David Atkinson - The Second Life of Nathan Jones

He sighed and tried to remember the love he’d once felt for Laura but found it difficult; they hadn’t been close for so long. Occasionally they had a good day or more likely a good night when she was horny, and their love-making brought them together physically and mentally, but those episodes had become less frequent.

Laura came back and sat with Daisy on her knee. His wife had jet-black hair, her natural colour. In all the years he’d known her she’d never changed it. Even now with many grey hairs appearing she still resisted colouring it. Her small nose sat like a cute little button on her pale and lovely face. Dark emerald eyes that once captivated him and gazed upon him with love and devotion nowadays more often expressed impatience and scorn.

‘Well, I suppose I’d better get home. Daisy needs her lunch and I’ve got to pick the girls up from school at three.’

Nathan didn’t argue; the silence wasn’t comfortable, and he needed to sleep. The painkillers made him drowsy and irritable. Minutes after she left he slipped into a fitful slumber. His dreams were rarely pleasant any more.

Laura brought the girls to see him every evening whilst he remained in hospital and although seeing his daughters acted like a tonic, staring at his wife’s stressed and unhappy face had the opposite effect. He was glad when, after four days, they let him go home.

The consultant appeared on the Friday afternoon with a clipboard and a printed list of things he wasn’t allowed to do once they handed over the strong painkillers and released him from their care.

Motocross

Hang gliding

Parachuting

Rally driving

Water-skiing

Boxing

Bull riding

Nathan had never attempted any of those things and it left him wondering if he’d been missing out on life somehow. He signed the bottom of the form, promising not to do anything dangerous, though he had to remember he’d ended up in the morgue by simply trying to cross the road.

The young-looking consultant – too young to be a senior doctor in Nathan’s mind – took the signed disclaimer from him and ticked another box on her clipboard and said without looking up, ‘Now, you shouldn’t drive or operate machinery whilst taking these pills either.’

He waited for her to look up and wafted his sling and plastered arm at her.

‘Oh, yeah, sorry, I’m on automatic, but you’d be surprised at what some people try and do.’

‘Like bull riding.’

‘Sorry?’

‘It’s on your list of prohibited activities.’

‘Is it?’

‘Yeah, right at the bottom.’

She peered at the form then looked up and smiled. ‘Yeah maybe give that a miss for a few weeks at least.’

‘I’ll try, but there are so many opportunities to bull ride in Edinburgh that it might be unavoidable,’ Nathan informed her.

She ignored his sarcasm and left his discharge forms on the bottom of the bed.

Apart from the obvious sling and a few cuts on his forehead, Nathan looked none the worse for his experience. Underneath his shirt, his broken ribs were bound tightly, and his damaged skull bore no marks, but he’d been told to be careful because, although the linear fractures required no treatment as such, he had to return immediately if he experienced any unexpected or severe headaches. Heading home to a grumpy wife and three young kids meant the chances of developing a severe headache were somewhere near one hundred per cent.

Despite this, mentally, he felt elated. It might be down to some sort of post-death high, but he reckoned that, as there wouldn’t be many discussion groups available who’d shared his experience, he’d probably never know.

Laura arrived to take him home in an unusually animated and chatty mood and did most of the talking. As his head hurt and he felt drowsy this suited him fine. He spent most of the weekend watching TV and falling asleep unexpectedly. One minute he would be watching a re-run of an episode of the Antiques Roadshow , the next he’d be snoring, although he suspected this might be more to do with the programme than the pills. Chloe woke him up. ‘Dad, how can you sleep when you’re snoring so loudly?’

‘I don’t know, Chloe.’ He yawned, and Laura came over and made a fuss of him, which he really enjoyed.

Then Daisy jumped onto the couch and gave him a huge cuddle. Dying had certainly made his two youngest daughters very appreciative of him. It probably wouldn’t last so he needed to make the most of it – once they sensed he’d recovered fully they’d be back to normal. Daisy jumped down and tripped over his foot.

‘Shit.’

‘Daisy, don’t say that; it’s not a nice word,’ scolded Laura.

‘Daddy said it.’

‘He shouldn’t have. Nathan, don’t say shit.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘Shit,’ squealed Daisy with delight.

‘Daisy, stop it.’

‘You said shit again, Laura, that’s why she’s doing it.’

‘Shit!’ yelled Daisy again, gleefully.

‘I didn’t, did I? Shit, I didn’t mean to.’

‘Shit,’ said Daisy, bouncing up and down on the rug.

Laura put her head in her hands. ‘We need to stop saying shit. I hardly ever say it – it’s you she’s learned it from.’

‘Why’s everything my fault?’

‘Because it usually is.’

‘Shit,’ cried Daisy as she walked over and picked up her doll. She took the doll into her bedroom whispering, ‘Shit,’ into its ear.

On Monday, Laura dropped Daisy at her day nursery and went to work, leaving him alone at home for the first time since he’d come back from hospital. His wife had been making an effort to be civil to him and he felt guilty about the recent disingenuous thoughts and feelings he’d had when she’d so easily given up on coming to see him in hospital that first day. He hoped it might be a sign that they could begin to patch things up.

Their marriage had started off amazingly well considering the circumstances under which they’d got together. After Millie had been born they’d remained close; people even referred to them as ‘devoted’ when they saw them together.

He couldn’t put his finger on when exactly things had begun to turn sour. He supposed it had been a gradual process. Somewhere between falling pregnant with Chloe and the birth of Daisy everything had changed. They’d not had a lot of time together as a couple before Laura fell pregnant with Millie. Perhaps if they’d been given that time socialising, holidaying and doing the normal stuff that young couples did then the relationship might have run its course and ended .Kids complicated everything. They naturally became a priority and somewhere in the mix Nathan and Laura had got lost. Money had only started to become an issue after Chloe came along. At that point Nathan’s work had dried up – companies took more decisions and jobs in-house meaning contractors were used less. The practice had begun to reverse in recent times, but good contracts remained elusive.

Going back further, Nathan suspected that part of Laura’s initial attraction to him could be put down to the fact she’d thought him posh. True, he’d gone to boarding school, but his private education had come about more from the fact he’d been an inconvenience to his parents rather than any aspirational hopes they’d had for their son. He’d interfered with their lifestyle, so he’d spent most of his pre-school years in assorted day nurseries and most weekends with babysitters or childminders. (He still didn’t understand the distinction between the two.)

Shortly after Nathan’s birth, an elderly aunt had died, leaving her entire and considerable estate to his mother. He learned later that she had been waiting years for this happy event, and his parents had spent many hours planning exactly what they were going to do with the money – which included a lot of travel, some nice cars and a holiday home in France. The inconvenience of having a brat would be something they’d deal with as long as it didn’t cramp their style.