David Nicholls - One Day

‗Don‘t tease me, Em.‘

‗I‘m not, I just . . . it was nothing to do with pity, and you know it. But it‘s . . .

complicated. Us. Come here, wil you?‘

She nudged him once more with her foot and after a moment he tipped over like a fel ed tree, his head coming to rest against her shoulder.

She sighed. ‗We‘ve known each other a long time, Dex.‘

‗I know. I just thought it might be a good idea. Dex and Em, Em and Dex, the two of us. Just try it for a while, see how it worked. I had thought that‘s what you wanted too.‘

‗It is. It was. Back in the late Eighties.‘

‗So why not now?‘

‗Because. It‘s too late. We‘re too late. I‘m too tired.‘

‗You‘re thirty-five!‘

‗I just feel our time has passed, that‘s al ,‘ she said.

‗How do you know, unless we give it a try?‘

‗Dexter – I have met someone else!‘

They sat in silence for a moment, listening to the children shouting in the courtyard below, the sound of distant televisions.

‗And you like him? This guy.‘

‗I do. I real y, real y like him.‘

He reached down, and took her left foot in his hand, stil dusty from the street.

‗My timing isn‘t great, is it?‘

‗No, not real y.‘

He examined the foot he held in his hand. The toenails were painted red, but chipped, the smal est nail gnarled and barely there. ‗Your feet are disgusting.‘

‗I know they are.‘

‗Your little toe‘s like this little nub of sweetcorn.‘

‗Stop playing with it then.‘

‗So that night—‘ He pressed his thumb against the hard skin of her sole. ‗So was it real y so terrible?‘

She poked him sharply in the hip with her other foot.

‗Don‘t fish, Dexter.‘

‗No real y, tel me.‘

‗ No, Dexter, it was not such a terrible night, in fact it was one of the more memorable nights of my life. But I stil think we should leave it at that.‘ She swung her legs off the sofa and sidled up until their hips were touching, taking his hand, her head on his shoulder now. Both stared forwards at the bookshelves, until Emma final y sighed. ‗Why didn‘t you say al this, I don‘t know – eight years ago?‘

‗Don‘t know, too busy trying to have . . . fun, I suppose.‘

She lifted her head to look at him sideways. ‗And now you‘ve stopped having fun, you think ―good old Em, give her a go—‖‘

‗That‘s not what I meant—‘

‗I‘m not the consolation prize, Dex. I‘m not something you resort to. I happen to think I‘m worth more than that.‘

‗And I think you‘re worth more than that too. That‘s why I came here. You‘re a wonder, Em.‘

After a moment she stood abruptly, picked up a cushion, threw it sharply at his head and walked towards the bedroom. ‗Shut up, Dex.‘

He reached for her hand as she passed, but she shook it free. ‗Where are you going?‘

‗To have a shower, get changed. Can‘t sit around here al night!‘ she shouted from the other room, angrily pul ing clothes from the wardrobe and dropping them onto the bed.

‗After al , he‘l be here in twenty minutes!‘

‗Who‘l be here?‘

‗Who do you think? My NEW BOYFRIEND!‘

‗Jean-Pierre‘s coming here?‘

‗Uh-huh. Eight o‘clock.‘ She started unbuttoning the tiny buttons on her shirt, then gave up, pul ed it impatiently over her head and whipped it at the floor.

‗We‘re al going out for dinner! The three of us!‘

He let his head fal backwards and let out a long low groan. ‗Oh God. Do we have to?‘

‗I‘m afraid so. It‘s al been arranged.‘ She was naked now, and furious, at herself, at the situation. ‗We‘re taking you to the very restaurant where we first met! The famous bistro! We‘re going to sit there at the same table and hold hands and tel you al about it! It‘s al going to be very, very romantic.‘ She slammed the bathroom door, shouting through it. ‗And in no way awkward!‘

Dexter heard the sound of the shower running, and lay back on the sofa, looking at the ceiling, embarrassed now at this ridiculous expedition. He had thought that he had the answer, that they could rescue each other, when in truth Emma had been fine for years. If anyone needed rescuing, it was him.

And maybe Emma was right, maybe he was just feeling a little lonely. He heard the ancient plumbing gurgle as the shower ceased, and there it was again, that terrible, shameful word. Lonely. And the worst of it was that he knew it was true. Never in his life had he imagined that he would be lonely. For his thirtieth birthday he had fil ed a whole night-club off Regent Street; people had been queuing on the pavement to get in. The SIM card of his mobile phone in his pocket was overflowing with telephone numbers of al the hundreds of people he had met in the last ten years, and yet the only person he had ever wanted to talk to in al that time was standing now in the very next room.

Could this be true? He scrutinised the notion once again and finding it to be accurate he stood suddenly with the intention of tel ing her straightaway. He walked towards the bedroom then stopped.

He could see her through the gap in the door. She was sitting at a smal 1950s dressing table, her short hair stil wet from the shower, wearing a knee-length old-fashioned black silk dress, unzipped at the back to the base of her spine, opened wide enough to see the shade beneath her shoulder blades. She sat motionless and erect and rather elegant, as if waiting for someone to come and zip the dress up, and there was something so appealing about the idea, something so intimate and satisfying about that simple gesture, both familiar and new, that he almost stepped straight into the room. He would fasten the dress, then kiss the curve between her neck and her shoulder and tel her.

Instead he watched silently as she reached for a book on the dressing table, a large wel -thumbed French/English dictionary. She began to leaf through the pages then stopped suddenly, her head slumping forwards, both hands spanning

her brow and pushing her fringe back as she groaned angrily. Dexter laughed at her exasperation, silently he thought, but she glanced towards the door and he quickly stepped backwards. The floorboards popped beneath his feet as he pranced absurdly towards the kitchen area, running both taps and moving cups around uselessly under running water as an alibi. After a while he heard the ting of the old-fashioned phone being picked up in the bedroom, and he turned off the taps so that he might overhear the conversation with this Jean-Pierre. A low, lover‘s murmur, in French. He strained to listen, failing to understand a single word.

The bel sounded once again as she hung up. Some time passed, then she was standing in the doorway behind him. ‗Who was that on the phone?‘ he asked over his shoulder, matter-of-factly.

‗Jean-Pierre.‘

‗And how was Jean-Pierre?‘

‗He‘s fine. Just fine.‘

‗Good. So. I should get changed. What time is he coming round again?‘

‗He isn‘t coming round.‘

Dexter turned.

‗What?‘

‗I told him not to come round.‘

‗Real y? You did?‘

He wanted to laugh—

‗I told him I had tonsil itis.‘

—wanted to laugh so much, but he mustn‘t, not yet. He dried his hands. ‗What is that? Tonsil itis. In French?‘

Her fingers went to her throat. ‗ Je suis très désolé, mais mes glandes sont gonflées, ‘ she croaked feebly. ‗ Je pense que je peux avoir l’amygdalite.‘

‗L‘amy . . . ?‘

‗ L’amygdalite.‘

‗You have amazing vocab.‘

MONDAY 15 JULY 2002

Belsize Park

The radio alarm sounds as usual at 07.05. It is already bright and clear outside, but neither of them move just yet.

Instead they lie with his arm around her waist, their legs tangled at the ankle, in

Dexter‘s double bed in Belsize Park in what was once, many years ago now, a bachelor flat.

He has been awake for some time, rehearsing in his head a tone of voice and phrasing that is both casual and significant, and when he feels her stir he speaks.

‗Can I say something?‘ he says into the back of her neck, his eyes stil closed, mouth gummed with sleep.

‗Go on,‘ she says, a little wary.

‗I think it‘s crazy, you having your own flat.‘

With her back to him, she smiles. ‗O-kay.‘

‗I mean you‘re here most nights anyway.‘

She opens her eyes. ‗I needn‘t be.‘

‗No, I want you to be.‘

She turns in the bed to face him, and sees his eyes are stil closed. ‗Dex, are you?

. . .‘

‗What?‘

‗Are you asking me to be your flatmate?‘

He smiles and without opening his eyes, he takes her hand beneath the sheet and squeezes it. ‗Emma, wil you be my flatmate?‘

‗Final y!‘ she mumbles. ‗Dex, it‘s al that I‘ve lived for.‘

‗So, what, yes?‘

‗Let me think about it.‘

‗Wel let me know, won‘t you? Because if you‘re not interested, I might get someone else in.‘

‗I said, I‘l think about it.‘

He opens his eyes. He had expected a yes. ‗What‘s there to think about?‘

‗Just, I don‘t know. Living together.‘

‗We lived together in Paris.‘

‗I know, but that was Paris.‘

‗We more or less live together now.‘

‗I know, I just—‘

‗And it‘s insane for you to rent, renting is money down the drain, in the current property market.‘

‗You sound like my independent financial adviser. It‘s very romantic.‘ She pouts her lips and kisses him, a cautious morning kiss. ‗This isn‘t just about sound financial planning, is it?‘

‗Mainly, but I also think it‘d be . . . nice.‘

‗Nice.‘

‗You living here.‘

‗And what about Jasmine?‘

‗She‘l get used to it. Besides, she‘s only two and a half, it‘s not up to her, is it? Or her mother.‘

‗And might it not get a bit . . . ?‘

‗What?‘

‗Cramped. The three of us at weekends.‘

‗We‘l manage.‘

‗Where wil I work?‘

‗You can work here while I‘m out.‘

‗And where wil you take your lovers?‘

He sighs, a little bored of the joke after a year of almost maniacal fidelity. ‗We‘l go to hotels in the afternoon.‘

They lapse into silence again as the radio burbles on and Emma closes her eyes once more and tries to imagine herself unpacking cardboard boxes, finding space for her clothes, her books. In truth, she prefers the atmosphere of her current flat, a pleasant, vaguely Bohemian attic off the Hornsey Road. Belsize Park is just too neat and chi-chi, and despite her best efforts and the gradual colonisation of her books and clothes, Dexter‘s flat stil retains an atmosphere of the bachelor years: the games console, the immense television, the ostentatious bed. ‗I keep expecting to open a cupboard and be buried under, I don‘t know . . .

a cascade o f panties or something.‘ But he has made the offer, and she feels as if she should offer something in return.

‗Maybe we should think of buying somewhere together,‘

she says. ‗Somewhere bigger.‘ Once again, they have grazed against the great unspoken subject. A long silence fol ows, and she wonders if he has fal en asleep again, until he says:

‗Okay. Let‘s talk about it tonight.‘

And so another weekday begins, like the one before and the ones to come. They get up and get dressed, Emma drawing on the limited store of clothes she keeps jammed into her al ocated cupboard. He has the first shower, she has the second, during which time he walks to the shop and buys the newspaper and milk if necessary. He reads the sports pages, she the news and then after breakfast, eaten for the most part in comfortable silence, she takes her bike from the hal way and pushes it with him towards the tube.

Each day they kiss each other goodbye at approximately eight twenty-five.

‗Sylvie‘s dropping Jasmine off at four o‘clock,‘ he says.

‗I‘l be back at six. You‘re sure you don‘t mind being there?‘

‗Course not.‘

‗And you‘l be okay with Jasmine?‘

‗Fine. We‘l go to the zoo or something.‘

Then they kiss again, and she goes to work, and he goes to work, and so the days go by, faster than ever.

Work. He is working again in his own business, though

‗business‘ feels a little too high-powered a word at present for this little delicatessen-café on a residential street between Highgate and Archway.

The idea was hatched in Paris, during that long strange summer in which they had dismantled his life, then put it back together again. It had been Emma‘s idea, sitting outside a café near the Parc des Buttes Chaumont in the north-east. ‗You like food,‘ she had said, ‗you know about wine. You could sel real y good coffee by the pound, imported cheeses, al that swanky stuff that people want these days. Not pretentious or chi-chi, just this real y nice little shop, with tables outside in the summer.‘ Initial y he had bridled at the word ‗shop‘, not quite able to see himself as a

‗shopkeeper‘ or, even worse, a grocer. But an ‗imported food specialist‘ had a ring to it. Better to think of it as a café/restaurant that also sold food. He would be an entrepreneur.

So in late September, when Paris had final y, final y started to lose some of its gleam, they had travel ed back on the train together. With light tans and new clothes they walked arm-in-arm along the platform and it felt like they were arriving in London for the very first time, with plans and projects, resolutions and ambitions.

Their friends nodded sagely, sentimental y, as if they had known it al along. Emma was introduced once again to Dexter‘s father – ‗Of course I remember. You cal ed me a fascist‘ – and they put forward the idea of the new business in the hope that he might want to help with the financing.

When Alison had died there had been a private understanding that some money might go to Dexter at an appropriate time, and this seemed like the moment.

Privately, Stephen Mayhew stil expected his son to lose every penny, but that was a smal price to pay to know that he would never, ever appear on television ever again. And Emma‘s presence helped. Dexter‘s father liked Emma, and for the first time in some years found himself liking his son because of her.

They had found the property together. A video rental shop, already an anomaly with its shelves of dusty VHS, had final y given up the ghost, and, with one last push from Emma, Dexter had made his move and taken the property on a twelve-month lease. Through a long wet January they ripped out the metal shelving and distributed the remaining Steven Seagal videos around local charity shops. They stripped and painted the wal s a buttery white, instal ed dark wooden panel ing, scoured other bankrupt restaurants and cafés for a decent industrial coffee machine, chil cabinets, glass-fronted refrigerators; al those failed businesses reminding him of what was at stake, how likely he was to fail.

But al the time Emma was there, pushing him on, keeping him convinced that he was doing the right thing.

The area was up-and-coming the estate agents said, slowly fil ing with young professionals who knew the value of the word ‗artisan‘ and wanted jars of duck confit, customers who didn‘t mind paying two pounds for an irregular loaf of bread or a lump of goat‘s cheese the size of a squash bal . The café would be the kind of place where people came to ostentatiously write their novels.

On the first day of spring they sat in the sun on the pavement outside the partly refurbished shop and wrote down a list of possible names: corny combinations of words like magasin, vin, pain, Paris pronounced ‗Paree‘, until they settled on Bel evil e Café, bringing a flavour of the 19th arrondissement to just south of the

A1. He formed a limited company, his second after Mayhem TV plc, with Emma as his company secretary and, in a smal but significant way, his coinvestor. Money was starting to come in from the first two ‗Julie Criscol ‘ books, the animated TV series had been commissioned for its second series, there was talk of merchandising: pencil cases, birthday cards, even a monthly magazine. There was no denying it, she was now what her mother would term

‗wel off‘. After a certain amount of throat-clearing, Emma found herself in the strange, slightly unnerving position of being able to offer Dexter financial help. After a certain amount of foot shuffling, he accepted.

They opened in April, and for the first six weeks he stood by the dark wood counter, watched people walk in, look round, sniff and walk out again. But then word began to spread, things began to pick up and he found himself able to take on some staff. He began to acquire regulars, even to enjoy himself.

And now the place has become fashionable, albeit in a more sedate, domesticated way than he is used to. If he is famous now it is only local y, and only for his selection of herbal teas, but he‘s stil a mild heartthrob to the flushed young mums-to-be who come in to eat pastries after their pram-ercise class, and in a smal way he is almost, almost a success again. He unlocks the heavy padlock that holds down the metal shutters, already hot to the touch on this radiant summer‘s morning. He pul s them up, unlocks the door and feels, what?

Content? Happyish? No, happy.

Secretly, and for the first time in many years, he is proud of himself.

Of course there are long boring wet Tuesdays, when he wants to pul down the shutters and methodical y drink al the red wine, but not today. It‘s a warm day, he is seeing his daughter tonight and wil be with her for much of the next eight days while Sylvie and that bastard Cal um go on another of their constant holidays. By some strange mystery Jasmine is now two and a half years old, self-possessed and beautiful like her mother, and she can come in and play shops and be fussed over by the other staff, and when he gets home tonight Emma wil be there. For the first time in many years he is more or less where he wants to