Chapter Twenty-Eight

Sunday 30th June

Talk to me

"Nikki, I'm sorry, whatever it is I'm sorry."

"I just Skyped you, and you weren't there. You promised you would be there," she said resentfully.

"Nikki, I was in a cab on the way to your house!"

"They're called taxis," she grumbled, a sarcastic edge to her voice.

Harry found himself breathing in and out slowly, concentrating on keeping the breaths even and not turning on his heels and walking back out the door.

"But you had that special 4G thing…"

"Nikki, I was minutes from your house. Isn't having me here better? Did you want to talk to me?"

"Yes," she said quietly, picking at her nails and staring at the floor.

"Then talk to me, I'm here." He felt like shaking her but didn't trust her response if he tried to touch her.

He saw her look up then, quickly catch his eye and look down again. If he'd blinked he would have missed it.

"But for how long?" she mumbled.

"Nikki?"

"Don't look at me like that!" she cried her eyes reddening. "I know you won't be here long, just do what you have to and get out of here," her voice was beginning to sound threatening.

Harry took a step towards her, he was confused, he'd explained everything to her. Written it all down. First she was cross with him for not being there when she wanted to talk to him and now it sounded like she was throwing him out.

"Nikki," he said calmly holding a hand out to her. "Talk to me please." He was tempted to add that he'd spent all night on a plane, crushed between a sumo wrestler and national hot dog eating champion and he wasn't in the mood for any more crap, but he bit his tongue. Fighting with her was not going to solve anything, not when he was so tired.

He saw her looking at his hand, but she didn't move. He took another step towards her and held out the other hand, which she also ignored.

"But you're selling your flat," she spat viciously. "Are you just hoping you can crash here while you sort out the details with the estate agent? Get it done as quickly as you can and then get back. That way you can claim you won't even have time to see your own mother! You probably even think you can take the car."

Harry sucked in a breath as if she'd actually hit him; not just verbally attacked him. He hadn't spoken to her in months, he knew she would have taken Leo's death hard, but he had never expected it would have been this bad. He'd asked Jack how she was and he'd reported that she was functioning as usual at work, if not more dedicated; more consumed by work, but Harry had overestimated the closeness of their relationship. Jack was obviously not privy to the private side of Nikki, Jack just got the same 'I'm in control,' show that everyone else got. He'd never seen any further, not as Harry had. She'd not let Jack see this. Even before Harry had left, she'd usually hid this from him too. She was a mess.

He left her in the hallway and walked into the kitchen. He couldn't stand in that confined space with her, he needed a bit of room. He'd been cramped all night. He filled the kettle with water to make tea, he'd been travelling for hours and this was hardly the reception he'd anticipated. It was as he was pouring the boiled water into the cups he realised something.

"You never got my letter did you?"

He heard drawers banging in the hallway and then she appeared in the kitchen and threw down a pile of envelopes onto the kitchen table.

"It wasn't addressed to me, it was addressed to you. I sent it days ago." How long did snail mail take he wondered. He'd gotten so used to the instant nature of email and texts. Did it still take a week for mail to cross the Atlantic?

He passed Nikki a cup of tea she hadn't asked for and she sat down at her table. She picked up the letter, the one from the letting agency, the one she had opened.

"It say's you're selling your flat," she said in a monotone.

"I am," he affirmed.

Her eyes flashed up again to his and back down to her tea but this time she stayed quiet and didn't cast any aspersions on his parentage.

"I'm selling my flat because I want to buy a house," he began.

"Somewhere nice? Queens? Staten Island? New Jersey?" she interrupted.

"Nikki!" he was really beginning to lose it with her, but he'd also noticed the bottle of pills on the table and recognised the name, so that had further answered the question of how she was. She couldn't have got his letter, or she'd not read it and this one about the sale of his flat would have upset her.

"I'm selling my flat Nikki, because I'm buying a house here in London. I'm not going back to NYU in September, I want to live in London, this is my home. I want to be here." He paused and then added quietly. "I want to be with you."

She looked up at him then, her eyes wide at first and then closing to slits.

"So they fired you then?" she said cruelly disregarding the last statement entirely.

"Nikki!" he shouted, banging the bottle of pills down on the table, at a loss as to what to say. He twirled the bottle in his hand. "Why do you always get these and never take them? Why do you go to the bother? They do help you know."

"How do you know…" she broke off. "They could be a new pot, maybe I just got a refill?"

"Not with a May date on they wouldn't be. Talk to me Nikki. Please? First you're mad because you wanted to talk to me and I wasn't there and now I'm here you can barely even look at me. What was so important that you had to tell me about but now I'm here you can't stand to be near me?" He broke off his own mind whirling as to the reasons that could cause this paradox.

"Oh no!" he exclaimed as he pushed back his chair and moved round to her side of the table grabbing at her left arm and pulling her hand towards him, studying the fingers.

"Harry?" she cried. It was the first time she'd acknowledged him properly. The first time she'd used his name but it sent shivers through Harry's spine for all the wrong reasons.

"It's not got that far then… Where is he?" He paused and looked around for signs that someone other than Nikki was living with her.

"Is he still upstairs? Is that why you're like this? Is he going to wander in here in his underpants at any minute and want to know what the hell is going on and when you're going back to bed?"

"Harry…"

"Or were you expecting him to ring the doorbell. Is that why I got such a great welcome?" he asked sarcastically. "Because you weren't expecting me, you don't want me. You were waiting for someone else. You were expecting someone else. Is that what you wanted to tell me? Tell me that you had finally found someone. Tell me goodbye? My timing is truly appalling." He'd circled the table twice during his little speech, he couldn't believe he'd only been back in the country a couple of hours and here he was back in Nikki's kitchen fighting with her as if he'd never left. Why had he even entertained the notion that they were possible?

"Nikki?" She had her head in her hands, her elbows on the table.

"That's not why," she said.

"What's not why?" Harry babbled unclear for an instant as to what they had been arguing about, he'd been wondering whether he should have gone to Vegas after all. He could have had a string of show girls; they'd be no shortage of one off girls there. What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas and all that…

"I wasn't trying to tell you that I had found someone else."

"You've not?" Harry suddenly stopped circumnavigating the table and sat back in his chair.

"I like your tea," he added after taking another sip. Nikki just shook her head.

"I wanted to Skype you because…" she broke off, but she did look up at him. Her eyes swam with a jumble of emotions; he saw her loneliness, her sadness and her shattered and almost broken spirit.

"You wanted to Skype me, so you could still be the one in control of the conversation," he suggested. It was all about control still. That's why she had an unopened bottle of antidepressants on the kitchen table. She had to be the one in control.

She put her head back in her hands. She would have taken comfort from his presence on the computer, someone she could have shared an edited version of her life with for a few minutes, to experience a sympathetic ear and have an empathetic conversation.

But Harry, in her house, sat at her table that was an entirely different entity. There was no way of sharing just the edited highlights, he was much harder to lie to when he was sat a metre away from her and not just on the laptop screen. With him there, he could respond, he could reach out to her, hold her in his arms and the minute he did she knew the last strappings of control she felt she had on her life would be torn to shreds and she would blow apart, scattered to the four winds just as Leo had been. Leo had known his fate and had smiled and got on with it. She knew her breakdown was inevitable but unlike Leo she was terrified. She was frightened that as soon as she began to talk to Harry she would break apart and she wasn't sure any more that she could trust him to find all the pieces and put her back together again.

"You're staying in London?"

"I'm staying." He affirmed.

"Permanently?"

"Yes."

She took the chance to look up then, across the mugs, across the scattered pile of letters, passed the antidepressants and into his face. He held her gaze, she expected the tears to come but instead of falling apart as she had expected she felt strangely reassured.

"You're not going back?" she whispered.

"I'm not going back," he confirmed and gave her a smile. She didn't return the smile but she didn't look away and the taut lines that furrowed her brow began to relax, they sat motionless just looking at each other until they both jumped out of their seats at the sound of the doorbell.

"Nikki?"


'Who's at the door, who's at the door, someone better answer it…Robert get the door.' Harry's left over airplane goodie bag to anyone who can name the show that comes from! Or guesses as to who is at the door will do…