David Nicholls - One Day

‘For a whole term you ate nothing but tinned mince.’

‘What can I say — people change! So what do you think?’

‘Alright then. You can buy me lunch. But I warn you, I know nothing about business.’

‘That’s alright. It’ll be nice to catch up anyway.’ Half admonishingly, he tapped Dexter’s elbow. ‘You went very quiet on me for a while.’

‘Did I? I was busy.’

‘Not that busy.’

‘Hey, you could have called me too!’

‘I did, often. You never returned my calls.’

‘Didn’t I? Sorry. I had things on my mind.’

‘I heard about your mum.’ He looked into his glass. ‘Sorry about that. Lovely lady, your mum.’

‘S’alright. Long time ago now.’

There was a moment’s silence, comfortable and affectionate, as they looked around the lawn at old friends talking and laughing in the late afternoon sun. Nearby, Callum’s latest girlfriend, a tiny, striking Spanish girl, a dancer in hip-hop videos, was speaking to Sylvie who stooped down to hear her.

‘It’ll be nice to talk to Luiza again,’ said Dexter.

‘I shouldn’t get too attached.’ Callum shrugged. ‘I think Luiza’s on the way out.’

‘Some things don’t change then.’ A pretty waitress, self-conscious in a mobcap, arrived to top up their glasses. They both grinned at her, caught each other grinning, and tapped their glasses together.

‘Eleven years since we left.’ Dexter shook his head, incredulous. ‘Eleven years. How the fuck did that happen?’

‘I see Emma Morley’s here,’ said Callum, out of nowhere.

‘I know.’ They glanced over and saw that she was talking to Miffy Buchanan, an old arch-enemy. Even at a distance, they could tell Emma’s teeth were gritted.

‘I’d heard you and Em fell out.’

‘We did.’

‘But you’re alright now?’

‘Not sure. We’ll see.’

‘Great girl, Emma.’

‘She is.’

‘Quite a beauty these days.’

‘She is, she is.’

‘Did you ever. .?’

‘No. Nearly. Once or twice.’

‘Nearly?’ sniffs Callum. ‘What does that mean?’

Dexter changed the subject. ‘But you’re alright, yeah?’

Callum took a sip of champagne. ‘Dex, I’m thirty-four. I’ve got a beautiful girlfriend, my own house, my own business, I work hard at something I enjoy, I make enough money.’ He placed his hand on Dexter’s shoulder. ‘And you, you’ve got a show on late-night TV! Life’s been good for all of us.’

And partly from wounded pride, partly from a revived sense of competition, Dexter decided to tell him.

‘So — do you want to hear something funny?’

Emma heard Callum O’Neill whoop from the other side of the Great Lawn and glanced across in time to see him holding Dexter in a head-lock, rubbing his knuckles on Dexter’s scalp. She smiled then turned her full attention back to hating Miffy Buchanan.

‘So I heard you were unemployed,’ she was saying.

‘Well I prefer to think of myself as self-employed.’

‘As a writer?’

‘Just for a year or two, a Sabbatical.’

‘But you haven’t actually had anything published?’

‘Not as yet. Though I have actually been paid a small advance to—’

‘Hm,’ said Miffy, sceptically. ‘Harriet Bowen has had three novels published now.’

‘Yes, I’ve been made aware of that. Several times.’

‘ And she’s got three kids.’

‘Well. There you go.’

‘Have you seen my two?’ Nearby two immense toddlers in three-piece suits were rubbing canapés into each other’s faces. ‘IVAN. NO BITING.’

‘They’re lovely boys.’

‘Aren’t they? So have you had any kids yet?’ said Miffy, as if it was an either/or situation, novels or kids.

‘Nope—’

‘Seeing anyone?’

‘Nope—’

‘No-one?’

‘Nope—’

‘Anyone on the horizon?’

‘Nope—’

‘Even so, you look much better than you did.’ Miffy looked her up and down appraisingly, as if contemplating buying her at auction. ‘You’re actually one of the few people here who’s actually lost some weight! I mean you were never massively fat or anything, just puppy-fat, but it’s fallen off you!’

Emma felt her hand tighten around the champagne glass. ‘Well it’s good to know the last eleven years haven’t been wasted.’

‘And you used to have this really strong Northern accent, but now you just talk like everybody else.’

‘Do I?’ Emma said, taken aback. ‘Well, that’s a shame. I didn’t lose it on purpose.’

‘To be honest, I always thought you were putting it on. You know — an affectation—’

‘ What? ’

‘Your accent. You know — Ay oop! Miners-this, miners-that, Guat-e-mala Ra-ra-ra! I thought you were always rubbing it in everyone’s face a bit. But now you’re talking normally again!’

Emma had always envied those people who spoke their minds, who said what they felt without attention to social nicety. She had never been one of those people, but even so now felt an F-sound forming on her bottom lip.

‘. . and you were always so angry about everything all the time.’

‘Oh, I still get angry, Miffy. .’

‘Oh my God, there’s Dexter Mayhew.’ Miffy was whispering in her ear now, one hand squeezing Emma’s shoulder. ‘Did you know we had a thing once?’

‘Yes, you told me. Many, many times.’

‘He still looks great? Doesn’t he look great?’ and she sighed swooningly. ‘How come you two never got together?’

‘I don’t know: my accent, the puppy-fat?. .’

‘You weren’t that bad. Hey, have you seen his girlfriend? Isn’t she beautiful? Don’t you think she’s just exquisite?’ and Miffy turned round for a reply, but was surprised to see that Emma had already gone.

The guests were gathering at the marquee now, huddling eagerly around the seating plan as if getting their exam results. Dexter and Emma found each other in the crowd.

‘Table five,’ said Dexter.

‘I’m on table twenty-four,’ said Emma. ‘Table five’s quite near the bride. Twenty-four’s out near the chemical loos.’

‘You mustn’t take it personally.’

‘What’s the main course?’

‘The rumour-mill says salmon.’

‘Salmon. Salmon, salmon, salmon, salmon. I eat so much salmon at these weddings, twice a year I get this urge to swim upstream.’

‘Come to table five. We’ll swap the name cards around.’

‘Tamper with the seating plan? They shoot people for less than that. There’s a guillotine out back.’

Dexter laughed. ‘We’ll talk afterwards, yeah?’

‘Come and find me.’

‘Or you can come and find me.’

‘Or you come find me.’

‘Or you find me.’

As punishment for some past slight, Emma had been placed between the groom’s elderly aunt and uncle from New Zealand, and the phrases ‘beautiful landscape’ and ‘wonderful quality of life’ were rotated for a good three hours. Occasionally she would be distracted by a great gale of laughter from the direction of table five, Dexter and Sylvie, Callum and his girlfriend Luiza; the glamorous table. Emma poured herself another glass of wine and asked once more about the landscape, the quality of life. Whales: had they ever seen real-life whales? she asked and glanced enviously at table five.

At table five, Dexter glanced enviously over at table twenty-four. Sylvie had devised a new game of quickly placing her hand over the top of Dexter’s wine glass whenever he picked up the bottle, turning the long meal into a stern test of his reflexes. ‘You will take it easy, won’t you?’ she whispered when he had scored a point, and he assured her that he would, but the result was mild boredom, and increasing envy at Callum’s maddening self-assurance. At table twenty-four, he could see Emma talking politely and earnestly to a tanned elderly couple, noting the attentive way she listened, her hand placed now on the old man’s arm, laughing at his joke, now taking their picture with the disposable camera, now leaning in to have her picture taken. Dexter noticed her blue dress, the kind of thing she never would have worn ten years ago, and noticed too that the zip had come undone by three inches or so at the back, that the hem had ridden up to halfway along her thigh, and there followed a fleeting but still vivid memory of Emma in an Edinburgh bedroom on Rankeillor Street. Dawn light through the curtains, a low single bed, her skirt around her waist, arms above her head. What had changed since then? Not that much. The same lines formed around her mouth when she laughed, they were etched just a little deeper now. She still had the same eyes, bright and shrewd, and she still laughed with her wide mouth tightly shut, as if holding in some secret. In many ways she was far more attractive than her twenty-two-year-old self. She was no longer cutting her own hair for one thing, and she had lost some of that library pallor, that shoe-gazing petulance and surliness. How would he feel, he wondered, if he were seeing that face for the first time now? If he had been allocated table twenty-four, had sat down and introduced himself. Of all the people here today, he thought, he would only want to talk to her. He picked up his drink and pushed back his chair.