David Belbin - Bone & Cane

The strike was less popular in Nottingham than elsewhere (most of the scab miners were from nearby pits) and, anyway, this was meant to be a safe Tory seat. But Sarah had been on the wrong side of a picket line, and knew what it felt like to be a class enemy. Nick’s father was a miner, long dead of emphysema. If Nick had seen her that day, he would never have forgiven her.

She later learnt that Nick was working as an English teacher at an inner city secondary school. Louise, when they reconnected, a couple of years later, told her that she and Nick had only seen each other for a few weeks. She’d apologised for messing up their friendship but she’d always had a thing for Nick and had to take her chance. Sarah understood that the prospect of a lasting romance always overrode friendship. But she was sorry she’d given Louise the opportunity. Last Louise heard, Nick was living with the Asian girl Sarah had seen at the march. They got a lot of hassle. The girl’s brothers had twice beaten Nick up. That wouldn’t put him off. Nick always liked a challenge. And he was smart, at least as smart as she was. Sarah wouldn’t be surprised if he was a deputy head by now, with an Asian wife, lots of kids. Nick had no strong ties to Nottingham she knew of, not unless you counted the footballer brother he had never got on with. So he could be anywhere.

We all make mistakes when we’re young. You have one great, fulfilling relationship and, if that runs into trouble, naturally you assume that another, even better one is waiting round the corner. Staying with Nick was the great what if of Sarah’s life. Her longest relationship since then had been with Dan. They’d enjoyed plenty of good moments, but the whole was a pale facsimile of what she’d had with Nick.

Louise moved to the US in 1988. She invited Sarah to her wedding, but Sarah couldn’t go and they’d since lost touch. Sarah had never been very good with female friendships. Most of her friends were in the party. Nick would have stopped that happening, if she’d stayed with him. On nights when she got drunk alone, played old records, became a bit teary, Sarah was still convinced that Nick was the love of her life. He’d left a hole that she filled with work, work, work.

If by some chance the driver she’d just seen was Nick, what was he doing driving a taxi? Sarah got out of the bath and checked the phone book. No Nick Cane. There was a Joseph Cane, who had two numbers, one of which was for Cane Cars. She remembered Nick’s younger brother and used to keep an eye on his football career, though she had left the city by the time he came here to play for Notts County.

People’s lives fell apart. An MP who did casework was more aware of that than most. Sarah was tempted to ring Joe’s number, ask to be put in touch with Nick. But if Nick had been in Nottingham all this time, he must know she was a local MP. He could have contacted her at any point during the last two years. Which meant he didn’t want to.

On Thursday, Brian Hicks from the Evening Post showed up in Sarah’s first-class carriage from St Pancras. He sat down next to her, stale aftershave mingling with the sweat and booze odours of an afternoon spent picking up gossip in Annie’s Bar. This was the one House of Commons watering hole where journalists and MPs were able to meet on equal terms. Brian spent a lot of time there. It was too blokey for Sarah.

Tired, she forced a smile. ‘Good to see you, Brian.’

‘Ed’s back from holiday. Fancy doing that joint interview with him?’

Sarah shook her head. ‘It’s old news now.’

‘Human interest stories don’t date. And you pulled out of the one we had scheduled last month. You owe me this.’

Sarah kept her tight, professional face on. Brian would know that there was something she wasn’t telling him. ‘I owe you one, Brian, but it’s not going to be this one. An election’s about to be called.’

‘At which you’ll lose your seat. Any publicity will help.’

‘Anything short of an unprecedented landslide won’t help. Leave it, will you?’

A steward came down the carriage with coffee. Time to change topic. Sarah considered asking Brian whether he knew anything about Cane Cars. But Brian was a gossip by trade and she didn’t want to alert him to her sudden interest in an old university boyfriend.

‘Got any plans for what you’ll do after the election?’ Brian asked.

‘I expect I’ll take a holiday,’ Sarah said.

‘Your Dan can get the time off?’

‘He’s not my Dan any more,’ Sarah said.

‘Sorry to hear that,’ Brian said, and the look he gave her was sincere. ‘That wasn’t connected to the Jasper March incident, I hope.’

‘No, we split before that. He moved out ten days ago. You know how it is, relationship not going anywhere.’

‘I’ve had a marriage like that for twenty years. Never thought of moving out though.’

Sarah gave him a weak smile. She had never met Brian’s wife, who spent most of her time in their Derbyshire ‘weekend’ cottage, but suspected that the marriage was a good one. They had no kids, so why would they stay together otherwise? Sarah had an unfashionably idealistic notion of marriage. Some people stuck together out of fear of being alone, but she would never settle for less than love, for less than she’d once had with Nick.

5

MARCH 1997

In prison you spend all your time waiting for the future to begin. Leaving prison wasn’t like when I fall in love or when I have kids or after Labour wins the next election . This future was going to happen. On a set day, you would be released. Until then, you could legitimately put your life on hold.

Nick had done four years, seven months and eighteen days of an eight year stretch. Five years ago, he’d been pasty-faced and flabby, a packet-a-day smoker, with several joints on top of that. Now he was well built, down to ten slender rollies a day and hadn’t touched draw since a random drugs test cost him three months’ remission.

His brother was waiting for him at the gates in a yellow taxi with Cane Cars on the side. Nick got into the passenger seat.

‘You look well fit, my friend.’

Nick smiled sheepishly and reached out his arm. The brothers were six years apart, far enough for the two of them not to have been close growing up, near enough for the gap not to matter now. When he went inside, Nick thought he had many friendships far stronger than that with his younger brother. But Joe was the one who kept visiting, who offered him a place to stay on the out. Most of his friends had slipped out of touch by the second year.

The two men hugged awkwardly over the handbrake.

‘Caroline’s cooking something special for you,’ Joe said, enthusiastically. Joe’s wife wouldn’t want him in the house, Nick knew, and who could blame her? But it was only for a few weeks, until he got a place of his own, one his probation officer would have to approve.

‘How’s the teaching going?’ Nick asked.

‘She’ll be glad to get out for a while,’ Joe said.

‘Get out?’ Nick asked. ‘You mean the Easter holidays?’

Joe didn’t reply. They turned off the ring road.

‘This is where we live now,’ Joe said. They entered a hillside estate of 1920s semis with big back gardens. Nick knew his brother had moved while he was inside, but hadn’t realized his new home was so close to the prison where he had begun his sentence.

‘Nice place,’ Nick said, as Joe parked the car.

‘Still needs painting on the outside,’ his brother told him. ‘You should see what we’ve done inside, though. Come on.’

The house looked like the early eighties had never ended: stripped pine, original Adams tiles on the floor, framed prints, big patchwork cushions, a cheese plant, a rubber plant and pastel colours on the walls.