She looked at him with frank disgust. ‘Was that a proposal, Dex?’
‘Not now, just at some point if we both get desperate.’
She laughed bitterly. ‘And what makes you think I’d want to marry you?’
‘Well, I’m sort of taking that as a given.’
She shook her head slowly. ‘Well you’ll have to join the queue, I’m afraid. My friend Ian said exactly the same thing to me while we were disinfecting the meat fridge. Except he only gave me until I was thirty-five.’
‘Well no offence to Ian, but I think you should definitely hold out for the extra five years.’
‘I’m not holding out for either of you! I’m never getting married anyway.’
‘How do you know that?’
She shrugged. ‘Wise old gypsy told me.’
‘I suppose you disagree on political grounds or something.’
‘Just. . not for me, that’s all.’
‘I can see you now. Big white dress, bridesmaids, little page boys, blue garter. .’ Garter. His mind snagged on the word like a fish on a hook.
‘As a matter of fact, I think there are more important things in life than “relationships”.’
‘What, like your career, you mean?’ She shot him a look. ‘Sorry.’
They turned back to the sky, shading into night now and after a moment she said, ‘Actually my career took a bit an upturn today if you must know.’
‘You got fired?’
‘Promotion.’ She started to laugh. ‘I’ve been offered the job of manager.’
Dexter sat up quickly. ‘In that place? You’ve got to turn it down.’
‘Why do I have to turn it down? Nothing wrong with restaurant work.’
‘Em, you could be mining uranium with your teeth and that would be fine as long as you were happy. But you hate that job, you hate every single moment.’
‘So? Most people hate their jobs. That’s why they’re called jobs.’
‘I love my job.’
‘Yeah, well, we can’t all work in the media, can we?’ She hated the tone of her voice now, sneering and sour. Worse still, she could feel hot, irrational tears starting to form in the back of her eyes.
‘Hey, maybe I could get you a job!’
She laughed. ‘What job?’
‘With me, at Redlight Productions!’ He was warming to the idea now. ‘As a researcher. You’d have to start as a runner, which is unpaid, but you’d be brilliant—’
‘Dexter, thank you, but I don’t want to work in the media. I know we’re all meant to be desperate to work in the media these days, like the media’s the best job in the world—’ You sound hysterical, she thought, jealous and hysterical. ‘In fact I don’t even know what the media is—’ Stop talking, stay calm. ‘I mean what do you people do all day except stand around drinking bottled water and taking drugs and photocopying your bits—’
‘Hey, it’s hard work, Em—’
‘I mean if people treated, I don’t know, nursing or social work or teaching with the same respect as they do the bloody media—’
‘So be a teacher then! You’d be a fantastic teacher—’
‘I want you to write on the board, “I will not give my friend careers advice!”’ She was talking too loud now, shouting almost, and a long silence followed. Why was she being like this? He was only trying to help. In what way did he benefit from this friendship? He should get up and walk away, that’s what he should do. They turned to look at each other at the same time.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘No, I’m sorry.’
‘What are you sorry for?’
‘Rattling on like a. . mad old cow. I’m sorry, I’m tired, bad day, and I’m sorry for being so. . boring.’
‘You’re not that boring.’
‘I am, Dex. God, I swear, I bore myself.’
‘Well you don’t bore me.’ He took her hand in his. ‘You could never bore me. You’re one in a million, Em.’
‘I’m not even one in three.’
He kicked her foot with his. ‘Em?’
‘What?’
‘Just take it, will you? Just shut up and take it.’
They regarded each other for a moment. He lay down once more, and after a moment she followed and jumped a little when she found out that he had slid his arm beneath her shoulders. There was a self-conscious moment of mutual discomfort before she turned onto her side and curled towards him. Tightening his arm around her, he spoke into the top of her head.
‘You know what I can’t understand? You have all these people telling you all the time how great you are, smart and funny and talented and all that, I mean endlessly, I’ve been telling you for years. So why don’t you believe it? Why do you think people say that stuff, Em? Do you think it’s a conspiracy, people secretly ganging up to be nice about you?’
She pressed her head against his shoulder to make him stop or else she felt she might cry. ‘You’re nice. But I should go.’
‘No, stay a bit longer. We’ll get another bottle.’
‘Isn’t Naomi waiting for you somewhere? Her little mouth crammed full of drugs like a little druggy hamster.’ She puffed out her cheeks and Dexter laughed, and she began to feel a little better.
They stayed there for a while, then walked down to the off-licence and back up the hill to see the sun set over the city, drinking wine and eating nothing but a large bag of expensive crisps. Strange animal cries could be heard from Regents Park Zoo, and finally they were the last people on the hill.
‘I should get home,’ she said, standing woozily.
‘You could stay at mine if you wanted.’
She thought of the journey home, the Northern Line, the top deck of the N38 bus, then the long perilous walk to the flat that smelt unaccountably of fried onions. When she finally got home the central heating would probably be on and Tilly Killick would be there with her dressing-gown hanging open, clinging to the radiators like a gecko and eating pesto out of the jar. There would be teeth marks in the Irish Cheddar and thirtysomething on TV, and she didn’t want to go.
‘Borrow a toothbrush?’ said Dexter, as if reading her thoughts. ‘Sleep on the sofa?’
She imagined a night spent on the creaking black leather of Dexter’s modular sofa, her head spinning with booze and confusion, before deciding that life was already complicated enough. She made a firm resolution, one of the resolutions she was making almost daily these days. No more sleepovers, no more writing poetry, no more wasting time. Time to tidy up your life. Time to start again.
CHAPTER FIVE. The Rules of Engagement
WEDNESDAY, 15 JULY 1992
The Dodecanese Islands, Greece
And then some days you wake up and everything is perfect.
This fine bright St Swithin’s Day found them under an immense blue sky with not the smallest chance of rain, on the sun deck of the ferry that steamed slowly across the Aegean. In new sunglasses and holiday clothes they lay side by side in the morning sun, sleeping off last night’s taverna hangover. Day two of a ten-day island-hopping holiday, and The Rules of Engagement were still holding firm.
A sort of platonic Geneva Convention, The Rules were a set of basic prohibitions compiled before departure to ensure that the holiday didn’t get ‘complicated’. Emma was single again; a brief, undistinguished relationship with Spike, a bicycle repairman whose fingers smelt perpetually of WD40, had ended with barely a shrug on either side, but had at least served to give her confidence a boost. And her bicycle had never been in better shape.