Know Nowt Nigel

"Ready." I reached down and collected my helmet.

We walked out of the restaurant arm in arm, with me thanking Evie for treating me to the meal and promised to return the compliment when Junie finally finished her extended education and I was released from my financial commitment, provided she didn't decide to go for a professorship.

When we reached the exit I asked Evie when her ride would arrive and she said they were already here and she would just wait where she was for them to drive round the car park. So I kissed her goodbye on the cheek and she asked me not to lose contact with her. I reminded her where she would find me at work if she wanted to contact me.

I walked around the corner to the side of the restaurant where they had the bike rack. It was gloomy round there and a couple of people were standing immediately in front of my bike, a man and a woman, well wrapped up against the chill night. I didn't look at them closely as I was putting on my helmet and tying up the strap but as I passed them the woman spoke to me.

"Nige, can I have a word?" she said.

I froze, I hadn't heard that voice for exactly twelve months.

"I might have known. Little Sis called you and stalled me, to give you enough time to get here?"

"Yes, we were waiting at her house for you both to go round for a nightcap but you declined her offer. I really needed to speak to you, honey."

I took my helmet off and looked her in the face.

"Don't call me honey," I said firmly through clenched teeth, "You lost any right to do that a long time ago."

I looked past her to see who it was that was with her. Was it Nicholson, or some other man who was entitled to call her honey? It was gloomy around there and he was wearing a baseball cap. It wasn't Nicholson, who was about my height and build. This chap was taller, thinner, around six foot. "Who are you, pal? Take your hat off will you?"

He removed his baseball cap, saying, "It's me, Dad, Robert, I'm here to help Mum speak to you."

"Is that the Robert Daniel Billings that told me he didn't want anything to do with his old man, just a year ago?" I said sarcastically, then turning to Pat, "Is he my son, Pat?"

"Of course he is, you idiot!" Pat spat, "How could you doubt it?"

"I don't know how long you've been spreading your favours around for your other lovers, I only caught you the once!" I spat back just as venomously.

"Dad!" shouted Rob.

"Nigel!" sobbed Pat simultaneously.

I went on, adding, "This is the reason why I never wanted to speak to you ever again, Pat, either of you. It's just too damn upsetting. None of you want anything to do with me and I don't want anything to do with you, either. Why the hell don't you all just leave me alone!"

I was shouting by now and crying as I tried to put my helmet back on. I just wanted to get out of there.

"Dad!" cried Robert again and he put his arms around me and squeezed me to him. I tried to fight him but he had pinned my arms and he was too strong and I could feel Pat putting her arms around me too. I stopped wasting my time and strength struggling and cried my sodding eyes out. I could feel another set of hands pull the helmet from my limp hands and set it on the ground and then Evie held me from behind, too. Damn it, I was bloody-well surrounded. and all four of us were crying by now. Families, even broken ones still hurt, don't they?

"Nige, you never caught me, honey," Pat said through her own tears, "It was Janet that you caught in the shower!"

"Huh? Janet" I sobbed, "Who the fuck's Janet?"

Evie said, "You met her earlier this evening, she asked you if you had a grudge against her."

"Sorry, you've lost me completely," I said, "Who is she for crying out loud and what does all that nonsense about a grudge have to do with me?"

Pat chipped in then, "Janet was a sales manager where I work and she'd been having an affair with our old boss Reggie Nicholson for a couple of months and, while you were at work on Friday evenings, I used to disappear into town with a couple of friends and my sister here, while they used our bedroom."

"What? No, that can't be right, I know your BMW was parked in our driveway, don't try and trick me into thinking I had made a mistake."

"That was Janet's BMW, all three sales managers, Geoff, Janet and me, had identical cars. I used to wait for Janet's call to say she was leaving so I could get back to the house after they had gone and at least an hour before you got home, giving me time to change the bed linen and put the dirty ones in the wash."

Evie added her tu'pennyworth, "Pat was with Pauline, Gemma and me all evening until gone 11. She never got the call from Janet and set out for home anyway. She never drinks when she's with us and she said she was gonna rock your socks off all weekend starting from when you got home. Me, Gem and Paulie are so jealous of Pat as yours is the most solid marriage that we know."

"Was ... maybe. No ... it's impossible! You were definitely in the shower room Pat until I smashed up the bed, which released the door and allowed you to get out while I was downstairs dealing with the mattress. Then you crept up behind me in the garage and surprised me. I left immediately because ..." I said, trying to remember a night I had spent the whole of the past year trying to forget.

When Pat had came up behind me I knew I had to get away, I had just destroyed her lover's car and smashed up her bedroom, I knew I was just a wafer thickness away from throttling the life out of her. I didn't think I could ever hurt Pat but I was so upset and angry then that I was in the middle of a red mist.

"Janet didn't get herself out of the shower room. She had fainted and was completely naked. You had bagged up all her clothes along with mine. Her coat, purse and car keys were still on the sofa in the living room where she left them. As soon as I got home and saw your car right up behind Janet's and blocking her in I knew we were all in trouble. I drove further down the road and parked as there was no space left on our drive and, anyway, I wanted to leave room for you to reverse out so that Janet could get home. Then I saw the mattress lying on the lawn, the garage light on, and I knew it was a lot more serious than I'd imagined."

"But if it was all such a misunderstanding, why did everyone in my family tell me to bugger off?"

"Well, Nige, that's my fault." Pat said, "I couldn't tell the kids that you thought you'd caught me having an affair. I ... I thought if you could think that badly of me so easily, that you were probably thinking of having affairs-"

"I never-"

"I know now, honey, but you had just destroyed my bedroom, my carpets, ruined every stitch of clothing I possessed, including my wedding dress, I really thought we were finished that night-"

"So did I! We were ... we are! I knew from the first night we went out that I was just on borrowed time and it would all end in flames or tears one day. I was so out of your class-"

"Honey, I-"

"No, I'm right on this point, it was never going to work out after the kids left. All the while you were going ever upwards in your career and you were leaving me behind-"

"Never-"

"-then you were so much more sexually experienced than me, I knew that when you attacked me that first date and then you took charge for our first time, so I knew you'd dump me just as soon as someone better-"

"I was a virgin!"

"What!?" I think that was a three-part chorus.

"I attacked you that first night because I fell in love with you that very night and wanted you to be the one to take my cherry then and there. And when you were reluctant to make love to me I thought it was probably because you thought I was the innocent little girl I really was ... so I lied."

"You lied?"

"I lied. There's only ever been you, I've never wanted to cheat with anyone. I'm not like Janet, I only ever wanted you. I'd been thinking of making sweet love to you all that evening while Janet and Reggie were sneaking around and having nasty cheating sex in our bed, knowing that I didn't have to go looking for romance, I already had the real thing at home."

"So if it hadn't been for that bloody factory fire I might have got lucky that night?"

"And all weekend, no kids at home for once, remember?"

"Bugger, I really cocked up big time going off half-cocked like that, didn't I?"

"You did, but then I wasn't much better. I was really furious at what you did. You ruined the house, wrecked our bedroom, destroyed every stitch of clothing I possessed. And Janet was terrified, traumatised, and she's not been the same woman since. We had to let her go from her job, she couldn't work and she couldn't cope with her divorce, either. Anyway, I had to call an ambulance after you drove off and stayed there with her until she got to hospital. The poor girl was in traumatic shock and needed sedatives, in fact she's still on them. I couldn't stay at the house on my own that night, so I called Evie."

Evie chipped in then. "Pat was a mess. Her nerves were frayed. She couldn't drive to the hospital following Janet's ambulance. I had to collect her and take her, then from the hospital I took her back to mine. She stayed with me for more than a week."

"That week was a nightmare," Pat said, "Reggie came in very late to work on Monday morning with a black eye. He was late because his wife needed to use the company car to ferry the kids around. He had spent the whole weekend in a hotel apparently. His wife had been suspicious of him for a long time, and you setting fire to his car was the last straw. So she hit him over the head with a lamp and kicked him out.

"Then later on Monday morning Janet's husband came into the office and beat him to a pulp. Janet's husband had gone to the hospital with his mum early on Saturday morning having found a message from the hospital on his phone when he finished his night shift. His mum offered to come with him and take her clothes home for the wash."

"That's when he found out she had been brought in with only her coat on and nothing else," Evie took up the story, "He put two and two together, and confronted her. She confessed that she'd had an affair with 'someone at work' but refused to say who with. When her husband entered the office on Monday morning and saw Reggie's black eye plus the panic at seeing him reflected in the other eye, he made it four. I think that's how many of his ribs he broke!"

Evie and Pat started laughing then.

"Couldn't happen to a nicer bloke," I said. "I thought I was going to be arrested for arson."

"No," Pat laughed, "Reggie was certain it was Janet's husband that burnt his car but nobody owned up to seeing who did it. Funny thing is that Janet's husband was a fireman who attended both your factory fire and Reggie's car fire!"

"But there were lots of witnesses who saw me walk away."

"Nobody liked that arrogant bugger enough to describe you to him or the police, though." Pat laughed, "His neighbours were warming their hands by the fire and were a bit annoyed when the firemen arrived and put the blaze out."

"So why have you not told me that this was a mix-up until now?"

"I didn't know anything about the fire at Grafton's, for a week or so, or Reggie's car for that matter," said Pat. "I was really angry with you and didn't want to speak to you, especially seeing how angry you were that night. The look in your eyes in the garage sent shivers up my spine. I actually feared for my life. I thought you'd go home and sulk while I spent a week at Evie's-"

"Aunt Evie called us early next day and told us you and Mum had had a big argument, that you'd smashed up a few things and that she was staying at Aunt Evie's until you cooled off," chipped in Robert, "She was clearly frightened by the violence and we all thought the worst, that you were going through a mid-life crisis and needed space apart to cool off."

"I'm sorry about your wedding dress, Pat," I said, "I didn't notice anything in particular, just grabbed the lot, hangars and all. I didn't even know you'd kept it. I got rid of my old wedding suit years ago."

"I've salvaged the dress from the bags, but didn't discover it until about ten days later. It was all wrapped up in polythene, but the oil had seeped in and stained it. I can't even clean it properly because it'll probably fall apart."

"Sorry. So, you've fixed the place up again, since?" I asked, "Evie told me about the carpets."

"Yes, partly at least. The police dealt with it as a domestic and gave me a crime number. I spoke to Jeanie, my friend down at the insurance brokers, and she put it through as a burglary. The nice insurance assessor man came round and he put the cause of the claim down as aggravated burglary, so I got compensated for the bedroom furniture, the carpets and my clothes. The cheque came through about two or three months later."

"Glad you're got everything sorted out alright then," I said.

By this time we had all relaxed our grip on one another and I was able to retrieve my helmet from the ground and fumble in my pocket for my padlock key.

"Yes, as I said, the adjuster came around about ten days later and the first time we went back to the house was on that Tuesday." Pat said, "We went round after we thought you would've left for work, I was never going back to live with you in that house, but I needed to be there for the claim adjuster to assess the damage. It was the first time I saw the extent of the bedroom wreckage in daylight and the state you left the carpets. I saw you hadn't collected any of your own clothes and neither of the spare bedrooms had been slept in. I shouted down to Evie saying I didn't think you'd been there all week."

"And I shouted up to her to get her butt downstairs and look at the kitchen," Evie chimed in.

"I saw the bunch of dead flowers, the bottle of wine and box of chocolates on the side in the kitchen," Pat added, "And knew you must have brought them with you on Friday night, and that was why you were home so early, hoping for a romantic evening."

"You know I'm an optimist," I shrugged as I unlocked my bicycle chain and wrapped it round my handlebars.

"I know, so was I but that was before I got home and saw what you'd done to the place." she said quietly.

Evie said, "We then realised that you must've seen Reggie coming out the front door or getting into his car and we thought you'd given him his black eye. We didn't know about his car being burned until months later during his divorce. That was when he heard that it was his wife that gave him the black eye after some unnamed disgruntled husband was blamed for setting fire to his car."

"We visited Janet, who was at home heavily sedated by that Tuesday," said Pat, "And she said she never saw who it was who locked her in. She assumed her husband had found out about her affair. She finished her shower and was getting cold because the towel was now wet and my bathrobe was hanging on the bedroom door. Then she found she was trapped in there and it was 20 minutes after she had started banging on the door and shouting for help that she then heard someone smashing up the place. The sound got louder and louder, then you smashed the mirror and she became hysterical. Last thing she heard before she fainted was you smashing up the bed just the other side of that en suite door. She thought it was her husband going mad with a fireman's axe. She expected-"

"Nicholson's 'Heeere's Johnny!' from 'The Shining' film, huh? " I said as I tucked my trouser bottoms into my socks, "Not the same Nicholson she'd been screwing all night and the previous couple of months, though, obviously."

"No, obviously," Pat agreed, "So we tried to catch you while you were at work and we found the place all boarded up with a 'For Sale' sign outside. We went round to your opposite number in the plate-room, Tom Jolliffe's; he was at home, out of work like you at the time. He told us about that fire on the Friday night, but he thought you had stayed on until the end of the shift, apparently the shift manager posted the list of everyone who stayed to all the interested parties. Pal of yours is he?"

I nodded.

Pat continued, "Tom couldn't help us, he didn't know where you were. Nor would your football club mates Jonathan and Mark give up any info."

"Well, they're mates." I pulled the bike out of the bay and swung my right leg over the crossbar.

"Where're you going, Nige?" Pat asked.

"Home," I said.

"Good," she said, "The girls are waiting there, they're dying to see you."

"That's not good, it's pretty rough round there, the car'll be up on bricks if they're parked longer than ten minutes."

"No, they are at our home, I want you to come back with me, Nige, honey, I've missed you."

"I don't think so, Pat. I've become quite comfortable on my own," I lied, "You've just said you had no intention of going back to the house until you saw I had left for good-"

"That was before I saw the flowers and realised-"

"And you started to make the break official with the legal separation-"

"But that was only to get you to talk to me, honey."

"Well, we're talking now," I put my foot on the pedal and wheeled down the path, calling over my shoulder, "So, you can go ahead with the divorce, honey, I'm happy to sign the papers any time."

I cycled off before they could say anything else.

EPILOGUE

Pat unfroze our assets the next day.

Even before I saw Evie at the copy shop that first time, Pat had known where I lived and worked. She had used a private eye to track me down and merely used Evie to open up a dialogue with me.

So, I wasn't that surprised when I saw that Pat was waiting at the front door when I opened the copy shop at 08.30 that Friday morning. Actually, I think I opened up ten minutes early because it was raining outside and we don't have an awning like old-fashioned shops used to have. Apparently, she said, her office copier had packed up and she needed a couple of copies of an old report run off for some reason.

"Now that we are back talking with each other, maybe we could get together to talk one evening, if you are free?" Pat suggested.

I was removing the wire stitches from her report and smoothing out the pages.

"So what subjects would we talk about one evening, for example?"

"How the kids are getting on, what they want for Christmas, Robert's marriage plans, when we first fell in love with each other, you know, stuff like that."

"There might be some things worth discussing, I suppose. When is Robert getting married, and when did you fall in love with me?" I asked, knocking up the pages and fanning them into the document feeder. "Two copies, Pat, right?"

"Huh? Yeah, two'd do," she answered, raising her voice a little to overcome the noise of the document scanner, "Caroline prefers the last weekend in June, but she's leaving it very late to get the right venue sorted.... When you set light to that menu. When for you?"

"I suppose we ought to sort out the actual dates first, and put together a list of friends and relatives, my side of the family are pretty straightforward. Then I can run off some 'Save The Date' postcards."

I pulled the two copies out of the delivery tray, plus the original and carried them over to the bench and continued, "When you laughed about the burning menu, I knew I would never find anyone else quite as beautiful as you."

"We should have made love that first night," Pat smiled, "I wanted too. I'm doing nothing tonight, perhaps you'd meet me somewhere neutral for a drink and a chat?"

I wire-stitched the two copies as well as put the original back together and carried them to the counter.

"Sure," I said, popping the papers into a carrier bag, "Where and what time?" I asked. I looked up and added, "I wanted to but was I afraid to have a relationship that was just based on sex, I wanted us to get to know each other better first."