One Plus One, Page 31

  A little something to help with the vet's bills. Give your sister a hug from me. I'm so mad at what happened to you all.

  My dog got hit by a car and was saved by the PDSA. I'm guessing you don't have one near you. I thought it would be nice, as someone helped me, to help you a little. Please accept my PS10 toward his recuperation.

  From a fellow girl maths geek. Please tell your little sister to keep on. Don't let them win.

  There were 459 shares. Nicky counted 130 names on the donations page, PS2 being the smallest donation, and PS250 the highest. A total stranger had sent PS250. The final tally sat at PS932.50, the last having come in an hour previously. He kept refreshing the page and staring at the figure, wondering if they had put a period in the wrong place.

  His heart was doing something strange. He placed his palm against his chest, wondering if this was what it felt like to have a heart attack. He wondered if he was going to die. What he wanted to do, though, he discovered, was laugh. He wanted to laugh at the magnificence of total strangers. At their kindness and their goodness and the fact that there were actual people out there being good and nice and giving money to people they had never met and never would. And because, most crazy of all, all that kindness, all that magnificence, was sitting there just because of his words.

  --

  Jess was standing by the cupboard holding a parcel of pink paper when he scooted into the living room. "Here," he said. "Look." He pulled at her arm, dragging her over to the sofa.

  "What?"

  "Put that down."

  Nicky opened the laptop and placed it on her lap. She almost flinched, as if it were actually painful for her to be so close to something that belonged to Mr. Nicholls.

  "Look." He pointed at the donations page. "Look at this. People have sent money. For Norman."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Just look, Jess."

  She squinted at the screen, moving the page up and down as she read, then reread it. "But . . . we can't take that."

  "It's not for us. It's for Tanzie. And Norman."

  "I don't understand. Why would people we don't know send us money?"

  "Because they're upset about what happened. Because they can see it wasn't fair. Because they want to help. I don't know."

  "But how did they know?"

  "I wrote a blog about it."

  "You did what?"

  "Something Mr. Nicholls told me. I just . . . put it out there. What was happening to us."

  "Show me."

  Nicky switched pages then and showed her the blog. She read it slowly, her brow furrowed in concentration, and he felt suddenly awkward, like he was showing her part of himself that he didn't show anyone. Somehow it was harder to show all that emotional stuff to someone you knew.

  "So, how much is the vet?" he said when he could see that she'd finished.

  She spoke like someone in a daze. "Eight hundred and seventy-eight pounds. And forty-two pence. So far."

  Nicky lifted his hands in the air. "So we're okay, yes? Look at the total. We're okay!"

  She looked at him and he could see on her face the exact expression he must have worn half an hour previously.

  "It's good news, Jess! Be pleased!" And for a minute her eyes brimmed with tears. And then she looked so confused that he leaned forward and hugged her. This was his third voluntary hug in three years.

  "Mascara," she said when she pulled back.

  "Oh." He wiped under his eyes. She wiped hers.

  "Good?"

  "Fine. Me?"

  She leaned forward and ran a thumb under the outer edge of his eye.

  Then she let out a breath and suddenly she was a bit like the old Jess again. She stood up and brushed down her jeans. "We'll have to pay them all back, of course."

  "Most of them are, like, three pounds. Good luck with working that out."

  "Tanzie will sort it out." Jess picked up the pink tissue parcel, and then, almost as an afterthought, she shoved it into a cupboard. She pushed her hair from her face. "And you have to show her the messages about maths. It's really important she sees those."

  Nicky looked upstairs toward Tanzie's bedroom. "I will," he said, and just for a minute his mood dipped. "But I'm not sure it's going to make any difference."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Jess

  Norman came home. "It's time for us to say good-bye to our old hero, isn't it, old chap?" the vet said, patting Norman's side. The way he spoke to him, and the way that Norman immediately flopped to the ground for a tummy scratch, made Jess think this was not the first time he'd done it. As the vet dropped right down onto the floor, she caught a glimpse of the man beyond the careful professional manner. His broad smile, the way his eyes crinkled when he looked at the dog. And she heard Nicky's phrase running through her head, as it had done for days: the kindness of strangers.

  "I'm glad you made the decision you did, Mrs. Thomas," he said, pushing himself back onto his feet while they diplomatically ignored the pistol crack of his knees. Norman stayed on his back, his tongue lolling, ever hopeful. Or perhaps just too fat to get up. "He deserved his chance. If I'd known how his injuries had come about, I would have been a bit less reticent about proceeding."

  Tanzie stayed pressed close to Norman's enormous black body as they lumbered home, his lead wrapped twice around her fist. The walk from the vet's was the first time she had been outside in three weeks that she hadn't insisted on holding Jess's hand.

  Jess had hoped that having him back would lift her daughter's spirits. But Tanzie was still a little shadow, tailing her silently around the house, peering around corners, waiting anxiously beside her form teacher at the end of the day for Jess's arrival at the school gates. At home she read in her room or lay silently on the sofa watching cartoons, one hand resting on the dog beside her. Mr. Tsvangarai had been off since term restarted--a family emergency--and Jess felt a reflexive sadness when she pictured him discovering Tanzie's determination to push mathematics from her life, the disappearance of the singular, quirky little girl she'd been. Sometimes she felt as if she had simply traded one unhappy, silent child for another.

  St. Anne's rang to discuss Tanzie's orientation day at the school, and Jess had to tell them that she wasn't coming. The words were a squat dry frog in her throat.

  "Well, we do recommend it, Mrs. Thomas. We find the children settle a lot better if they've familiarized themselves a little. It's good for her to meet a few fellow pupils as well. Is it a problem with getting time off from her current school?"

  "No. I mean she--she's not coming."

  "At all?"

  "No."

  A short silence.

  "Oh," said the registrar. Jess heard her flicking through papers. "But this is the little girl with the ninety percent scholarship, yes? Costanza?"

  She felt herself color. "Yes."

  "Is she going to Petersfield Academy instead? Did they offer her a scholarship, too?"

  "No. That's not it," Jess replied. She closed her eyes as she spoke. "Look, I don't suppose . . . Is there any way you could . . . increase the scholarship any further?"

  "Further?" She sounded taken aback. "Mrs. Thomas, it was already the most generous scholarship we've ever offered. I'm sorry, but there's no question."

  Jess pressed on, glad that nobody could see her shame. "If I could get the money together by next year, would you consider deferring her place?"

  "I'm not sure whether that would be possible. Or even if it would be fair to the other candidates." She hesitated, perhaps suddenly conscious of Jess's silence. "But of course we'd certainly look at her favorably if ever she did want to reapply."

  Jess stared at the spot on the carpet where Marty had brought a motorbike into the front room and it had leaked oil. A huge lump had risen into her throat. "Well, thank you for letting me know."

  "Look, Mrs. Thomas," the woman said, her voice suddenly conciliatory, "there's still another week to go before we have to close the place. We'll hold it for you un
til the last possible minute."

  "Thank you. That's very kind of you. But, really, there's no point."

  Jess knew it and the woman knew it. It wasn't going to happen for them. Some leaps were just too big to make.

  She asked Jess to pass on her best wishes to Tanzie for her new school. As she put the phone down, Jess imagined her already scanning her lists for the next suitable candidate.

  --

  She didn't tell Tanzie. Two nights previously Jess discovered that Tanzie had removed all her maths books from her shelf and stacked them with Jess's remaining books on the upstairs landing, inserting them between thrillers and a historical romance so that she wouldn't notice. Jess put them in a neat pile in her wardrobe, where they couldn't be seen. She wasn't sure if this was saving Tanzie's feelings or her own.

  Marty received the solicitor's letter and rang, protesting and blustering about why he couldn't pay. She told him it was out of her hands. She said she hoped they could be civil about it. She told him his children needed shoes. He didn't mention coming down at half term.

  She got her job back at the pub. The girl from the City of Paris had apparently disappeared to the Texas Rib Shack three shifts after she'd started. Tips were better and there was no Stewart Pringle making random grabs at your backside.

  "No loss. She didn't know not to talk during the guitar solo of 'Layla,'" Des mused. "What kind of barmaid doesn't know to keep quiet during the guitar solo of 'Layla'?"

  She cleaned four days a week with Nathalie, and avoided number two Beachfront. She preferred jobs like scrubbing ovens, where she was unlikely to accidentally look through the window and catch sight of it, with its jaunty blue-and-white for-sale placard. If Nathalie thought she was behaving a little oddly, she didn't say anything.

  She put an advert in the local newsagent's offering her services as a handyperson. No Job Too Small. Her first job came in less than twenty-four hours later: putting up a bathroom cabinet for a pensioner in Aden Crescent. The old woman was so happy with the result that she gave Jess a five-pound tip. She said she didn't like having men in her house and that in the forty-two years she had been married to her husband he had only ever seen her with her good wool vest on. She recommended Jess to a friend who managed a nursing home and needed a washer replaced and carpet gripper installed. Two other jobs followed, also pensioners. Jess sent a second installment of cash to number two Beachfront. Nathalie dropped it in. The for-sale sign was still up.

  Nicky was the only one in the family who seemed genuinely cheerful. It was as if the blog had given him a new sense of purpose. He wrote it most evenings, posting about Norman's progress, pictures from his life, chatting with new friends. He met up with one of them IRL, he said, translating that for Jess: "In Real Life." He was all right, he said. And no, not like that. He wanted to go to open days at two different colleges. He was speaking to his form tutor about how to apply for a hardship grant. He'd looked it up. He smiled, often several times a day and without being asked, dropped to his knees with pleasure when he saw Norman wagging his tail in the kitchen, waved unself-consciously at Lila, the girl from number forty-seven (who, Jess noticed, had dyed her hair the same shade as his), and played an air guitar solo in the front room. He walked into town frequently, his skinny legs seeming to gain a longer stride, his shoulders not exactly back, but not slumped, defeated, as they had been in the past. Once he even wore a yellow T-shirt.

  "Where's the laptop gone?" Jess said when she went into his room one afternoon and found him working away on their old computer.

  "I took it back." He shrugged. "Nathalie let me in."

  "Did you see him?" she said, before she could stop herself.

  Nicky's eyes slid away. "Sorry. His stuff's there, but it's all boxed up. I'm not sure he stays there anymore."

  It shouldn't have been a surprise, but as Jess made her way downstairs she found herself holding her stomach with both hands, as if she had been punched.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Ed

  His sister accompanied him to court several weeks later, on a day that woke still and hot. Ed had told his mother not to come. By then they were never sure whether it was a good idea to leave Dad for any length of time. As they crawled across London, his sister leaned forward in her taxi seat, her fingers tapping impatiently on her knee, her jaw set in a tight line. Ed felt perversely relaxed.

  The courtroom was nearly empty. Thanks to the unholy combination of a particularly grisly murder at the Old Bailey, a political love scandal, and the public meltdown of a young British actress, the two-day trial had not registered as a big news story, just enough for an agency court reporter and a trainee from the Financial Times. And Ed had already pleaded guilty, against the advice of his legal team.

  Deanna Lewis's claims of innocence had been somewhat undermined by the evidence of a friend, a banker, who had apparently informed her in no uncertain terms that what she was about to do was indeed insider trading. The friend was able to produce an e-mail she had sent informing Deanna as much, and one in return from Deanna accusing the friend of being "picky," "annoying," and "frankly a little too involved in my business. Don't you want me to have a chance to move forward?"

  Ed stood and watched the court reporter scribbling away, and the solicitors leaning in to each other, pointing to bits of paper, and it all felt rather anticlimactic.

  "I am minded that you confessed your guilt and that, as far as Ms. Lewis and yourself are concerned, this appears to be isolated criminal behavior, motivated by factors other than money. This cannot be said of Michael Lewis."

  The FSA, it turned out, had tracked other "suspicious" trades Deanna's brother had made, spread bets and options.

  "It is necessary, however, that we send a signal that this kind of behavior is completely unacceptable, however it may have come about. It destroys investors' confidence in the honest movement in markets, and it weakens the whole structure of our financial system. For that reason I am bound to ensure that the level of punishment is still a clear deterrent to anyone who may believe this to be a 'victimless' crime."

  Ed stood in the dock trying to work out what to do with his face and was fined PS750,000 and costs, and sentenced to six months' imprisonment, suspended for twelve months.

  It was over.

  Gemma let out a long, shuddering breath and dropped her head into her hands. Ed felt curiously numb. "That's it?" he said quietly, and she looked up at him in disbelief. A clerk opened the door of the dock and ushered him out. Paul Wilkes clapped him on the back as they emerged into the corridor.

  "Thank you," Ed said. It seemed like the right thing to say.

  He caught sight of Deanna Lewis in the corridor, in animated conversation with a redheaded man. He looked like he was trying to explain something to her and she kept shaking her head, cutting him off. Ed stood staring for a moment, and then, almost without thinking, walked through the throng of people and straight up to her. "I wanted to say I'm sorry," he said. "If I had thought for one minute--"

  She spun round, her eyes widening. "Oh, fuck off," she said, her face puce with fury, and pushed past him. "You fucking loser."

  The faces that had swiveled at the sound of her voice took notice of Ed, then turned away in embarrassment. Somebody sniggered. As Ed stood there, his hand still half lifted as if to make a point, he heard a voice in his ear.

  "She's not stupid, you know. She would have known she shouldn't have told her brother."

  Ed turned, and there, behind him, stood Ronan. He took in his checked shirt and his thick black glasses, the computer bag slung over his shoulder, and something in him deflated with relief. "You . . . you were here all morning?"

  "Bit bored at the office. I thought I'd come and see what a real-life court case was like."

  Ed couldn't stop looking at him. "Overrated."

  "Yeah. That's what I thought."

  His sister had been shaking hands with Paul Wilkes. She appeared at his side, straightening her jacket. "Right. Shall w
e go and ring Mum, give her the good news? She said she'd leave her mobile on. If we're lucky, she'll have remembered to charge it. Hey, Ronan."

  He leaned forward and kissed her cheek. "Nice to see you, Gemma. Been a long time."

  "Too long! Let's go to mine," she said, turning to Ed. "It's ages since you saw the kids. I've got Spag Bol in the freezer we can have tonight. Hey, Ronan. You can come, too, if you like. I'm sure we could add some extra pasta to the pot."

  Ronan's gaze slid away, as it had when he and Ed were eighteen. He kicked at something on the floor. Ed turned to his sister. "Um . . . Gem . . . would you mind if I left it? Just for today?" He tried not to register the way her smile fell. "I'll definitely come another time. I just . . . there's a few things I'd really like to talk to Ronan about. It's been . . ."

  Her gaze flickered between them. "Sure," she said brightly, pushing her fringe from her eyes. "Well. Call me." She hoisted her bag onto her shoulder, and began to make her way toward the stairs.

  He yelled across the busy corridor, so that several people looked up from their papers. "Hey! Gem!"

  She turned, her bag under her arm.

  "Thanks. For everything."

  She stood there, half facing him.

  "Really. I appreciate it."

  She nodded, a ghost of a smile. And then she was gone, lost in the crowds on the stairwell.

  "So. Um. Fancy a drink?" Ed tried not to sound pleading. He wasn't sure he was entirely successful. "I'm buying."

  Ronan let it hang there. Just for a second. The bastard. "Well, in that case . . ."

  --

  It was Ed's mother who had once told him that real friends were the kind where you pick up where you'd left off, whether it be a week since you'd seen each other or two years. He'd never had enough friends to test it. He and Ronan nursed pints of beer across a wobbling wooden table in the busy pub, a little awkwardly at first, and then increasingly freely, the familiar jokes popping up between them like Whac-a-Moles, targets to be hit, with discreet pleasure. Ed felt as if he had been untethered for months and someone had finally tugged him in to land. He found himself watching his friend surreptitiously: his laugh, his enormous feet, the way he slumped over, even at a pub table, as if peering into a screen. And those things he hadn't seen about him before: how he laughed more easily; his new, designer-framed glasses; a kind of quiet confidence. When he opened his wallet to pull out some cash, Ed caught a glimpse of a photograph of a girl, beaming into his credit cards.