Gone-Girl-by-Gillian-Flynn

cut – I have an image of Go hacking away at him just before he went on
camera, slipping into Mama Mo’s role, fussing over him, doing the salivathumb
rubdown on some spot near his chin. He is wearing my tie and when
he lifts his hand to make a gesture, I see he is wearing my watch, the vintage
Bulova Spaceview that I got him for his thirty-third birthday, that he never
wore because it wasn’t him, even though it was completely him.
‘He’s wonderfully well groomed for a man who thinks his wife is
missing,’ Desi snipes. ‘Glad he didn’t skip a manicure.’
‘Nick would never get a manicure,’ I say, glancing at Desi’s buffed nails.
‘Let’s get right to it, Nick,’ Sharon says. ‘Did you have anything to do
with your wife’s disappearance?’
‘No. No. Absolutely, one hundred percent not,’ Nick says, keeping wellcoached
eye contact. ‘But let me say, Sharon, I am far, far from being
innocent, or blameless, or a good husband. If I weren’t so afraid for Amy, I
would say this was a good thing, in a way, her disappearing—’
‘Excuse me, Nick, but I think a lot of people will find it hard to believe
you just said that when your wife is missing.’
‘It’s the most awful, horrible feeling in the world, and I want her back
more than anything. All I am saying is that it has been the most brutal eyeopener
for me. You hate to believe that you are such an awful man that it
takes something like this to pull you out of your selfishness spiral and wake
you up to the fact that you are the luckiest bastard in the world. I mean, I had
this woman who was my equal, my better, in every way, and I let my
insecurities – about losing my job, about not being able to care for my family,
about getting older – cloud all that.’
‘Oh, please—’ Desi starts, and I shush him. For Nick to admit to the world
that he is not a good guy – it’s a small death, and not of the petite mort
variety.
‘And Sharon, let me say it. Let me say it right now: I cheated. I
disrespected my wife. I didn’t want to be the man that I had become, but
instead of working on myself, I took the easy way out. I cheated with a young
woman who barely knew me. So I could pretend to be the big man. I could
pretend to be the man I wanted to be – smart and confident and successful –
because this young woman didn’t know any different. This young girl, she
hadn’t seen me crying into a towel in the bathroom in the middle of the night
because I lost my job. She didn’t know all my foibles and shortcomings. I was
a fool who believed if I wasn’t perfect, my wife wouldn’t love me. I wanted