‘.. it’s sort of like the Hackney of Paris,’ she was saying.smiled that maddening smile.nudged him. ‘What?!’
‘Only you would go to Paris and find the bit that’s most like Hackney.’
‘It’s interesting. I think so, anyway.’they turned down a quiet side street and came to what looked like a garage door where Emma punched a code into a panel and pressed against the heavy gate with her shoulder. They entered into an enclosed courtyard, cluttered and rundown and overlooked by apartments on all sides. Washing hung from rusting balconies, shabby pot plants wilted in the evening sun. The courtyard echoed with the noise of competing TVs and children playing soccer with a tennis ball, and Dexter fought down a little shiver of irritation. Rehearsing this occasion, he had pictured a tree-shaded square, louvred windows, a view of Notre-Dame perhaps. This was all fine enough, chic even in an urban, industrial way, but something more romantic would have made this all a little easier.
‘Like I said, it’s nothing grand. Fifth floor, I’m afraid.’pressed the light switch, which was on a timer, and they began the steep ascent of the wrought-iron stairs, tightly curled and seemingly sheering away from the wall in places. Emma was suddenly conscious of the fact that Dexter’s eyes were exactly level with her backside and she began nervously reaching back to her skirt to smooth down creases that weren’t there. As they reached the landing of the third floor the timer of the light clicked off, and they found themselves in darkness for a moment, Emma fumbling behind her to find his hand, and leading him up the stairs until they stood outside a door. In the dim light from the transom, they smiled at each other.
‘Here we go. Chez Moi!’her bag, she produced an immense bunch of keys, and began work on a complex sequence of locks. After some time the door opened onto a small but pleasant flat with scuffed grey-painted floorboards, a large baggy sofa and a small neat desk overlooking the courtyard, its walls lined with austere-looking books in French, the spines a uniform pale yellow. Fresh roses and fruit stood on the table in a small adjoining kitchen, and through another door Dexter could glimpse the bedroom. They had yet to discuss the sleeping arrangements, but he could see the apartment’s only bed, a large cast-iron affair, quaint and cumbersome like something from a farmhouse. One bedroom, one bed. Evening sunlight shone through the windows, drawing attention to the fact of it. He glanced at the sofa to check that it didn’t fold out into anything. Nope. One bed. He could feel the blood pumping in his chest, though perhaps this was just from the long climb.closed the door and there was a silence.
‘So. Here we are!’
‘It’s great.’
‘It’s okay. Kitchen’s through here.’ The climb and nerves had made Emma thirsty and she crossed to the fridge, opened it and took out a bottle of sparkling water. She had begun to drink, taking great gulps, when suddenly Dexter’s hand was on her shoulder, then he was in front of her somehow, and kissing her. Her mouth still full of the effervescing water, she pursed her lips tight to prevent it squirting in his face like a soda siphon. Leaning away, she pointed at her cheeks, absurdly ballooned like a puffer fish, flapped her hands and made a noise that approximated to ‘hold on a moment’., Dexter stepped back to allow her to swallow. ‘Sorry about that.’
‘S’okay. You took me by surprise, that’s all.’ She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
‘Okay now?’
‘Fine, but Dexter, I have to tell you..’he was kissing her again, clumsily pressing too hard as she leant backwards over the kitchen table, which suddenly juddered noisily across the floor, so that she had to twist away at the waist to stop the vase of roses falling.
‘Oops.’
‘The thing is, Dex—’
‘Sorry about that, I just—’
‘But the thing is—’
‘Bit self-conscious—’
‘I’ve sort of met someone.’actually took a step backwards.
‘You’ve met someone.’
‘A man. A guy. I’m seeing this guy.’
‘A guy. Right. Okay. So. Who?’
‘He’s called Jean-Pierre. Jean-Pierre Dusollier.’
‘He’s French?’
‘No, Dex, he’s Welsh.’
‘No, I’m just surprised, that’s all.’
‘Surprised he’s French, or surprised that I should actually have a boyfriend?’
‘No, just that — well it’s pretty quick, isn’t it? I mean you’ve only been here a couple of weeks. Did you unpack first, or..’
‘Two months! I’ve been here two months, and I met Jean-Pierre a month ago.’
‘And where did you meet him?’
‘In a little bistro near here.’
‘A little bistro. Right. How?’
‘How?’
‘—did you meet him?’
‘Well, um, I was having dinner by myself, reading a book, and this guy was with some friends and he asked me what I was reading..’ Dexter groaned and shook his head, a craftsman deriding another’s handiwork. Emma ignored him and walked through to the living room. ‘And anyway, we got talking—’followed. ‘What, in French?’
‘Yes, in French, and we hit it off, and now we’re.. seeing each other!’ She flopped onto the sofa. ‘So. Now you know!’
‘Right. I see.’ His eyebrows rose then lowered again, his features contorting as he explored ways to sulk and smile at the same time. ‘Well. Good for you, Em, that’s really great.’
‘Don’t patronise me, Dexter. Like I’m some lonely old lady—’
‘I’m not!’ With feigned nonchalance, he turned to look out the window into the courtyard below. ‘So what’s he like then, this Jean..’
‘Jean-Pierre. He’s nice. Very handsome, very charming. An amazing cook, he knows all about food, and wine, and art, and architecture. You know, just very, very.. French.’
‘What, you mean rude?’
‘No—’
‘Dirty?’
‘Dexter!’
‘Wears a string of onions, rides a bike—’
‘God, you can be unbearable sometimes—’
‘Well what the hell is that supposed to mean, “very French”?’
‘I don’t know, just very cool and laidback and—’
‘Sexy?—’
‘I didn’t say “sexy”.’
‘No but you’ve gone all sexy, playing with your hair, your shirt unbuttoned—’
‘Such a stupid word, “sexy”—’
‘But you’re having a lot of sex, right?’
‘Dexter, why are you being so—?’
‘Look at you, you’re glowing, you’ve got a little sweaty glow—’
‘There’s no reason for you to be — why are you anyway?’
‘What?’
‘Being so.. mean, like I’ve done something wrong!’
‘I’m not being mean, I just thought..’ He stopped, and turned to look out of the window, his forehead on the glass. ‘I wish you’d told me before I came. I’d have booked a hotel.’
‘You can still stay here! I’ll just sleep with Jean-Pierre tonight.’ Even with his back to her she could tell that he had flinched. ‘Sleep at Jean-Pierre’s tonight.’ She leant forward on the sofa, her face cupped in both hands. ‘What did you think was going to happen, Dexter?’
‘I don’t know,’ he mumbled at the windowpane. ‘Not this.’
‘Well, I’m sorry.’
‘Why do you think I came to see you, Em?’
‘For a break. To get away from things. See the sights!’
‘I came to talk about what happened. You and me, finally getting together.’ He picked at the putty on the windows with his fingernail. ‘I just thought it would have been a bigger deal for you. That’s all.’
‘We’ve slept together once, Dexter.’
‘Three times!’
‘I don’t mean how many acts of intercourse, Dex, I mean the occasion, the night, we spent one night together.’
‘And I just thought it might have been something worth remarking on! Next thing I know you’ve run off to Paris and thrown yourself under the nearest Frenchman—’
‘I didn’t “run off”, the ticket was already booked! Why do you think that everything that happens happens because of you?’
‘And you couldn’t phone me up maybe, before you..?’
‘What, to ask your permission?’
‘No, to see how I felt about it!’
‘Hang on a minute — you’re annoyed because we haven’t examined our feelings? You’re annoyed because you think I should have waited for you?’
‘I don’t know,’ he mumbled. ‘Maybe!’
‘My God, Dexter, are you.. are you actually jealous?’
‘Of course I’m not!’
‘So why are you sulking?’
‘I’m not sulking.’
‘Look at me then!’did so, petulant, his arms crossed high on his chest, and Emma couldn’t help but laugh.
‘What? What?’ he asked, indignant.
‘Well you do realise there’s a certain amount of irony in this, Dex.’
‘How is this ironic?’
‘You getting all conventional and.. monogamous all of a sudden.’said nothing for a moment, then turned back to the window.conciliatory, she said, ‘Look — we were both a little drunk.’
‘I wasn’t that drunk..’
‘You took your trousers off over your shoes, Dex!’ Still he wouldn’t turn around. ‘Don’t stand over by the window. Come and sit here, will you?’ She lifted her bare feet up onto the sofa and curled her legs beneath her. He bumped the pane of glass with his forehead once, twice, then without meeting her eye, crossed the room and slumped next to her, a child sent home from school. She rested her feet against his thighs.
‘Alright, you want to talk about that night? Let’s talk about it.’said nothing. She poked him with her toes, and when he finally looked at her, she spoke. ‘Okay. I’ll go first.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I think that you were very upset and a little bit drunk and you came to see me that night and it just.. happened. I think with all the misery of breaking up with Sylvie, and moving out and not seeing Jasmine, you were feeling a little lonely and you just needed a shoulder to cry on. Or to sleep with. And that’s what I was. A shoulder to sleep with.’
‘So that’s what you think?’
‘That’s what I think.’
‘.. and you only slept with me to make me feel better?’
‘Did you feel better?’
‘Yes, much better.’
‘Well so did I, so there you go. It worked.’
‘.. but that’s not the point.’
‘Well there are worse reasons to sleep with someone. You should know.’
‘But pity sex?’
‘Not pity, compassion.’
‘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, will you?’ She nudged him once more with her foot and after a moment he tipped over like a felled tree, his head coming to rest against her shoulder.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 all,’ she said.
‘How do you know, unless we give it a try?’
‘Dexter — I have met someone else!’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 really, really like him.’reached down, and took her left foot in his hand, still dusty from the street. ‘My timing isn’t great, is it?’
‘No, not really.’examined the foot he held in his hand. The toenails were painted red, but chipped, the smallest 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 really so terrible?’poked him sharply in the hip with her other foot. ‘Don’t fish, Dexter.’
‘No really, tell 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 still 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 finally sighed. ‘Why didn’t you say all this, I don’t know — eight years ago?’
‘Don’t know, too busy trying to have.. fun, I suppose.’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.’a moment she stood abruptly, picked up a cushion, threw it sharply at his head and walked towards the bedroom. ‘Shut up, Dex.’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 all night!’ she shouted from the other room, angrily pulling clothes from the wardrobe and dropping them onto the bed. ‘After all, he’ll be here in twenty minutes!’
‘Who’ll 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, pulled it impatiently over her head and whipped it at the floor. ‘We’re all going out for dinner! The three of us!’let his head fall backwards and let out a long low groan. ‘Oh God. Do we have to?’
‘I’m afraid so. It’s all 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 tell you all about it! It’s all going to be very, very romantic.’ She slammed the bathroom door, shouting through it. ‘And in no way awkward!’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.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 filled 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 all 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 all that time was standing now in the very next room.this be true? He scrutinised the notion once again and finding it to be accurate he stood suddenly with the intention of telling her straightaway. He walked towards the bedroom then stopped.could see her through the gap in the door. She was sitting at a small 1950s dressing table, her short hair still 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 tell her.he watched silently as she reached for a book on the dressing table, a large well-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.bell 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.’turned.
‘What?’
‘I told him not to come round.’
‘Really? You did?’wanted to laugh—
‘I told him I had tonsillitis.’
— wanted to laugh so much, but he mustn’t, not yet. He dried his hands. ‘What is that? Tonsillitis. In French?’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.’
‘Well, you know.’ She shrugged modestly. ‘Had to look it up.’smiled at each other. Then, as if an idea had suddenly occurred to her, she quickly crossed the room in three long strides, took his face between her hands, and kissed him, and he placed his hands upon her back, finding the dress still unfastened, the skin bare and cool and still damp from the shower. They kissed like this for some time. Then, still holding his face in her hands, she looked at him intently. ‘If you muck me about, Dexter.’
‘I won’t—’
‘I mean it, if you lead me on or let me down or go behind my back, I will murder you. I swear to God, I will eat your heart.’
‘I won’t do that, Em.’
‘You won’t?’
‘I swear, I won’t.’then she frowned, and shook her head, then put her arms around him once more, pressing her face into his shoulder, making a noise that sounded almost like rage.
‘What’s up?’ he asked.
‘Nothing. Oh, nothing. Just..’ She looked up at him. ‘I thought I’d finally got rid of you.’
‘I don’t think you can,’ he said.Four
–2005Thirties
‘They spoke very little of their mutual feelings: pretty phrases and warm attentions being probably unnecessary between such tried friends.’Hardy, Far From the Madding CrowdSIXTEEN. Monday Morning15 JULY 2002Parkradio 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.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 still closed, mouth gummed with sleep.
‘Go on,’ she says, a little wary.
‘I think it’s crazy, you having your own flat.’her back to him, she smiles. ‘O-kay.’
‘I mean you’re here most nights anyway.’opens her eyes. ‘I needn’t be.’
‘No, I want you to be.’turns in the bed to face him, and sees his eyes are still closed. ‘Dex, are you?..’
‘What?’
‘Are you asking me to be your flatmate?’smiles and without opening his eyes, he takes her hand beneath the sheet and squeezes it. ‘Emma, will you be my flatmate?’
‘Finally!’ she mumbles. ‘Dex, it’s all that I’ve lived for.’
‘So, what, yes?’
‘Let me think about it.’
‘Well let me know, won’t you? Because if you’re not interested, I might get someone else in.’
‘I said, I’ll think about it.’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’ll 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’ll manage.’
‘Where will I work?’
‘You can work here while I’m out.’
‘And where will you take your lovers?’sighs, a little bored of the joke after a year of almost maniacal fidelity. ‘We’ll go to hotels in the afternoon.’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 still 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 of 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 follows, and she wonders if he has fallen asleep again, until he says:
‘Okay. Let’s talk about it tonight.’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 allocated 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 hallway 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’ll be back at six. You’re sure you don’t mind being there?’
‘Course not.’
‘And you’ll be okay with Jasmine?’
‘Fine. We’ll go to the zoo or something.’they kiss again, and she goes to work, and he goes to work, and so the days go by, faster than ever.. 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.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 sell really good coffee by the pound, imported cheeses, all that swanky stuff that people want these days. Not pretentious or chi-chi, just this really nice little shop, with tables outside in the summer.’ Initially 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.in late September, when Paris had finally, finally started to lose some of its gleam, they had travelled 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.friends nodded sagely, sentimentally, as if they had known it all along. Emma was introduced once again to Dexter’s father — ‘Of course I remember. You called 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 still expected his son to lose every penny, but that was a small 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.had found the property together. A video rental shop, already an anomaly with its shelves of dusty VHS, had finally 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 walls a buttery white, installed dark wooden panelling, scoured other bankrupt restaurants and cafés for a decent industrial coffee machine, chill cabinets, glass-fronted refrigerators; all those failed businesses reminding him of what was at stake, how likely he was to fail.all 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 filling 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 ball. The café would be the kind of place where people came to ostentatiously write their novels.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 Belleville 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 small but significant way, his co-investor. Money was starting to come in from the first two ‘Julie Criscoll’ 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 ‘well 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.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.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 locally, and only for his selection of herbal teas, but he’s still a mild heartthrob to the flushed young mums-to-be who come in to eat pastries after their pram-ercise class, and in a small 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 pulls 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.course there are long boring wet Tuesdays, when he wants to pull down the shutters and methodically drink all the red wine, but not today. It’s a warm day, he is seeing his daughter tonight and will be with her for much of the next eight days while Sylvie and that bastard Callum 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 will be there. For the first time in many years he is more or less where he wants to be. He has a partner whom he loves and desires and who is also his best friend. He has a beautiful, intelligent daughter. He does alright. Everything will be fine, just as long as nothing ever changes.miles away, just off the Hornsey Road, Emma climbs the flights of stairs, unlocks the front door and feels the cool, stale air of a flat that has been unoccupied for four days. She makes tea, sits at her desk, turns on her computer, and stares at it for the best part of an hour. There’s a lot to do — scripts for the second series of ‘Julie Criscoll’ to read and approve, five hundred words of the third volume to write, illustrations to work on. There are letters and emails from young readers, earnest and often disconcertingly personal notes that she must give some attention to, about loneliness and being bullied and this boy I really, really like.her mind keeps slipping back to Dexter’s proposal. During the long, strange summer in Paris last year they had made certain resolutions about their future together — if in fact they did have a future together — and central to the scheme was that they would not live together: separate lives, separate flats, separate friends. They would endeavour to be together, and faithful of course, but not in any conventional way. No traipsing around estate agents at the weekend, no joint dinner parties, no Valentine’s Day flowers, none of the paraphernalia of coupledom or domesticity. Both of them had tried it, neither had succeeded.had imagined this arrangement to be sophisticated, modern, a new design for living. But so much effort is required to pretend that they don’t want to be together that it has recently seemed inevitable that one of them will crack. She just hadn’t expected it to be Dexter. One subject has remained largely unspoken, and now there seems to be no way to avoid it. She will have to take a deep breath and just say the word. Children. No, not ‘children’, best not scare him, better use the singular. She wants a child.have spoken about it before, in a roundabout facetious way, and he has made noises about maybe, in the future, when things are a little bit more settled. But how much more settled can things be? The subject sits there in the middle of the room and they keep walking into it. It’s there every time her parents telephone, it’s there every time she and Dexter make love (less frequently now than in the debauch of the flat in Paris, but still often enough). It keeps her awake at night. Sometimes it seems that she can chart her life by what she worries about at three a.m. Once it was boys, then for too long it was money, then career, then her relationship with Ian, then her infidelity. Now it is this. She is thirty-six years old, a child is what she wants, and if he doesn’t want it too, then perhaps they had better..? Call it a day? It seems melodramatic and degrading to issue that kind of ultimatum, and the thought of carrying out the threat seems inconceivable, for the moment at least. But she resolves that she will raise the subject tonight. No, not tonight, not with Jasmine staying, but soon. Soon.a distracted morning of time-wasting, Emma goes for a lunch-time swim, ploughing up and down the lanes yet still unable to clear her head. Then with her hair still wet she cycles back to Dexter’s flat and arrives to find an immense, vaguely sinister black 4x4 waiting outside the house. It’s a gangsters’ car, two silhouettes visible against the windscreen, one broad and short, the other tall and slim; Sylvie and Callum, both gesticu lating wildly in the middle of another argument. Even from across the road Emma can hear them, and as she wheels her bike closer she can see Callum’s snarled face, and Jasmine in the back seat, eyes fixed on a picture book in an attempt to filter out the noise. Emma taps the window nearest Jasmine and sees her look up and grin, tiny white teeth in a wide mouth, straining forwards against her seatbelt to get out.the car window, Emma and Callum nod. There’s something of the playground about the etiquette of infidelity, separation and divorce, but allegiances have been declared, enmities sworn, and despite having known him for nearly twenty years Emma must no longer talk directly to Callum. As for the ex-wife, Sylvie and Emma have settled on a tone, self-consciously bright and grudge-free, but even so dislike shimmers between them like a heat haze.
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