Chapter 8

A television version of a person with a broken heart.

Malcolm watches her throughout the night and the next few days, and even knowing her as well as he does, Malcolm assesses that she is in reasonable shape, and he's impressed - and perhaps a little chastened that he is surprised by his wife's ability to cope with a terrible situation. They travel through three days like this, of Nicola getting on with her job and doing her usual Prime Ministerial thing, swanning about, fannying around, kissing babies. The whole catastrophe. Malcolm watches it on the news with wry affection. It is not until he wakes at 2am on an otherwise normal Wednesday night to find the bed empty that Malcolm thinks there might be something wrong.

He pokes his head into the en suite even though the door is open and the lights are out, wanders into the main sitting room, and, finding it empty, sets off on a trek around the expansive residence.

Malcolm finds his dozy giblet of an other half sitting on the floor of the kitchen, clad in pyjamas and a dressing gown with her knees folded into her chest. Her head is resting against the cabinets, her eyes cast towards the ceiling. Malcolm is struck by his failure to notice how utterly fucking not okay she is.

The Scot stands in the doorway silently for a long moment, taking her in and thinking about how much better care of him she would be taking in this situation than he has been of her. He remembers, with uncomfortable clarity, the way she cared for him in the aftermath of the Goolding fiasco, the way she put aside the grievous bodily harm that they'd committed against each other for the last months and had arrived on his doorstep, intent to ensure he wasn't letting himself starve to death. He had greeted her with his usual contempt, spitting at her "Get the fuck off mah doorstep, Nic'la, I'm not in the mood for a fucking restorative justice conference t'night." After forcing herself into his life it hadn't taken many of these encounters for them to work out that underneath the politics and the positioning and the poison, they actually rather liked each other.

Weeks had passed before Malcolm had allowed Nicola to see the full extent of the damage that being sacked and disgraced had caused him. He had not cared to know about her damage at that time. His overwhelming recollection of her during that period was of her tenderness - tenderness that he did not deserve. The first night he had fallen apart in front of her she had put him to bed like he was a fucking child, and he hadn't objected - fuck, he hadn't even minded, and that must say everything about his mental state that night. In a moment of abandon Nicola had run her fingertips over his face - yes, tenderly - daring to take in the corner of his mouth with her thumb. Malcolm had almost winced at the contact, not because it was unwelcome necessarily, but because since his downfall Malcolm had felt like a thing contaminated, like failure was dripping from his very pores. And here was Nicola, Nicola who he'd fought and ruined and undermined, touching him, and not shying away from skin that he lived inside and still couldn't stand. Malcolm had caught her wrist and held her hand in place against his cheek.

"Stay." He'd whispered, and even in the darkness he's sure he could see the flash of hesitation that had crossed her face. Malcolm had moved her hand and touched his lips to the pad of her middle finger, staring in the darkness at the frozen form of the former Leader of the Opposition whose downfall he had affected. And somehow, against whatever better judgement she may have, Nicola Murray had shed her jacket and jeans and slid into bed beside him. Malcolm had fallen asleep with the weight of Nicola Murray in his arms, his fingers finding their way back around her wrist, wondering how long it had been since he had been held by a woman as he slept.

Malcolm moves into the room and Nicola's eyes travel towards the motion. Malcolm sinks to the floor beside her and feels like he's failed her. Nicola listens to him take a deep, even breath, and feels herself subconsciously fall into the rhythm of his breathing; she feels a little calmer already.

This is how well you know this man. Nicola thinks. He can make you feel better just by breathing.

Malcolm drops an arm over her knees and lightly runs his fingers over he left shin.

"Don't fucking call me 'Nicky'." She says, the normally sharp edge of her voice blunted by fatigue.

"Haven't said a fucking word, yet." Malcolm says gently.

"You were about to." She counters, and, irritatingly, she is right. He was going to try to distract her with a familiar irritation.

"Yeh know me too well, pet." He whispers, leaning to kiss her temple. Malcolm waits a beat, knowing she will rest her head in the curve of his shoulder. She does after thirty seconds of silence, and Malcolm drops his face to her hair, her floral, vanilla conditioner pervading his nostrils.

"I'm sorry, darlin'." He said against her thick, unruly mop of hair.

"You've got nothing to be sorry for." Her tone is flat, but one of her hands has come up to clasp his arm, the one resting across her body.

"Beg t'differ." He squeezes her leg. "Though' you were doing alrigh'."

"I am." She says, and he believes that she thinks she is. Malcolm doesn't contradict her. It doesn't seem like a productive use of either of their time. What she believes is what she believes.

"I could be takin' better care of you." He says instead.

"I knew so little about her when she was alive, Malcolm." Nicola says, pulling her head back and resting it against the cupboards once more. "It feels - I don't know. Disingenuous. To speak at her funeral. I mean, we talked but we never really talked. Not about anything... real."

"Will yeh divorce me if I'm blunt?" He asks the question gently, genuinely. He knows she is on a short tether, and he does not in any way mean to make this worse for her.

"I wouldn't have married you if I had an aversion to bluntness." She counters, her tone hard.

"You're not supposed to be best friends with yer fucking coppers. It makes it worse when they have t'die for you. And sometimes they do have t'die for you. It's what they sign up to do."

"Jesus, Malcolm!" She snaps, and he is about to be outraged at her telling him he can be blunt and then objecting to the particular form of his insensitivity. He changes tack quickly - skipping to the end of his commentary before getting to the middle.

"She'd want yeh t'speak, Nic'la. Yeh're not there t'say what a great kid she was or talk abou' her first boyfriend. She's got fam'ly fer that. She'd want yeh to speak because she worked for you. And by all accounts he wanted to work for yeh." Nicola nods, and Malcolm senses a moment when teasing her might not go down like a cup of cold sick. "I mean, fuck knows why..."

When she turns her head to glare at him she finds his wry smile, and the familiarity of it makes her smile back at him, albeit wearily, before resting her head on his shoulder again.

"Say whatever yeh feel comfortable sayin', pet. Whatever yeh think is true."

She nods, stray strands of milk chocolate hair finding their way up his nose. "I love you, Malcolm." She says softly. Malcolm reaches over with his right hand, uncomfortably contorting himself, brushes her hair from her face and lifts her chin to meet his eyes.

"I love you too, darlin'." Malcolm brings his lips to hers and kisses her reassuringly. Nicola is conscious of the fact that no man has ever really, properly, loved her before Malcolm. She's not sure if that's extremely sad or just a bit fucked up, to be properly loved for the first time by a man widely believed to be heartless, who almost destroyed her entire career.

"So are we here fer th' night or are we goin' t'bed?"

Nicola blows all the air from her lungs out her nose, and again casts her eyes to the ceiling, as if it holds the answers to all the great mysteries of life.

"Bed." She decides, although her tone isn't really that decisive.

Each groans softly as they rise to their feet. "Christ, we must be getting old." Nicola grumbles.

"Darlin' we've been fucking ancient for a decade now."

Malcolm falls asleep almost as soon as his head hits the pillow, but Nicola finds she cannot close her eyes. After about four hours, when Nicola is convinced sleep will evade her for the next decade, Malcolm rolls onto his side, pulls her against his chest hard enough that there is no option to resist. "Go the fuck t'sleep, Nic'la." He grumbles. Nicola smiles softly to herself, but does actually manage to get a few hours of sleep, crushed safely against his chest.