David Nicholls - One Day

‘What, with you?’

‘With me or anyone. In fact that’s Rule Three. I don’t want to have to sit there like a lemon while you’re rubbing oil into Lotte from Stuttgart.’

‘Em, that is not going to happen.’

‘No, it isn’t. Because it’s a Rule.’

Rule Number Four, at Emma’s insistence, was the no nudity clause. No skinny-dipping: physical modesty and discretion at all times. She did not want to see Dexter in his underpants or in the shower or, God forbid, going to the toilet. In retaliation, Dexter proposed Rule Number Five. No Scrabble. More and more of his friends were playing it now, in a knowing ironic way, triple-word-score-craving freaks, but it seemed to him like a game designed expressly to make him feel stupid and bored. No Scrabble and no Boggle either; he wasn’t dead yet.

Now on Day Two, with The Rules still in place, they lay on the deck of the ancient rust-spotted ferry as it chugged slowly from Rhodes towards the smaller Dodecanese islands. Their first night had been spent in the Old Town, drinking sugary cocktails from hollowed-out pineapples, unable to stop grinning at each other with the novelty of it all. The ferry had left Rhodes while it was still dark and now at nine a.m. they lay quietly nursing their hangovers, feeling the throb of the engines in their churning liquid stomachs, eating oranges, quietly reading, quietly burning, entirely happy in each other’s silence.

Dexter cracked first, sighing and placing his book on his chest: Nabokov’s Lolita , a gift from Emma who was responsible for selecting all the holiday reading, a great breeze-block of books, a mobile library that took up most of her suitcase.

A moment passed. He sighed again, for effect.

‘What’s up with you?’ said Emma, without looking up from Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot.

‘I can’t get into it.’

‘It’s a masterpiece.’

‘Makes my head hurt.’

‘I should have got something with pictures or flaps.’

‘Oh, I am enjoying it—’

‘ Very Hungry Caterpillar or something—’

‘I’m just finding it a bit dense. It’s just this bloke banging on about how horny he is all the time.’

‘I thought it would strike a chord.’ She raised her sunglasses. ‘It’s a very erotic book, Dex.’

‘Only if you’re into little girls.’

‘Tell me one more time, why were you sacked from that Language School in Rome?’

‘I’ve told you, she was twenty-three years old, Em!’

‘Go to sleep then.’ She picked up her Russian novel. ‘Philistine.’

He settled his head once more against his rucksack, but two people were by his side now, casting a shadow over his face. The girl was pretty and nervous, the boy large and pale, almost magnesium white in the morning sun.

‘Scuse me,’ said the girl in a Midlands accent.

Dexter shielded his eyes and smiled broadly up at them. ‘Hi there.’

‘Aren’t you that bloke off the telly?’

‘Might be,’ said Dexter, sitting and removing his sunglasses with a raffish little flick of his head. Emma quietly groaned.

‘What’s it called? largin’ it !’ The title of the TV show was always spelt in lower case, lower being the more fashionable of the two cases at this time.

Dexter held his hand up. ‘Guilty as charged!’

Emma laughed briefly through her nose, and Dexter shot her a look. ‘Funny bit,’ she explained, nodding towards her Dostoyevsky.

‘I knew I’d seen you on the telly!’ The girl nudged her boyfriend. ‘I said so, didn’t I?’

The pale man shuffled and mumbled, then silence. Dexter became aware of the chug of the engines and Lolita lying open on his chest. He slipped it quietly into his bag. ‘On holiday, are ya?’ he asked. The question was clearly redundant, but allowed him to slip into his television persona, that of a really great, down to earth guy who they’d just met at the bar.

‘Yeah, holiday,’ mumbled the man.

More dead air. ‘This is my friend Emma.’

Emma peered over her sunglasses. ‘Hi there.’

The girl squinted at her. ‘Are you on television too?’

‘Me? God, no.’ She widened her eyes. ‘Though it is my dream.’

‘Emma works for Amnesty International,’ said Dexter proudly, one hand on her shoulder.

‘Part-time. Mainly I work in a restaurant.’

‘As a manager. But she’s just about to pack it in. She’s trainin’ to be a teacher in September, aren’t you, Em?’

Emma looked at him levelly. ‘Why are you talking like that?’

‘Like wha’?’ Dexter laughed defiantly, but the young couple were shifting uneasily, the man looking over the ship’s side as if contemplating the jump. Dexter decided to round up the interview. ‘So we’ll see you on the beach, yeah? Maybe get a beer or summink?’ and the couple smiled and headed back to their bench.

Dexter had never consciously set out to be famous, though he had always wanted to be successful, and what was the point of being successful in private? People should know. Now that fame had happened to him it did make a certain sense, as if fame were a natural extension of being popular at school. He hadn’t set out to be a TV presenter either — did anyone? — but was delighted to be told that he was a natural. Appearing on camera had been like sitting at a piano for the first time and discovering he was a virtuoso. The show itself was less issue-based than other shows he had worked on, really just a series of live bands, video exclusives, celebrity interviews, and yes, okay, it wasn’t exactly demanding, all he really did was look at the camera and shout ‘make some noise!’ But he did it so well, so attractively, with such swagger and charm.

But public recognition remained a new experience. He was self-aware enough to know that he possessed a certain facility for what Emma would call ‘prattishness’ and with this in mind he had been investing some private effort into working out what to do with his face. Anxious not to appear affected or cocky or a fake, he had been devising an expression that said hey, it’s no big deal, it’s only TV and he assumed this expression now, replacing his sunglasses and returning to his book.

Emma watched this performance, amused; the straining for nonchalance, the slight flare of the nostrils, the smile that flickered at the corners of his mouth. She pushed her sunglasses up onto her forehead.

‘It’s not going to change you, is it?’

‘What?’

‘Being very, very, very, very slightly famous.’

‘I hate that word. “Famous”.’

‘Oh and what would you prefer? “Well known”.’

‘How about “notorious”?’ he grinned.

‘Or “annoying”? How about “annoying”?’

‘Leave it out, will ya?’

‘And you can drop that now, please?’

‘What?’

‘The cockney accent. You went to Winchester College for Christ’s sake.’

‘I don’t do a cockney accent.’

‘When you’re being Mr TV you do. You sound like you’ve left your whelk stall to go and do this ’ere fancy telly programme.’

‘You’ve got a Yorkshire accent!’

‘Because I’m from Yorkshire!

Dexter shrugged. ‘I’ve got to talk like that, otherwise it alienates the audience.’

‘And what if it alienates me?’

‘I’m sure it does, but you’re not one of the two million people who watch my show.’

‘Oh, your show is it now?’

‘The TV show on which I feature.’

She laughed and went back to her book. After a while Dexter spoke again.

‘Well, do you?’

‘What?’

‘Watch me? On largin’ it ?’

‘I might have had it on. In the background once or twice, while I’m balancing my cheque-book.’