Текст книги "One Day"

Автор книги: David Nicholls

Соавторы: David Nicholls
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‘So.’ His eyes were scanning the room as he spoke. ‘How’s the teaching?’

‘It’s fine, Dexter,’ she scowled.

‘What? What have I done?’ he replied indignantly, eyes snapping back to her.

She spoke levelly. ‘If you’re not interested, don’t ask.’

‘I am interested! It’s just. .’ He poured himself more wine. ‘I thought you were meant to be writing some bookor something?’

‘I am writing some-book-or-something, but I also have to earn a living. And also more to the point I enjoy it, Dexter, andI’m a bloody good teacher!’

‘I’m sure you are! It’s just, well, you know the expression. “Those who can. .”’

Emma’s mouth fell open. Stay calm—

‘No, I’m not familiar with it, Dexter. Tell me. What expression?’

‘You know. .’

‘No, seriously, Dexter, tell me.’

‘It’s not important.’ He was starting to look sheepish.

‘I’d like to know. Finish the sentence. “Those who can. .”’

He sighed, a glass of wine in his hand, then spoke flatly. ‘Those who can, do, those who can’t, teach. .’

She spat the words. ‘And those who teach say go fuck yourself.’

And now his glass of wine was in his lap as Emma shoved the table away and jumped to her feet, grabbing her bag, knocking over bottles, clattering plates as she clambered out of the booth, storming through that hateful, hateful place. All around her people were staring now but she didn’t care, she just wanted to be out. Do not cry, you will not cry, she commanded herself and, glancing behind her, saw Dexter mopping furiously at his lap, placating the waiter then following on in pursuit. She turned, broke into a run, and now here was the Cigarette Girl striding down the stairs towards her on long legs and high heels, a grin splitting her scarlet mouth. Despite her vow, Emma felt hot tears of humiliation prick her eyes, and now she was falling onto the stairs, stumbling on those stupid, stupid high shoes, and there was an audible gasp from the audience of diners behind her as she fell to her knees. The Cigarette Girl was beside her, holding onto her elbow, with a look of maddening, genuine concern.

‘Are you alright there?’

‘Yes, thank you, I’m fine—’

But now Dexter had caught up with her, was helping her up. Firmly she shook herself free from his grip.

‘Get off me, Dexter!’

‘Don’t shout, calm down—’

‘I will notcalm down—’

‘Alright, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Whatever it is you’re angry about, I’m sorry!’

She turned to him on the stairs, eyes blazing. ‘What, you don’t know?’

‘No! Come back to the table, and you can tell me!’ But she was tumbling on, through the swing doors now, pushing them closed behind her so that the metal edge cracked him sharply on the knee. He limped after her. ‘This is stupid, we’re both a bit drunk, that’s all—’

‘No, you’redrunk! You’re always drunk or off your face on something or other, every time I see you. D’you realise I literally haven’t seen you sober for, what, three years? I’ve forgotten what you’re like sober, you’re too busy boring on about yourself or your new pals or running to the loo every ten minutes – I don’t know if it’s dysentery or too much coke, but either way it’s fucking rude and most of all it’s boring. Even when you talk to me you’re always looking over my shoulder in case there’s some better option. .’

‘That’s not true!’

‘It is true, Dexter! Well bollocks to it. You’re a TV presenter, Dex. You’ve not invented penicillin, it’s TV, and crap TV at that. Well sod it, I’ve had enough.’

They were out amongst the crowds on Wardour Street in the fading summer light.

‘Let’s go somewhere and talk about this.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it, I just want to go home. .’

‘Emma, please?’

‘Dexter, just leave me alone, will you?’

‘You’re being hysterical. Come here.’ He took her arm once again and, idiotically, tried to hug her. She pushed him away, but he held onto her. People were staring at them now, another couple fighting in Soho on a Saturday night, and she relented finally, allowing herself to be pulled into a side street.

They were silent now, Dexter stepping away from her so that he could take her in. She was standing with her back to him, wiping her eyes with the heel of her hand, and he suddenly felt a hot pang of shame.

Finally, she spoke, in a quiet voice, her face to the wall.

‘Why are you being like this, Dexter?’

‘Like what?’

‘You know what.’

‘I’m just being myself!’

She spun to face him. ‘No, you’re not. I know what you’re like and this isn’t you. You’re horrible like this. You’re obnoxious, Dexter. I mean you always werea bit obnoxious, every now and then, a bit full of yourself, but you were funny too, and kind sometimes, and interested in people other than yourself. But now you’re just out of control, with the booze, the drugs—’

‘I’m just having fun!’

She sniffed, once, and looked up at him, through smudged black eyes.

‘And sometimes I get carried away, that’s all. If you weren’t so. . judgemental all the time—’

‘Am I? I don’t think I am. I try not to be. I just don’t. .’ She stopped herself speaking, shook her head. ‘I know you’ve been through a lot, in the last few years, and I’ve tried to understand that, really I have, with your mum and all, but. .’

‘Go on,’ he said.

‘I just don’t think you’re the person I used to know. You’re not my friend anymore. That’s all.’

He could think of nothing to say to this, so they stood in silence, until Emma put her hand out, took two fingers of his hand, squeezed them in her palm.

‘Maybe. . maybe this is it, then,’ she said. ‘Maybe it’s just over.’

‘Over? What’s over?’

‘Us. You and me. Friendship. There are things I needed to talk to you about, Dex. About Ian and me. If you’re my friend I should be able to talk to you but I can’t, and if I can’t talk to you, well, what is the point of you? Of us?’

‘“What’s the point?”’

‘You said yourself, people change, no use getting sentimental about it. Move on, find someone else.’

‘Yeah, but I didn’t mean us. .’

‘Why not?’

‘Because we’re. . us. We’re Dex and Em. Aren’t we?’

Emma shrugged. ‘Maybe we’ve grown out of each other.’

He said nothing for a moment, then spoke. ‘So, do you think I’ve grown out of you, or you’ve grown out of me?’

She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. ‘I think you think I’m. . dreary. I think you think I cramp your style. I think you’ve lost interest in me.’

‘Em, I do notthink you’re dreary.’

‘And neither do I! Neither do I! I think I’m fucking marvellousif you only knew it, and I think you used to think so too! But if you don’t or if you’re going to just take it for granted, then that’s fine. I’m just not prepared to be treated like this anymore.’

‘Treated like what?’

She sighed, and it was a moment before she spoke.

‘Like you always want to be somewhere else, with someone else.’

He would have denied this, but the Cigarette Girl was waiting in the restaurant at that very moment, the number of his mobile phone tucked into her garter. Later he would wonder if there was something else he might have said to save the situation, a joke perhaps. But nothing occurred to him and Emma let go of his hand.

‘Well off you go,’ she said. ‘Go to your party. You’re rid of me now. You’re free.’

With failing bravado, Dexter tried to laugh. ‘You sound like you’re dumping me!’

She smiled sadly. ‘I suppose I am in a way. You’re not who you used to be, Dex. I really, really liked the old one. I’d like him back, but in the meantime, I’m sorry, but I don’t think you should phone me anymore.’ She turned and, a little unsteadily, began to walk off down the side alley in the direction of Leicester Square.

For a moment, Dexter had a fleeting but perfectly clear memory of himself at his mother’s funeral, curled up on the bathroom floor while Emma held onto him and stroked his hair. Yet somehow he had managed to treat this as nothing, to throw it all away for dross. He followed a little way behind her. ‘Come on, Em, we’re still friends, aren’t we? I know I’ve been a little weird, it’s just. .’ She stopped for a moment, but didn’t turn round, and he knew that she was crying. ‘Emma?’

Then very quickly she turned, walked up to him and pulled his face to hers, her cheek warm and wet against his, speaking quickly and quietly in his ear, and for one bright moment he thought he was to be forgiven.

‘Dexter, I love you so much. So, somuch, and I probably always will.’ Her lips touched his cheek. ‘I just don’t like you anymore. I’m sorry.’

And then she was gone, and he found himself on the street, standing alone in this back alley trying to imagine what he would possibly do next.

Ian returns at just before midnight to find Emma curled up on the sofa, watching some old movie. ‘You’re back early. How was Golden Boy?’

‘Awful,’ she murmurs.

If Ian feels any glee at this, he doesn’t let it into his voice. ‘Why, what happened?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it. Not tonight.’

‘Why not? Emma, tell me! What did he say? Did you argue?. .’

‘Ian, please? Not tonight. Just come here, will you?’

She shuffles up so that he can join her on the sofa, and he notices the dress that she is wearing, the kind of thing she never wears for him. ‘Is that what you wore?’

She holds the hem of the dress between finger and thumb. ‘It was a mistake.’

‘I think you look beautiful.’

She curls up against him, her head on his shoulder. ‘How was the gig?’

‘Not great.’

‘Did you do the cats and dogs stuff?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Was there heckling?’

‘Little bit of heckling.’

‘Maybe it’s not your best material.’

‘Bit of booing.’

‘That’s part of it, though, isn’t it? Everyone gets heckled sometimes.’

‘I suppose so. I suppose sometimes I just worry. .’

‘What?’

‘That I might just be. . not very funny.’

She speaks into his chest. ‘Ian?’

‘What?

‘You are a very, very funny man.’

‘Thanks, Em.’

He rests his head against her and thinks about the small crimson box lined with crumpled silk that contains the engagement ring. For the last two weeks it has been tucked inside a balled-up pair of walking socks, waiting for its moment. Not right now though. In three weeks’ time they’ll be on the beach in Corfu. He imagines a restaurant overlooking the sea, a full moon, Emma in her summer dress, freshly tanned and smiling, perhaps a bowl of calamari between them. He imagines presenting the ring to her in an amusing way. For some weeks he has been devising different romantic-comedy scenarios in his head – perhaps dropping it into her wine glass while she’s in the loo, or finding it in the mouth of his grilled fish, and complaining to the waiter. Getting it muddled up with the calamari rings, that might work. He might even just give it to her. He tries out the words in his head. Marry Me, Emma Morley. Marry Me.

‘Love you lots, Em,’ he says.

‘Love you too,’ says Emma. ‘Love you too.’

The Cigarette Girl sits at the bar on her twenty-minute break, her costume on beneath her jacket, sipping whisky and listening to this man as he talks on and on about his friend, that poor pretty girl who fell down the staircase. They’ve had some kind of row apparently. The Cigarette Girl tunes in and out of the man’s monologue, nodding every now and then and glancing surreptitiously at her watch. It is five minutes to midnight, and she should really get back to work. The hour between twelve and one is the best for tips, the high-water mark of lust and stupidity on the part of the male customers. Five more minutes and she’ll go. Poor guy can barely stand up anyway.

She recognises him from that stupid TV programme – and doesn’t he go out with Suki Meadows? – but can’t recall his name. Does anyone watch that show anyway? The man’s suit is stained, the pockets bulging with packets of unsmoked cigarettes, there’s a sheen of oil on his nose, his breath is bad. What’s more, he still hasn’t even bothered to ask her real name.

The Cigarette Girl is called Cheryl Thomson. She works most days as a nurse, which is exhausting, but does an occasional shift here too because she went to school with the manager and the tips are incredible if you’re prepared to flirt a little. At home in her flat in Kilburn her fiancé is waiting for her. Milo, Italian, 6' 2", once a footballer, now also a nurse. Very good-looking, they’re getting married in September.

She would tell all this to the man if he asked, but he doesn’t, so at two minutes to midnight on St Swithin’s Day, she excuses herself – got to get back to work, no I can’t go to the party, yes I’ve got your number, hope you and your friend work things out – and leaves the man alone at the bar, ordering another drink.

Part Three

1996–2001

Early Thirties

‘Sometimes you are aware when your great moments are happening, and sometimes they rise from the past. Perhaps it’s the same with people.’

James Salter, Burning the Days

CHAPTER TEN. Carpe Diem

MONDAY 15 JULY 1996

Leytonstone and Walthamstow

Emma Morley lies on her back on the floor of the headmaster’s office, with her dress rucked up around her waist and exhales slowly through her mouth.

‘Oh, and by the way. Year Nine need new copies of Cider With Rosie.’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ says the headmaster, buttoning up his shirt.

‘So while you’ve got me here on your carpet, is there anything else you’d like to discuss? Budget issues, Ofsted inspection? Anything you want to go over again?’

‘I’d like to go over youagain,’ he says, laying down again and nuzzling her neck. It’s the kind of meaningless innuendo that Mr Godalming – Phil – specialises in.

‘What does that mean? That doesn’t mean anything.’ She tuts and shrugs him away and wonders why sex, even when enjoyable, leaves her so ill-tempered. They lie still for a moment. It’s six-thirty in the evening at the end of term and Cromwell Road Comprehensive has the eerie quiet of a school after hours. The cleaners have been round, the office door is closed and locked from the inside, but still she feels uneasy and anxious. Isn’t there meant to be some sort of afterglow, some sense of communion or well-being? For the last nine months she has been making love on institutional carpet, plastic chairs and laminated tables. Ever considerate of his staff, Phil has taken the foam cushion from the office armchair and it now rests beneath her hips, but even so she would one day like to have sex on furniture that doesn’t stack.

‘You know what?’ says the headmaster.

‘What?’

‘I think you’re sensational,’ and he squeezes her breast for emphasis. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do without you for six weeks.’

‘At least it’ll give your carpet burn a chance to heal.’

‘Six whole weeks without you.’ His beard is scratching at her neck. ‘I’ll go crazy with desire—’

‘Well you’ve always got Mrs Godalming to fall back on,’ she says, hearing her own voice, sour and mean. She sits and pulls her dress down over her knees. ‘And anyway, I thought the long holidays were one of the perks of teaching. That’s what you told me. When I first applied. .’

Hurt, he looks up at her from the carpet. ‘Don’t be like this, Em.’

‘What?’

‘The woman-scorned act.’

‘Sorry.’

‘I don’t like it anymore than you do.’

‘Except I think you do.’

‘No I don’t. Let’s not spoil it, eh?’ He places one hand on her back, as if consoling her. ‘This is our last time ’til September.’

‘Alright, I said sorry, okay?’ To mark a change in subject, she twists at the waist and kisses him, and is about to pull away when he places one hand on the nape of her neck and kisses her again with a gentle scouring action.

‘Christ, I’m going to miss you.’

‘You know what I think you should do?’ she says, her mouth on his. ‘It’s quite radical.’

He looks at her anxiously. ‘Go on. .’

‘This summer, soon as term’s over. .’

‘Tell me.’

She places one finger on his chin. ‘I think you should shave this off.’

He goes to sit. ‘No way!’

‘All this time and I don’t know what you actually look like!’

‘This IS what I look like!’

‘But your face, your actual face. You might even be quite handsome.’ She puts her hand on his forearm, and pulls him back down. ‘Who’s behind the mask? Let me in, Phil. Let me know the real you.’

They laugh for a while, comfortable again. ‘You’d be disappointed,’ he says, rubbing it like a favoured pet. ‘Anyway, it’s either this or shave three times a day. I used to shave in the morning but I looked like a burglar by lunch time. So I thought I’d let it grow, let it be my trademark.’

‘Oh, a trademark.’

‘It’s informal. The kids like it. Makes me look anti-authority.’

Emma laughs again. ‘It’s not 1973, Phil. A beard means something different these days.’

He shrugs defensively. ‘Fiona likes it. Says I have a weak chin otherwise.’ A silence follows, as it always does when his wife is mentioned. To lighten things he says, self-deprecatingly: ‘Of course you know the kids all call me The Beard.’

‘I wasn’t aware of that, no.’ Phil laughs and Emma smiles. ‘And anyway it’s not The Beard, it’s just Beard. No definite article, Monkey Boy.’

He sits suddenly, frowning sternly. ‘ Monkey Boy?’

‘That’s what they call you.’

‘Who?’

‘The kids.’

‘ Monkey Boy?’

‘Didn’t you know?’

‘No!’

‘Oops. Sorry.’

He flops back down on the floor, sulky and hurt. ‘Can’t believe they call me Monkey Boy!’

‘Only in fun,’ she says, soothingly. ‘It’s affectionate.’

‘Doesn’t sound very affectionate.’ He rubs his chin, as if comforting a pet. ‘It’s because I’ve got too much testosterone, that’s all.’ The use of the word ‘testosterone’ is enough to perk him up, and he pulls Emma back towards the floor and kisses her once more. He tastes of staffroom coffee and the bottle of white wine he keeps in his filing cabinet.

‘I’ll get a rash,’ she says.

‘So?’

‘So people’ll know.’

‘Everyone’s gone home.’ His hand is on her thigh when the phone rings on the desk and he recoils as if bitten. He staggers to his feet.

‘Leave it!’ groans Emma.

‘I can’t leave it!’ He’s dragging on his trousers, as if talking to Fiona whilst naked from the waist down would be a betrayal too far, as if he’s terrified of sounding in some way bare-legged.

‘Hi, there! Hello, love! Yes, I know! Just walking out the door. .’ Domestic issues are debated – pasta or stir-fry, TV or a DVD – and Emma distracts herself from her lover’s home life by retrieving her rolled-up underwear from beneath the desk where it lies with the paper-clips and pen tops. Dressing, she crosses to the window. There’s dust on the blades of the venetian blinds, outside a pink light hits the science block, and suddenly Emma wishes that she were in a park or on a beach or a European city square somewhere, just anywhere but here in this airless institutional room with a married man. How does it happen that you wake up one day, find yourself in your thirties and someone’s mistress? The word is repulsive, servile and she would rather not have it present in her mind, but can come up with no other. She is the boss’s mistress and the best that can be said of the circumstances is that at least there are no children involved.

The affair – another awful word – began the previous September, after the disastrous holiday in Corfu, the engagement ring in the calamari. ‘I think we want different things’ was the best that she could come up with, and the rest of the long, long fortnight passed in a haze of sunburn and sulking, self-pity and anxiety about whether the jewellers would take the ring back. Nothing in the world could be more melancholy than that unwanted engagement ring. It sat in the suitcase in their hotel room, emanating sadness like radiation.

She returned from the holiday looking brown and unhappy. Her mother, who knew about the proposal, who had practically bought her own dress for the wedding, raged and moaned at Emma for weeks until she began to question her rejection of the offer. But saying yes would feel like caving in, and Emma knew from novels that you should never cave in to marriage.

The affair had settled it. During a routine meeting she had burst into tears in Phil’s office, and he had crossed from behind the desk, put his arm round her, and pressed his mouth to the top of her head, almost as if to say ‘at last’. After work, he took her to this place he’d heard of, a gastropub, where you could get a pint but the food was great too. They had rib-eye steaks and goat’s cheese salad, and as their knees made contact beneath the big wooden table she had let it all flood out. After the second bottle of wine, it was all just a formality; the hug that became a kiss in the taxi home, the brown internal envelope in her pigeon hole ( about last night, can’t stop thinking about you, felt this way for years, we need to talk, when can we talk?).

Everything Emma knew about adultery had come from TV dramas of the Seventies. She associated it with Cinzano and Triumph TR7s and cheese and wine parties, thought of it as something the middle-aged did, the middle classes mainly; golf, yachts, adultery. Now that she was actually involved in an affair – its paraphernalia of secret looks, hands held under tables, fondles in the stationery cupboard – she was surprised at how familiar it all was, and what a potent emotion lust could be, when combined with guilt and self-loathing.

One night, after sex on the set of her Christmas production of Grease, he had solemnly handed her a gift-wrapped box.

‘It’s a mobile phone!’

‘In case I need to hear your voice.’

Sitting on the bonnet of the Greased Lightning, she stared at the box and sighed. ‘Well I suppose it was bound to happen eventually.’

‘What’s up? Don’t you like it?’

‘No, it’s great.’ She smiled, remembering. ‘I just lost a bet with someone, that’s all.’

Sometimes, walking and talking on a clear autumn evening in a secret part of Hackney Marshes, or giggling at the school carol service, drunk on mulled wine with their hips touching – sometimes she thought she was in love with Phillip Godalming. He was a good, principled, passionate teacher, if a little pompous sometimes. He had nice eyes, he could be funny. For the first time in her life she was the subject of an almost obsessive sexual infatuation. Of course, at forty-four he was far too old and his body, beneath the pelt, had that slipped doughy quality, but he was an earnest and intense lover, sometimes a little too intense for her liking; a face-puller, a talker. She found it hard to believe that the same man who stood in assembly to talk about the charity fun run would use that kind of language. Sometimes she wanted to break off during sex and say ‘Mr Godalming – you swore!’

But nine months have passed now, the excitement has faded and she finds it harder to understand why she’s here, loitering in a school corridor on a beautiful summer’s evening. She should be with friends, or with a lover whom she’s proud of and can mention in front of other people. Sulky with guilt and embarrassment, she waits outside the boys’ loos while Phil washes himself with institutional soap. His Deputy Head of English and Theatre Studies and his mistress. Oh good God.

‘All done!’ he says, stepping out. He takes her hand in his, still damp from the washbasin, dropping it discreetly as they step out into the open air. He locks the main door, sets the alarm, and they walk to his car in the evening light, a professional distance apart, his leather briefcase occasionally banging the back of her shin.

‘I’d drive you to the tube, but—’

‘—best be on the safe side.’

They walk a little further.

‘Four more days to go!’ he says jauntily, to fill the silence.

‘Where are you off to again?’ she asks, even though she knows.

‘Corsica. Walking. Fiona loves to walk. Walking, walking, walking, always walking. She’s like Gandhi. Then in the evening, off come the walking boots, out like a light. .’

‘Phil, please – don’t.’

‘Sorry. Sorry.’ To change the subject, he asks, ‘How about you?’

‘Might see family in Yorkshire. Staying here, working mostly.’

‘Working?’

‘You know. Writing.’

‘Ah, the writing.’ Like everyone, he says it as if he doesn’t believe her. ‘It’s not about you and me, is it? This famous book?’

‘No it’s not.’ They’re at his car now, and she is keen to be gone. ‘And anyway, I don’t know if you and me are all that interesting.’

He’s leaning against his blue Ford Sierra, gearing up for the big farewell, and now she has spoilt it. He frowns, bottom lip showing pink through his beard. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘I don’t know, just. .’

‘Go on.’

‘Phil, this, us. It doesn’t make me happy.’

‘You’re unhappy?’

‘Well, it’s not ideal is it? Once a week on an institutional carpet.’

‘You seemed pretty happy to me.’

‘I don’t mean satisfied.Good God, it’s not about sex, it’s the. . circumstances.’

‘Well it makes me happy—’

‘Does it? Does it really though?’

‘As I recall it used to make you happy too.’

‘Excited I suppose, for a while.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Emma!’ He glares down at her as if she has been caught smoking in the girls’ loos. ‘I’ve got to go now! Why bring this up just as I’ve got to go?’

‘I’m sorry, I—’

‘I mean for fuck’s sake, Emma!’

‘Hey! Don’t talk to me like that!’

‘I’m not, I just, I’m just. . Let’s just get through the summer holiday, shall we? And then we’ll work out what to do.’

‘I don’t think there’s anything we can do, is there? We either stop or we carry on, and I don’t think we should carry on. .’

He lowers his voice. ‘There is something else we can do. . I can do.’ He looks around, then when he’s sure it’s safe he takes her hand. ‘I could tell her this summer.’

‘I don’t want you to tell her, Phil. .’

‘While we’re away, or before even, next week. .’

‘I don’t want you to tell her. There’s no point. .’

‘Isn’t there?’

‘No!’

‘Because I think there is, I think there might be.’

‘Fine! Let’s talk next term, let’s, I don’t know – pencil-in a meeting.’

Heartened, he licks his lips, and checks once more for onlookers. ‘I love you, Emma Morley.’

‘No you don’t,’ she sighs. ‘Not really.’

He tilts his chin down, as if peering at her over imaginary glasses. ‘I think that’s for me to decide, don’t you?’ She hates that headmasterly look and tone of voice. She wants to kick him in the shins.

‘You had better go,’ she says.

‘I’ll miss you, Em—’

‘Have a nice holiday, if we don’t talk—’

‘You’ve no idea how much I’ll miss you—’

‘Corsica, lovely—’

‘Every day—’

‘See you then, bye—’

‘Here. .’ Raising his briefcase, using it a shield, he kisses her. Very discreet, she thinks, standing impassively. He opens the car door and steps in. A navy blue Sierra, a proper headmaster’s car, its glove compartment packed with Ordnance Survey maps. ‘Still can’t believe they call me Monkey Boy. .’ he mumbles, shaking his head.

She stands for a moment in the empty car park and watches him drive off. Thirty years old, barely in love with a married man, but at least there are no kids involved.

Twenty minutes later, she stands beneath the window of the long, low red-brick building that contains her flat, and notices a light on in the living room. Ian is back.

She contemplates walking off and hiding in the pub, or perhaps going round to see friends for the evening, but she knows that Ian will just sit in that armchair with the light off and wait, like an assassin. She takes a deep breath, and looks for her keys.

The flat seems much bigger since Ian moved out. Stripped of the video box-sets, the chargers and adapters and cables, the vinyl in gatefold sleeves, it feels as if it has been recently burgled, and once again Emma is reminded of how little she has to show for the last eight years. She can hear a rustling from the bedroom. She puts down her bag and walks quietly towards the door.

The contents of the chest of drawers are scattered on the floor: letters, bank statements, torn paper wallets of photographs and negatives. She stands silent and unobserved in the doorway and watches Ian for a moment, snorting with the effort of reaching deep into the back of the drawer. He wears unlaced trainers, track-suit bottoms, an un-ironed shirt. It’s an outfit that has been carefully put together to suggest maximum emotional disarray. He is dressed to upset.

‘What are you doing, Ian?’

He is startled, but only for a moment, after which he glares back indignantly, a self-righteous burglar. ‘You’re home late,’ he says, accusingly.

‘What’s that got to do with you?’

‘Just curious as to your whereabouts, that’s all.’

‘I had rehearsals. Ian, I thought we agreed you can’t just drop in like this.’

‘Why, got someone withyou, have you?’

‘Ian, I am so not in the mood for this. .’ She puts down her bag, takes off her coat. ‘If you’re looking for a diary or something, you’re wasting your time. I haven’t kept a diary for years. .’

‘As a matter of fact I’m just getting my stuff. It is mystuff, you know, I do ownit.’

‘You’ve got all your stuff.’

‘My passport. I don’t have my passport!’

‘Well I can tell you right now, it’s not in my underwear drawer.’ He is improvising of course. She knows that he has his passport, he just wanted to poke through her belongings and show her that he’s not okay. ‘Why do you need your passport? Are you going somewhere? Emigrating maybe?’

‘Oh you’d love that, wouldn’t you?’ he sneers.

‘Well I wouldn’t mind,’ she says, stepping over the mess and sitting on the bed.

He adopts a gumshoe voice. ‘Well, tough shit, sweetheart, ’cause I ain’t going nowhere.’ As a jilted lover, Ian has found a commitment and aggression that he never possessed as a stand-up comedian, and he is certainly putting on quite a show tonight. ‘Couldn’t afford to anyway.’

She feels like heckling him. ‘I take it you’re not doing a lot of stand-up comedy at the moment, then, Ian?’

‘What do youthink, sweetheart?’ he says, putting his arms out to the side, indicating the stubble, the unwashed hair, the sallow skin; his look-what-you’ve-done-to-me look. Ian is making a spectacle of his self-pity, a one-man-show of loneliness and rejection that he’s been working up for the last six months and, tonight at least, Emma has no time for it.

‘Where’s this “sweetheart” thing come from, Ian? I’m not sure if I like it.’

He returns to his search and mumbles something into the drawer, ‘fuck off, Em’ perhaps. Is he drunk, she wonders? On the dressing table, there’s an open can of strong cheap lager. Drunk – now there’sa good idea. At that moment, Emma decides to set out to get drunk as soon as possible. Why not? It seems to work for everyone else. Excited by the project, she walks to the kitchen to make a start.