every time I left the house where I’d been, who I’d seen and what we’d talked about. He still did it, as well. Still did it. We pretended it was no big deal most of the time because I didn’t cry any more so he didn’t need to scream at me to stop making him feel like a rapist.
Todd had tried, I knew he had, but he couldn’t manage it. This was who he was, and it wouldn’t be fair to keep on expecting him to be any different. He was who he was. I had to accept that and find a way to explain to him that I had to move on.
‘Thanks for the chat, Frank,’ I told him as he held open the back door for me to get out. We always stopped a little around the corner and I would get out and go into the back seat so outside the flat he would be opening the expected door for me. I didn’t ever want to cause any trouble for the drivers by being inappropriate.
‘You’re welcome, Miss Nika. And remember, only ever marry for love or money.’
‘I will.’
He carried the cardboard bags with long string handles, filled with five different pairs of potential wedding shoes from two expensive shops, to the front door of the flats, and left them on the metal mat.
‘Goodbye, Miss Nika,’ he said. ‘And good luck, with whatever you decide to do.’
‘So, which is it?’ Todd asked while we ate dinner.
When I’d come in, he’d nipped out to the shops for some extra supplies and had come back to find me in the shower. I’d gone to the shower to think about what Frank had said. I’d turned it over and over in my head like I was moving a coin over and over in my hand. After the shower I’d gone to find him but he was in his office, wearing his thick, padded headphones, listening to music, so I’d gone back to the bedroom, had lain on the bed, thinking and staring at the ceiling.
Before I’d realised it, hours had passed and in that time he’d whipped up one of his amazing creations: spinach and ricotta ravioli with a delicious red meat ragù. He’d put on low lighting and he’d opened a really expensive bottle of red. He didn’t have practice any time that week so he had time off, which meant he could cook, we could eat together and talk.
‘Which is what?’ I asked.
‘Which is it that you’re doing with me? Marrying for love or money? Isn’t that what “Frank” told you?’ he said, adding a sneer on the driver’s name. ‘He’s fired, by the way, for being overfamiliar. I’d already told them he couldn’t drive you any more after today, but then he was calling you Nika, like he knew you, and I realised he was probably in love with you. And I can’t have that.’
‘Sorry, I don’t understand.’ I moved my head up from staring at my food, snatched my mind away from what I was thinking about because it seemed important that I paid full attention to Todd and what he was saying. I had heard it and now I replayed it, I couldn’t quite believe what he’d said and needed him to clarify it. ‘What do you mean, Frank’s fired?’
‘What do you think fired means?’
‘But why? And how do you know …’ My voice trailed away for a moment, not sure I should ask what I was about to ask: ‘Have you been bugging the cars I use?’ No one would actually do this unless they were on a TV show. Todd and I weren’t on a TV show. Although parts of our life were unreal sometimes, and seeing myself on magazines was odd, seeing him play for England was surreal, but we didn’t live that kind of unreal life.
‘You haven’t stuck to our agreement, have you?’ he said insouciantly.
Todd was being so casual, so nonchalant, that I wanted to stand up and, in the same manner, upend his glass table. Maybe that would get him to take this a bit more seriously. ‘What?’ I asked.
‘I asked you, practically begged you to help me. To not push my buttons, to not give me things to worry about, to reassure me that I was doing well, and you haven’t been doing any of it. In fact, you’ve given me nothing but more worries that you’re going to cheat on me. Because of that, because of what you have done, I had to be sure what was going on when I wasn’t with you. And from what I heard, I’ve a right to be worried.’
‘You have a right to be worried? You? I’m not the one being photographed with a different woman draped over me every night. With little digs from “anonymous sources” that these women have intimate knowledge of your tattoos and birthmarks. If anyone has the right to be worried, it’s me.’
‘Don’t try and turn this on me. You’re the one who’s been having cosy little chats with the drivers.’
‘I talk to people. That’s what most normal human beings do. I talk to people. And you’ve had someone fired for it? You’re sick. I can’t believe you had me recorded. Who does that?’ I stopped talking and moving. Slowly, the only things that moved about me were my eyes, darting around the room, trying to spot them, trying to see if they were there. ‘Have you bugged this place as well so you can listen to me during the day? Is that why you’re always listening to stuff on your headphones? Have you been recording me? You’re sick.’
‘What’s sick is having to listen to you talking about music and love songs with another man.’ In other words, yes – he had bugged the flat. ‘You never talk to me like that.’
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. ‘Todd, I never talk to you like that because you have no interest in talking to me. I try to chat to you and you always dismiss it, or tell me I’m frying your brain. You have no interest in me whatsoever. And you don’t like me having friends – some of your friends’ wives try to be friendly but you make such a big deal every time I talk to them or make arrangements to go out I don’t bother. You don’t l
ike me calling people, you huff and puff every time I speak on the phone. You don’t like me emailing – and have to check all the time who I’m messaging and what I’m saying. So, you know what, yes, when I get the chance to speak to real people, I do.’ I shake my head at him. ‘I can’t believe you convinced those people to let you record me in the car.’
‘It didn’t take any convincing. The owner of the company understood my worries about what you might do given your drugs history.’
‘I HAVEN’T GOT A DRUGS HISTORY!’ I screamed at him. I was on my feet, my whole body burning with rage. ‘You are the drug taker, you are the drug user, I’ve never taken drugs in my life!’
The shock on his face was real. Partly because I’d never shouted at him before, and partly, too, because he’d genuinely forgotten that I never actually took drugs, that I only allowed him to say I did to save his reputation and his career.
‘Look, let’s forget all this, calm down.’ He indicated to the chair behind me. ‘Sit down. Talk about this rationally.’
‘There is nothing rational about what you’ve done. No matter how long we talk about it, it will never be rational.’
‘Come on, Nikky, I just need to be able to trust you. Surely you understand that. It’ll be better when we’re married. I’ll feel more secure. Once you’re properly mine, we’ll be all right.’
Todd thought he owned me. Or rather, he thought that he partially owned me – when I married him the process of ownership would be complete and I would be stamped across the forehead as ‘sold’.
‘I am not marrying you,’ I replied. ‘There is no way on Earth I’m marrying you.’
His anger, which was always there, simmering and brooding just below his calm, charming surface, exploded and he swiped away the plates, the glasses and cutlery in front of him. ‘YOU FUCKING WILL!’ he roared at me. ‘It’s all planned, the guests have all replied, there are important people coming to it! You will do as you’re told!’
This moment, his final explosion, had an odd effect on me. Instead of being scared, or desperately trying to work out how to appease him while scrabbling around for excuses to make myself believe he didn’t mean it, I stayed calm. I was calm. I stared at the fiery form of my fiancé and felt nothing but a certainty about what to do next. I slowly twisted the diamond ring off my finger, placed it on the table between us.
All his rage and fury fled, and he stared at the ring in shock. He didn’t expect this, truly he didn’t. ‘Nikky—’ he began.
‘My name’s Nika or Veronika. I am not called Nikky.’
‘Nikky suits you better.’
‘But it’s not my name. Why can’t you understand that? Why can’t you use it? I told Frank my name once and he used it. I’m sure if I told anyone my name they’d use it. Why can’t you?’
‘Is that what this is all about? Frank? If he means so much to you, I’ll get him his job back. But he’d better be grateful.’
‘Grateful for getting back a job he never should have lost in the first place?’ I ran my hands over my head, smoothing over the curls that had been put in three days ago. ‘Can you not see how crazy that sounds?’
‘Look, look, we can get over this. We can go back to working on our relationship, trying a bit harder.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to. Not any more. It’s over, Todd.’
He smiled, then chuckled to himself, then laughed out loud. Disbelief, of course. ‘It’s not over. It can’t be. I won’t let it be. We can’t break up.’
I said nothing. I was sure that it only took one person to break up a relationship, but Todd wouldn’t accept that. He would argue and argue with anything I said, would try to engage me in justifying why I wanted to split up. And I knew, from all the times he’d done it to me about other things – mainly about sex – nothing I said would convince him I had the right to make my own decisions, including the right to end this.
‘You, you’re nothing without me. You do realise that, don’t you?’ he said. ‘The clothes you wear, the shoes on your feet, the jewellery, make-up, hairstyle, all of it is from me. You were nothing and I made you who you are. And more than that, your phone, your computer, the money in your bank account, the credit cards are all mine. All mine. Without me, you’re nothing.’
‘I know,’ I replied. ‘You’re right.’ ‘And that’s why I have to leave. Maybe without you I’ll be me again, not this Nikky person you created,’ I added silently.
‘You’ll be back,’ he said as I walked towards the door. ‘When you realise what life is like out there in the real world, you’ll be back.’
‘I won’t, you know,’ I said in my head. And I wouldn’t. I knew no matter what happened, I would not be back.
Roni
London, 2016
‘I was only joking earlier,’ Uncle Warren informs me. He made a big deal of coming into my parents’ kitchen from the dining room and helping me to wash up. He stands across the kitchen, arms across his chest, leaning against the fridge. This was his favourite room in the house at one point. He was often dragging me in here to show me something or other.
‘I know,’ I say. The pan my mother has used to cook the rice is proving tricky to clean. I should probably soak it, but I remember how much Mum hated seeing things soaking in the sink: ‘It makes the place look like a junk yard,’ she would say. I have to clean it now.
‘If you knew, why didn’t you laugh then?’ Uncle Warren asks.
‘Did you need me to laugh?’ I ask.
‘Come on now, Roni, it was only a little banter.’
‘I see.’
‘You’re really getting on my nerves with that holier-than-thou attitude,’ he snarls. His voice is low so my parents can’t hear, even though they are in the living room at the front of the house, and he is suddenly, I’m aware, a lot closer to me.
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘If someone makes a joke, you laugh. That’s the polite thing to do. I’d have thought you of all people would know that.’
‘Me?’
‘Yeah, a nun.’
The rubber gloves go right up to my elbows and I’m sure they’re hindering rather than helping the process of removing seemingly welded-on pieces of rice from the bottom of Mum’s pan. The rice is rock hard and web-like. I drop the sponge and instead pick at it, although the rubber gloves make that much more difficult. ‘I’m not a nun any more.’ I take off one glove and go at the piece of rice again. I concentrate on it until I hear him leave the room.
Once I am alone, I stop the frantic cleaning. ‘I’m not an adoring seven-year-old any more, either,’ I add under my breath.
Nika
London, 2016
‘Sorry for all the cloak-and-dagger stuff,’ Sasha says. She’s aged in the eighteen years or so since I last saw her. Her face has filled out a little, but her eyes – large, brown and beautiful – are underscored by lines of sleep deprivation. Her forehead is pretty unlined, and her skin is dewy soft and blemish-free thanks to the make-up she has expertly applied, but she looks like she has lived every single second of her years the hard way. She looks younger than me, though, I’d imagine, because she hasn’t lived as eventful a life as I have.
‘Mummy and Daddy still think I’m the demon child, then?’ My laugh gags me as it should. If they won’t have me to stay for even the briefest of whiles, no one will, because it’s impossible to do anything without ID today. Much as I didn’t have much ID as Grace, I have even less as Veronika.
‘No, no, not at all. It’s your ex,’ Sasha explains.
‘My ex?’ Vinnie? I haven’t had anything to do with Vinnie in over five years and even then he only knew me as Grace or ‘Ace’. Then I remember: the other ex, the one who started all this. ‘You mean Todd?’
‘Yeah, him. Mr Big I Am.’
‘What’s he got to do with anything?’
‘He comes over here sometimes. In fact, he’s due a visit any day now.’
‘What?’ I ask in despair. ‘We finished
over ten years ago. And he’s still hanging around?’ I knew he wouldn’t let me go. I knew it.
‘No, no, not exactly like that. It’s complicated. A couple of months after they said in the papers that you’d split up and you’d just disappeared, he showed up at Mum and Dad’s house. Caused a huge stir on our street in his posh car and everything. People were coming out to get his autograph and everything. Mummy called me and I went over with Ralph and he was there, with your stuff, saying you’d run away and he was so upset because he didn’t understand why. How he’d always wanted to meet them but you’d done your best to keep them apart. All he’d ever tried to do was help you, especially with your drug problem. Mummy and Daddy were lapping it up like it was chocolate milk. Me and Ralph were like, “Yeah, right, Nika, drugs, don’t think so.” But you know what they’re like, they listen to the person who sounds the most plausible, especially after all that stuff in the papers. Anyway, he said to them to call him if they saw you so he could come and talk some sense into you.’
‘Yeah, but that was ten years ago.’
‘Yeah, it began ten years ago, but for a while he started coming over once a month for Sunday lunch and Ralph told me a couple of months later that he was sure he saw him hanging about across the road from Mum and Dad’s, just watching the house. Now we’ve moved back in, every now and then I’m sure I’ll catch a glimpse of him. Different car, but I’m sure it’s him. Then sure enough, a few days later, he’ll drop by with an expensive bottle of something for Daddy, a bunch of flowers for Mummy, some line about just seeing how they’re doing and feeling like they should have been his parents instead of his own.’ My sister shakes her head, her onyx-black hair glistening in the light. ‘Seriously, at one point I thought he’d murdered you and was trying to find out how much we knew cos he was trying so hard to be Mr Nice all the time. And when I never heard from you about where to send your post on to … I kept thinking … The worst, basically.’