Ханиф Курейши - Best British Short Stories 2020

David, always frugal, had suggested a Pizza Express on the South Bank. It’s fine, he texted, when she told him she was late but on the way. I’ve got a book , and she could picture it, something published by Verso that he would tell her about. Full of underlinings and annotations. What was happening to her to make her understand David’s intelligence so negatively? That he read philosophy purposefully enough to summarise and argue with it and apply it to public policy should have been a seductive thing about him, so why had she once dreamed of him ejaculating dusty pencil shavings over a white conference table?

As Pizza Expresses went, David had picked a nice one; it looked out on the Thames, on the bankside tinselled with fairy lights. Perhaps, she thought, he had chosen the place to be romantic. She worried that the reason he annoyed her so much was because she still wanted something from him, still believed he was reformable. They were both thirty-eight years old and knew they could live together in something like peace; they had done so for four years in her long breaks from teaching, in amiable semi-seclusion, on a sofa together with their books or in their separate working spaces. But what had seemed civilised then was no longer the type of peace she wanted; she was ready to sacrifice peace, even though she loved the peace she no longer wanted. How unfair that he had only ever had to acquiesce to her suggestion that they tried for a baby, that it was he who had forced her to bring it up, and that the first thing he had suggested when she admitted that their relationship was floundering was that perhaps this was because it was too soon for them to have a baby. She had been thirty-five then and it was not too soon for anything.

He was sitting upstairs at a little table by the window, tapping a pencil against the book he had open. And he looked just the same as she remembered him, his hair at the longer end of the length he let it get to, his beard a bit thicker than it had been, but still tidy, and his face had not cracked up, she saw no great scars left by her absence, just the slight crows’ feet and wrinkled brow that all sentient people their age had. He was a good-looking man, another unfairness. She watched him read something that disturbed him and he squeezed his brows together, scribbled something down. And then he smiled and let out a little laugh, and she remembered his sense of humour, the pithy accuracy with which he put down their shared enemies, and how she had loved him because of who he was, and not in spite of it. Even without a baby they might have been happy.

She was swilling that thought around her mouth, looking for the note of poison in it, when he looked up and saw her. His smile dropped for a second before he put it back on. That was understandable. She had probably not been smiling herself before he noticed her. But she smiled now, and he stood up and came out in front of the table and hugged her, and it felt natural to press their bodies against each other.

‘Hey, how are you? You look great,’ he said.

‘I’m good,’ she said. ‘You look great too.’

‘Stop being polite. You really do look great. Like a French actress. I don’t remember that dress.’

‘I only bought it yesterday.’

‘I should be honoured you’re wearing it first for me.’

‘I’m not wearing it for you.’

His face fell. ‘Of course, of course, how silly of me to say that. I don’t mean to imply—’

‘Calm down, David. I’m teasing you. Sort of. Let’s sit down. I’m sorry I’m late.’

‘Yes. Patrick’s having an emergency?’

‘Yes, a little bit.’

‘What is it?’

‘Oh, let’s not waste our evening talking about that.’

‘He’s not?’

‘What?’

‘Well, all this Me Too stuff. I wouldn’t put it past him.’

‘Let’s not start on Patrick. You’ve always hated him.’

‘Hate’s a strong word. I just think he’s an arrogant, Etoneducated twat.’

‘But for you twat would always follow the words “Eton-educated”.’

‘With good reason. Have you been watching the news? I suppose I might give George Orwell a break.’

‘You must remember Patrick didn’t enrol himself there.’

‘Must I? Who says I must?’

‘Anyway,’ she lied, ‘it’s nothing like that.’

When the waiter came, David showed him a voucher he had downloaded to his phone, two for one pizzas, which the waiter said he would take later, and then David ordered the cheapest bottle of red without consulting her beyond the colour, as though there was nothing to consult, which was something else she liked about him, his common-sense stinginess.

She refilled her glass when he was half through his and topped up his as an afterthought. They had navigated past Patrick’s danger to women, and now David was talking to her earnestly about the work his NGO was doing, and about his new promotion to head of strategy, and why was it, she wondered, that she had lied to David about the circumstances of Patrick’s current crisis?

‘So,’ he said, eventually, ‘what about you? Any news? Are you seeing anyone?’

There had been a Victorian a year ago. A Romantic the year before. They gave her injured looks when they passed her on the corridor. And there was a lesbian colleague she wondered about sometimes.

‘Do you fancy her?’ he asked.

‘Look at your eyes light up. No, not really. I think she’s attractive. I like her company. I wonder how she feels about me sometimes. But, anyway, I haven’t given up on the conventions of a heterosexual life yet. On motherhood.’

He looked away and changed the subject. ‘You don’t mind Pizza Express, do you? I don’t eat out that much these days. I didn’t know where to suggest.’

‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘You picked a nice one.’

They looked out at the Thames together. The tourists walking past made her think of the city breaks they had taken together to coastal cities, the waterside restaurants, the swimming, the reading, the galleries.

‘I seem to remember the Tate Modern’s open late on a Friday,’ she said.

‘We could be two tourists sightseeing.’

They watched the river, thinking what she thought were the same thoughts. The waiter showed a couple of young men to the table next to theirs.

‘So,’ she said. ‘It sounds like you’re not dating if you’re never in restaurants.’

‘Well, yeah, my Tinder days are over, anyway.’

‘You were on Tinder?’

‘Aren’t you?’

‘No. Can you be on Tinder at our age?’

‘Of course. Though maybe it’s different for a man. Women probably enter an older age-range than men do with women.’

‘Women probably do. Men probably do. Which did you do, David?’

‘You know. A couple of years above. A few years below.’

‘A couple and a few.’

‘Well, anyway. I didn’t like the thing. It felt artificial. The conversations could be hard work.’

‘Hard to find women who cared about changing the world?’

‘Don’t be sarcastic. It was hard to find women who were curious about the world, who thought about it much at all. I certainly never met anyone like you.’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound sarcastic.’

‘Don’t become cynical.’

She smiled. ‘The world offers provocation.’

‘I can’t argue with that.’

‘These dates you went on. Did they never lead to sex?’

‘They sometimes led to sex.’

‘Despite the conversation.’

‘In spite of the conversation.’

She realised she wanted him to tell her about them. Perhaps somewhere private. ‘One-night stands?’

‘Er, yeah. Sometimes two-or three-night.’

‘Sounds fun. And being single doesn’t tempt you back there?’