Текст книги "One Day"

Автор книги: David Nicholls

Соавторы: David Nicholls
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. bigdayspeech.doc

TUESDAY 15 JULY 2003

North Yorkshire

The holiday cottage was not at all like in the photographs. Small and dark, it had that holiday cottage smell, air-freshener and stale cupboards, and seemed to have retained the winter’s chill in its thick stone walls, so that even on a blazing July day it felt chilly and damp.

Still, it didn’t seem to matter. It was functional, isolated and the view of the North Yorkshire Moors was startling, even through the tiny windows. Most days they were out walking or driving along the coast, visiting antiquated seaside resorts that Emma remembered from childhood excursions, dusty little towns that seemed stuck in 1976. Today, the fourth day of the trip, they were in Filey, walking along the broad promenade that overlooks the great expanse of beach, still fairly empty on a Tuesday during term-time.

‘See over there? That’s where my sister got bitten by a dog.’

‘That’s interesting. What kind of dog?’

‘Oh I’m sorry, am I boring you?’

‘Only a little.’

‘Well tough, I’m afraid. Four more days to go.’

In the afternoon, they were meant to go on some ambitious hike to a waterfall that Emma had planned the night before, but after an hour they found themselves on the moors staring uncomprehendingly at the Ordnance Survey map before giving up, lying down on the parched heather and dozing in the sun. Emma had brought along a bird guide and an immense pair of ex-army binoculars, the size and weight of a diesel engine, which she now raised with some effort to her eyes.

‘Look, up there. I think it’s a hen harrier.’

‘Hmmm.’

‘Have a look. Go on – up there.’

‘I’m not interested. I’m sleeping.’

‘How can you not be interested? It’s beautiful.’

‘I’m too young to birdwatch.’

Emma laughed. ‘You’re being ridiculous, you know that.’

‘It’s bad enough that we’re rambling. It’ll be classical music next.’

‘Too coolto birdwatch—’

‘Then it’ll be gardening, then you’ll be buying jeans in Marks and Spencer’s, you’ll want to move to the country. We’ll call each other “darling”. I’ve seen it happen, Em. It’s a slippery slope.’

She raised herself on one arm, leant across and kissed him. ‘Remind me again, why am I marrying you?’

‘It’s not too late to cancel.’

‘Would we still get our deposit back?’

‘Don’t think so.’

‘Okay.’ She kissed him again. ‘Let me think about it.’

They were getting married in November, a small, discreet winter wedding at a registry office, followed by a small, restrained reception for close friends and family at a favoured local restaurant. It was, they insisted, not really a wedding, more an excuse for a party. The vows would be secular and not too sentimental and had yet to be written; almost too embarrassing, they imagined, actually to sit face-to-face and compose those promises to each other.

‘Can’t we just use the vows you made to your ex-wife?’

‘But you are still going to promise to obey me, right?’

‘Only if you vow that you’ll never, ever get into golf.’

‘And you’re going to take my surname?’

‘“Emma Mayhew”. Could be worse, I suppose.’

‘You could hyphenate.’

‘Morley-Mayhew. Sounds like a village in the Cotswolds. “We’ve got a little place just outside Morley-Mayhew”.’

And this was how they approached the big day: flippant, but privately, discreetly elated too.

This week in Yorkshire was their last chance of a holiday before their modest, discreet big day. Emma had a deadline and Dexter was anxious about leaving the business for a whole week, but at least the trip allowed them to stop off at Emma’s parents, an event that her mother had treated like an overnight visit by royalty. Serviettes were on the table, rather than the usual kitchen roll, there was trifle and a bottle of Perrier in the fridge. After the end of Emma’s relationship with Ian it had seemed that Sue Morley would never love again and yet, if anything, she was even more fixated on Dexter, flirting in a bizarre, over-enunciated voice, like a coquettish speaking clock. Dutifully, Dexter flirted back, while the rest of the Morley family could do nothing but stare silently at the floor tiles and try not to laugh. Sue didn’t care; to her it seemed as if a long-held fantasy was finally coming true: her daughter was actually marrying Prince Andrew.

Watching him through her family’s eyes, Emma had felt proud of Dexter; he twinkled at Sue, was boyish and funny with her cousins, seemed sincerely interested in her father’s koi carp and United’s chances in the league. Only Emma’s younger sister seemed sceptical of his appeal and sincerity. Divorced with two boys now, resentful and perpetually exhausted, Marianne was not in the mood for another wedding. They spoke that night while washing up.

‘Why’s Mum talking in that daft voice, that’s what I want to know.’

‘She likes him.’ Emma nudged her sister’s arm. ‘You like him too, don’t you?’

‘He’s nice. I like him. Just I thought he was meant to be some famous shagger or summat.’

‘A long time ago, maybe. Not now.’

And Marianne had sniffed and visibly resisted saying something about leopards and their spots.

They abandoned the search for the waterfall, and instead drove back to the local pub, eating crisps and playing closely matched games of pool through the late afternoon.

‘I don’t think your sister likes me very much,’ said Dexter, racking up the balls for the deciding game.

‘Course she does.’

‘She barely spoke a word to me.’

‘She’s just shy and a bit grumpy. She’s like that, our sis.’

Dexter smiled. ‘Your accent.’

‘What about it?’

‘You’ve got dead Northern since we’ve been up here.’

‘Have I?’

‘Soon as we hit the M1.’

‘Don’t mind, do you?’

‘Don’t mind at all. Whose turn to break?’

Emma won the game, and they walked back to the cottage in the evening light, woozy and affectionate from beer on an empty stomach. A working holiday, the plan had been to spend the day together and for Emma to work at night, but the trip had coincided with the most fertile days of Emma’s cycle, and they were obliged to take full advantage of these opportunities now. ‘What, again?’ mumbled Dexter as Emma closed the door and kissed him.

‘Only if you want to.’

‘No, I do. It’s just I feel a bit like I’m on a. . stud farm or something.’

‘Oh, you are. You are.’

By nine o’clock, Emma was asleep in the large, uncomfortable bed. It was still light outside, and for a while Dexter lay listening to her breathing, looking out at the small patch of purple moor that could be seen through the bedroom window. Still restless, he slid from the bed, pulled on some clothes and stepped quietly downstairs to the kitchen, where he rewarded himself with a glass of wine and wondered what they were supposed to do now. Dexter, who was used to the wilds of Oxfordshire, found this kind of isolation unnerving. It was too much to hope for a broadband connection, but in the brochure the cottage had also proudly boasted its lack of a television, and the silence made him anxious. On his iPod he selected some Thelonious Monk – he found himself listening to more jazz these days – then flopped back onto the sofa, releasing a cloud of dust, and picked up his book. Half-jokingly, Emma had bought him a copy of Wuthering Heightsto read on the trip, but he found the book almost entirely unreadable so instead he reached for his laptop, opened it and stared at the screen.

In a folder called ‘Personal Documents’ lay another folder called ‘Random’ within which lay a file of just 40KB called bigdayspeech.doc: the text of his groom’s speech. The horror of his witless, incoherent, semi-improvised performance at his previous wedding still remained vivid, and he was determined to get this one right, and to start work on it early.

So far, the text in its entirety ran as follows.

My Groom’s speach

After a whirlwind romance! etc.

How we met. At same Uni but never knew her. Seen her around. Always angry about something terrible hair. Show photographs? Thought I was toff. Dungarees, or did I imagine. Finally got to know her. Called Dad fascist.

Great friends on and off. Me being idiot. Sometimes don’t see thing in front of face.(corny)

How to describe Em. Her many qualities. Funny. Intelligence. Good dancer when she does but terrible cook. Taste in music. We argue. But can always talk laugh. Beautiful but doesn’t always know it etc etc.Great with Jas, even gets on with my ex-wife! Ho ho ha. Everyone loves her.

We lost touch. Bit about Paris.

Finally together, whirlwind romance nearly 15 years, finally makes sense. All friends said told you so. Happier than ever been.

Pause wile guests vom in unison.

Acknowledge second wedding. Get right this time. Thank caterers. Thank Sue Jim making me welcome. Feel like honorary northerner gags here etc.Telegrams? Absent friends. Sorry Mum’s not here. Would have approved. At last!

Toast to my beautiful wife blah-di-blah-di-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.

It was a start, and the structure was there. He set to work in earnest, switching the font from Courier to Arial to Times New Roman and back again, changing it all to italics, counting the words, adjusting the paragraphs and margins so that it looked more substantial.

Finally, he started to speak it out loud, using the text as notes, trying to recall the fluency he had once had on TV.

‘I’d just like to thank everyone for coming here today. .’

But he could hear the creak of floorboards above his head and quickly he closed the lid of the laptop, slid it furtively beneath the sofa and reached for Wuthering Heights.

Naked and sleepy-eyed, Emma padded down the stairs, stopping halfway and sitting with her arms wrapped round her knees. She yawned. ‘What time is it?’

‘Quarter to ten. Wild times, Em.’

She yawned once more. ‘You’ve tired me out.’ She laughed. ‘Stud.’

‘Go and put some clothes on, will you?’

‘What are you doing anyway?’ He held up Wuthering Heightsand Emma smiled. ‘“I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul”! Or is it “love without my life”. Or “live without my love”? Can’t remember.’

‘Haven’t got to that bit yet. It’s still some woman called Nelly banging on.’

‘It gets better, I promise you.’

‘Tell me again, why is there no television here?’

‘We’re meant to make our own entertainment. Come back to bed and talk to me.’

He stood and crossed the room, leaning over the banister and kissing her. ‘Promise you won’t force me to have sex again.’

‘What shall we do instead then?’

‘I know it sounds weird,’ he said, looking a little sheepish. ‘But I wouldn’t mind a game of Scrabble.’

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. The Middle

THURSDAY 15 JULY 2004

Belsize Park

Something strange was happening to Dexter’s face.

Coarse, black hairs had begun to appear high up on his cheeks, joining the occasional long grey solitary hairs that crept from his eyebrows. As if that wasn’t enough, a fine, pale fur was appearing around the opening of his ears and at the bottom of his earlobes; hair that seemed to sprout overnight like cress, and which served no purpose except to draw attention to the fact that he was approaching middle age. Was now middle-aged.

Then there was the widow’s peak, particularly noticeable now after a shower; two parallel byways gradually widening and making their way to the crown of his head, where the two paths would one day meet and it would all be over. He dried his hair with the towel, then scrubbed it this way and that with his fingertips until the path was covered over.

Something strange was happening to Dexter’s neck. He had developed this sag, this fleshy pouch under his chin, his bag of shame, like some flesh-toned roll-neck jumper. He stood naked in front of the bathroom mirror and put one hand on his neck as if trying to mould it all back into place. It was like living in a subsiding house – every morning he woke and inspected the site for fresh cracks, new slippage in the night. It was as if the flesh were somehow cleaving from the skeleton, the characteristic physique of someone whose gym membership had long since lapsed. He had the beginnings of a paunch and, most grotesquely, something strange was happening to his nipples. There were items of clothing that he could barely bring himself to wear now, fitted shirts and ribbed woollen tops, because you could see them there, like limpets, girlish and repulsive. He also looked absurd in any garment with a hood, and only last week he had caught himself standing in a trance, listening to Gardeners’ Question Time. In two weeks’ time he would be forty years old.

He shook his head, and told himself it wasn’t that disastrous. If he turned and looked at himself suddenly, and held his head in a certain way, and inhaled, he could still pass for, say, thirty-seven? He retained enough vanity to know that he was still an unusually good-looking man, but no-one was calling him beautiful anymore, and he’d always thought he would age better than this. He had hoped to age like a movie star: wiry, aquiline, grey-templed, sophisticated. Instead he was ageing like a TV presenter. An ex-TV presenter. A twice-married ex-TV presenter who ate far too much cheese.

Emma came in, naked from the bedroom, and he began to brush his teeth, another obsession; he felt like he had an old mouth, like it would never be clean again.

‘I’m getting fat,’ he mumbled, mouth full of foam.

‘No you’re not,’ she said without much conviction.

‘I am – look.’

‘So don’t eat so much cheese then,’ she said.

‘I thought you said I wasn’t getting fat.’

‘If you feel you are, then you are.’

‘And I don’t eat too much cheese. My metabolism is slowing down, that’s all.’

‘So do some exercise. Go to the gym again. Come swimming with me.’

‘No time, have I?’ While the toothbrush was removed from his mouth she kissed him consolingly. ‘Look, I’m a mess,’ he mumbled.

‘I’ve told you before, darling, you have beautiful breasts,’ and she laughed, poked him in the buttock and stepped into the shower. He rinsed, sat on the bathroom chair and watched her.

‘We should go and see that house this afternoon.’

Emma groaned over the sound of the water. ‘Do we have to?’

‘Well I don’t know how else we’re going to find—’

‘Okay. Okay! We’ll go and see the house.’

She continued to shower with her back to him and he stood and stalked into the bedroom to get dressed. They were scrappy and irritable once again, and he told himself that it was because of the strain of trying to find a place to live. The flat had already been sold and a large part of their possessions placed into storage just to make room for the two of them. Unless they found somewhere soon they would have to rent, and all this brought its tensions and anxieties.

But he knew that something else was going on and sure enough, as Emma waited for the kettle and read the paper, she suddenly said—

‘I’ve just got my period.’

‘When?’ he asked.

‘Just now,’ she said, with studied calm. ‘I could feel it coming on.’

‘Oh well,’ he said, and Emma continued to make coffee, her back to him.

He stood to wrap his arms around her waist and lightly kissed the nape of her neck, still damp from the shower. She didn’t look up from the newspaper. ‘Doesn’t matter. We’ll try again, yeah?’ he said, standing there with his chin on her shoulder for a while. It was a winsome, uncomfortable stance, and when she turned the page of the paper, he took it as his cue to return to the table.

They sat and read, Emma the current affairs, Dexter the sport, both taut with irritation while Emma tutted and shook her head in that maddening way she sometimes had. The Butler Inquiry into the origins of the war dominated the headlines, and he could feel her building up to some kind of topical political comment. He focussed on the latest from Wimbledon, but—

‘It’s weird, isn’t it? How there’s this war going on, and virtually no protest? I mean you think there’d be marches or something, wouldn’t you?’

That tone of voice riled him too. It was the one he remembered from all those years ago: her student voice, superior and self-righteous. Dexter made an uncontentious noise, neither challenging nor accepting, in the hope that this would be enough. Time passed, pages of the newspaper were turned.

‘I mean you’d think there’d be something like the anti-Vietnam movement or something, but nothing. Just that one march, then everyone shrugged and went home. Even the students aren’t protesting!’

‘What’s it got to do with the students?’ he said, mildly enough, he thought.

‘It’s traditional, isn’t it? That students are politically engaged. If we were still students, we’d be protesting.’ She went back to the paper. ‘ Iwould anyway.’

She was provoking him. Fine, if that’s what she wanted. ‘So why aren’t you?’

She looked at him sharply. ‘What?’

‘Protesting. If you feel so strongly.’

‘That’s exactly my point. Maybe I should be! That was exactly my observation! If there was some kind of cohesive movement. .’

He returned to the paper, resolving to keep quiet but unable to do so. ‘Or maybe it’s because people don’t mind.’

‘What?’ She looked at him, eyes narrowed.

‘The war. I mean if people were really affronted by it there’d be protests, but maybe people are glad that he’s gone. I don’t know if you noticed, Em, but he wasn’t a very nice man. .’

‘You can be glad Saddam’s gone and still be against the war.’

‘That’s my point. It’s ambiguous, isn’t it?’

‘What, you think it’s a fairlyjust war?’

‘Not menecessarily. People.’

‘But what about you?’ She closed the newspaper, and he felt a genuine sense of unease. ‘What do you think?’

‘What do I think?’

‘What do you think?’

He sighed. Too late now, no turning back. ‘I just think it’s pretty rich that a lot of people on the Left were against the war when the people that Saddam was murdering were exactly the people the Left should have been supporting.’

‘Like who?’

‘Trade unionists, feminists. Homosexuals.’ Should he say the Kurds? Was that correct? He decided to chance it. ‘The Kurds!’

Emma snuffled righteously. ‘Oh, you think we’re fighting this war to protect trade unionists?’ You think Bush invaded because he was worried about the plight of Iraqi women? Or gays?’

‘All I’m saying is that the anti-war march would have had a bit more moral credibility if the same people had protested against the Iraqi regime in the first place! They protested about apartheid, why not Iraq?’

‘. . and Iran? And China and Russia and North Korea and Saudi Arabia! You can’t protest against everyone.’

‘Why not? You used to!’

‘That’s beside the point!’

‘Is it? When I first knew you, all you didwas boycott things. You couldn’t eat a bloody Mars Bar without a lecture on personal responsibility. It’s not my fault you’ve become complacent. .’

He returned to his ridiculous sports news with a little self-satisfied smirk, and Emma felt her face beginning to redden. ‘I have not become. . Don’t change the subject! The point is, it’s ridiculous to claim that this war is about human rights, or WMDs or anything like that. It’s about one thing and one thing only. .’

He groaned. It was inevitable now: she was going to say ‘oil’. Please, please don’t say ‘oil’. .

‘. . nothing to do with human rights. It’s entirely to do with oil!’

‘Well isn’t that a pretty good reason?’ he said, standing and deliberately scraping his chair. ‘Or don’t you use oil, Em?’

As last words go, he felt this was pretty effective, but it was hard to walk away from an argument in this bachelor flat that suddenly felt too small, cluttered and scuffed. Certainly Emma wasn’t going to let a fatuous remark like that go unanswered. She followed him into the hall, but he was waiting for her, turning on her with a ferocity that unsettled them both.

‘I tell you what this is reallyabout. You’ve had your period and you’re angry about it and you’re taking it out on me! Well I don’t like being harangued while I’m trying to eat my breakfast!’

‘I’m not haranguingyou—’

‘Arguing then—’

‘We’re not arguing, we’re discussing—’

‘Are we? Because I’m arguing—’

‘Calm down, Dex—’

‘The war wasn’t my idea, Em! I didn’t order the invasion, and I’m sorry, but I don’t feel as strongly about it as you do. Maybe I should, maybe I will, but I don’t. I don’t know why, maybe I’m too stupidor something—’

Emma looked startled. ‘Where did that come from? I didn’t say you were—?’

‘But you treat me like I am. Or like I’m this right-wing nut because I don’t spout platitudes about The War. I swear, if I sit at one more dinner party and hear someone say “It’s all about the oil”! Maybe it is, so what? Either protest about that, or stop using oil or accept it and shut the fuck up!’

‘Don’t you dare tell me to—’

‘I wasn’t! I wasn’t talking to. . oh, forget it.’

He squeezed past that bloody bike of hers, cluttering up hishallway, and into the bedroom. The blinds were still drawn, the bed unmade, damp towels on the floor, the room smelling of their bodies from the night before. He began searching for his keys in the gloom. Emma watched him from the doorway, with that look of maddening concern, and he kept his eyes averted.

‘Why are you so embarrassed about discussing politics?’ she said calmly, as if he were a child having a tantrum.

‘I’m not embarrassed, I’m just. . bored.’ He was searching through the laundry basket, pulling out discarded clothes, checking trouser pockets for keys. ‘I find politics boring – there, I’ve said it now. It’s out!’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really.’

‘Even at University?’

‘Especially there! I just pretended I didn’t because it was the thing to do. I used to sit there at two in the morning listening to Joni Mitchell while some clown banged on about apartheid, or nuclear disarmament or the objectification of women and I used to think, fuck, this is boring, can’t we talk about, I don’t know, family or music or sex or something, people or something—’

‘But politics ispeople!’

‘What does that mean, Em? It’s meaningless, it’s just something to say—’

‘It means we talked about a lot of things!’

‘Did we? All I remember about those golden days is a lot of people showing-off, men mostly, banging on about feminism so that they could get into some girl’s knickers. Stating the bleeding obvious; isn’t that Mr Mandela nice and isn’t nuclear war nasty and isn’t it rotten that some people don’t have enough to eat—’

‘And that’s notwhat people said!’

‘—it’s exactly the same now, except the bleeding obvious has changed. Now it’s global warming and hasn’t Blair sold out!’

‘You don’t agree?’

‘I doagree! I do! I just think it would be refreshing to hear someone we know, one single person, say Bush can’t be all that stupid and thank God someone’s standing up to this fascist dictator and by the way I love my big car. Because they’d be wrong, but at least there’d be something to talk about! At least they wouldn’t be patting themselves on the back, at least it would make a change from WMDs and schools and fucking houseprices.’

‘Hey, you talk about house prices too!’

‘I know! And I fucking bore myself too!’ His shout echoed as he flung yesterday’s clothes against the wall, and then they both stood there in the gloomy bedroom, the blinds still down, the stale bed unmade.

‘Do I bore you then?’ she said quietly.

‘Don’t be ridiculous! That’s not what I said.’ Suddenly exhausted, he sat on the bed.

‘But do I?’

‘No, you don’t. Let’s change the subject, can we?’

‘So, what do you want to talk about?’ she said.

He sat hunched on the edge of the mattress, pressed his hands to his face and exhaled through his fingers. ‘We’ve only been trying for eighteen months, Em.’

‘Two years.’

‘Two years then. I don’t know, I just hate that. . look you give me.’

‘What look?’

‘When it doesn’t work, like it’s my fault.’

‘I don’t!’

‘That’s what it feels like.’

‘I’m sorry. I apologise. I’m just. . disappointed. I really want it, that’s all.’

‘So do I!’

‘Do you?’

He looked hurt. ‘Of course I do!’

‘Because you didn’t to begin with.’

‘Well I do now. I love you. You know that.’

She crossed the room and joined him, and they sat for a moment holding hands, shoulders hunched.

‘Come here,’ she said, falling backwards onto the bed, and he followed, their legs dangling over the edge. A shaft of murky light leaked between the blinds.

‘I’m sorry for taking it out on you,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry for. . I don’t know.’

She lifted his hand and pressed the back of it against her lips. ‘You know. I think we should get checked out. Go to a fertility clinic or something. Both of us.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with us.’

‘I know, and that’s what we’re going to confirm.’

‘Two years isn’t that long. Why not wait another six months?’

‘I just don’t feel like I’ve got another six months in me, that’s all.’

‘You’re crazy.’

‘I’ll be thirty-nine next April, Dex.’

‘I’m forty in two weeks!’

‘Exactly.’

He exhaled slowly, visions of test tubes floating before his eyes. Depressing cubicles, nurses snapping on rubber gloves. Magazines. ‘Alright then. We’ll have some tests.’ He turned to look at her. ‘But what’ll we do about the waiting list?’

She sighed. ‘I suppose we might have to, I don’t know. Go private.’

After a while, he spoke. ‘My God. Now that’s something I never thought you’d say.’

‘No, me neither,’ she said. ‘Me neither.

With some sort of fragile peace in place, he got ready for work. The absurd row would make him late, but at least the Belleville Café was running fairly smoothly now. He had employed a sharp, reliable manager, Maddy, with whom he enjoyed good business relations and some mild flirtation, and he no longer had to open up in the mornings. Emma accompanied him downstairs and they walked out into the day, gloomy and nondescript.

‘So where is this house then?’

‘Kilburn. I’ll send you the address. It looks nice. In the photos.’

‘They all look nice in the photos,’ she mumbled, hearing her own voice, sulky and dreary. Dexter chose not to speak, and a moment passed before she felt able to loop her arms around his waist and hold onto him. ‘We’re not being very good today, are we? Or I’m not. Sorry.’

‘That’s okay. We’ll stay in tonight, you and me. I’ll cook you dinner, or we’ll go out somewhere. To the cinema or something.’ He pressed his face to the top of the head. ‘I love you and we’ll sort this out, alright?’

Emma stood silent on the doorstep. The proper thing to do would be to tell him that she loved him too, but she still wanted to mope a little more. She resolved to sulk until lunch time, then make it up to him tonight. Perhaps if the weather cleared up, they could go and sit on Primrose Hill like they used to. The important thing is that he will be there and it will be okay.

‘You should go,’ she mumbled into his shoulder. ‘You’ll be late for Maddy.’

‘Don’t start.’

She grinned and looked up at him. ‘I’ll cheer up by tonight.’

‘We’ll do something fun.’

‘Fun.’

‘We still have fun, don’t we?’

‘Of course we do,’ she said, and kissed him goodbye.

And they did have fun, though it was of a different kind now. All that yearning and anguish and passion had been replaced by a steady pulse of pleasure and satisfaction and occasional irritation, and this seemed to be a happy exchange; if there had been moments in her life when she had been more elated, there had never been a time when things had been more constant.

Sometimes, she thought, she missed the intensity, not just of their romance, but of the early days of their friendship. She remembered writing ten-page letters late into the night; insane, passionate things full of dopey sentiment and barely hidden meanings, exclamation marks and underlining. For a while she had written daily postcards too, on top of the hour-long phone-calls just before bed. That time in the flat in Dalston when they had stayed up talking and listening to records, only stopping when the sun began to rise, or at his parents’ house, swimming in the river on New Year’s Day, or that afternoon drinking absinthe in the secret bar in Chinatown; all of these moments and more were recorded and stored in notebooks and letters and wads of photographs, endless photographs. There was a time, it must have been in the early nineties, when they were barely able to pass a photo-booth without cramming inside it, because they had yet to take each other’s permanent presence for granted.

But to just look at someone, to just sit and look and talk and then realise that it’s morning? Who had the time or inclination or energy these days to stay up talking all night? What would you talk about? Property prices? She used to long for those midnight phone-calls; these days if a phone rang late at night it was because there had been an accident, and did they really need more photographs when they knew each other’s faces so well, when they had shoeboxes full of that stuff, an archive of nearly twenty years? Who writes long letters in this day and age, and what is there to care so much about?

She sometimes wondered what her twenty-two-year-old self would think of today’s Emma Mayhew. Would she consider her self-centred? Compromised? A bourgeois sell-out, with her appetite for home ownership and foreign travel, clothes from Paris and expensive haircuts? Would she find her conventional, with her new surname and hopes for a family life? Maybe, but then the twenty-two-year-old Emma Morley wasn’t such a paragon either: pretentious, petulant, lazy, speechifying, judgemental. Self-pitying, self-righteous, self-important, all the selfs except self-confident, the quality that she had always needed the most.

No, this, she felt, was real life and if she wasn’t as curious or passionate as she once had been, that was only to be expected. It would be inappropriate, undignified, at thirty-eight, to conduct friendships or love affairs with the ardour and intensity of a twenty-two-year-old. Falling in love like that? Writing poetry, crying at pop songs? Dragging people into photo-booths, taking a whole day to make a compilation tape, asking people if they wanted to share your bed, just for company? If you quoted Bob Dylan or T.S. Eliot or, God forbid, Brecht at someone these days they would smile politely and step quietly backwards, and who would blame them? Ridiculous, at thirty-eight, to expect a song or book or film to change your life. No, everything had evened out and settled down and life was lived against a general background hum of comfort, satisfaction and familiarity. There would be no more of those nerve-jangling highs and lows. The friends they had now would be the friends they had in five, ten, twenty years’ time. They expected to get neither dramatically richer nor poorer; they expected to stay healthy for a little while yet. Caught in the middle; middle class, middle-aged; happy in that they were not over happy.