She sighs and shakes her head. ‘Ian, I swear to you on my life. I am not seeing Dexter.’
‘’Cos I saw in the papers that he’d split up with his girlfriend and I thought, you and me breaking up, and him being single again—’
‘I haven’t seen Dexter for, God, ages.’
‘But did anything happen? While you and I were together? Between you and Dexter, behind my back? Because I can’t bear the idea—’
‘Ian – nothing happened between me and Dexter,’ she says, hoping he’ll leave without asking the next question.
‘But did you want it to?’
Did she? Yes, sometimes. Often.
‘No. No, I didn’t. We were just friends, that’s all.’
‘Okay. Good.’ He looks at her, and tries to smile. ‘I miss you so much, Em.’
‘I know you do.’
He puts his hand to his stomach. ‘I feel sick with it.’
‘It’ll pass.’
‘Will it? Because I think I might be going a bit mad.’
‘I know. But I can’t help you, Ian.’
‘You could always . . . change your mind.’
‘I can’t. I won’t. I’m sorry.’
‘Righto.’ He shrugs and smiles with his lips tucked in, his Stan Laurel smile. ‘Still. No harm in asking is there?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘I still think you’re The Bollocks, mind.’
She smiles because he wants her to smile. ‘No, you’re The Bollocks, Ian.’
‘Well I’m not going to stand here and argue about it!’ He sighs, unable to keep it up, and reaches for the door. ‘Okay then. Love to Mrs M. See you around.’
‘See you around.’
‘Bye.’
‘Bye.’
He turns and pulls the door open sharply, kicking the bottom so that it gave the illusion of having hit him in the face. Emma laughs dutifully, then Ian takes a deep breath and is gone. She sits on the floor for one minute more then stands suddenly, and with a renewed sense of purpose grabs her keys and strides out of the flat.
The sound of a summer evening in E17, shouts and screams echoing off the buildings, a few St George’s flags still hanging limply. She strides across the forecourt. Isn’t she meant to have a close circle of kooky friends to help her get through all this? Shouldn’t she be sitting on a low baggy sofa with six or seven attractive zany metropolitans, isn’t that what city life is meant to be like? But either they live two hours away or they’re with families or boyfriends, and thankfully in the absence of kooky pals, there is the off-licence called, confusingly, depressingly, Booze’R’Us.
Intimidating kids are cycling in lazy circles near the entrance, but she’s fearless now, and marches through their centre, eyes fixed forward. In the shop she picks out the least dubious bottle of wine and joins the queue. The man in front of her has a cobweb tattooed on his face, and while she waits for him to count out enough small change for two litres of strong cider, she notices the bottle of champagne locked in a glass cabinet. It’s dusty, like a relic of some unimaginably luxurious past.
‘I’ll have that champagne too, please,’ she says. The shopkeeper looks suspicious, but sure enough the money is there, bunched tightly in her hand.
‘Celebration, is it?’
‘Exactly. Big, big celebration.’ Then, on a whim. ‘Twenty Marlboro too.’
With the bottles swinging in a flimsy plastic bag against her hip, she steps out of the shop, cramming the cigarette into her mouth as if it were the antidote to something. Immediately she hears a voice.
‘Miss Morley?’
She looks around, guiltily.
‘Miss Morley? Over here!’
And striding towards her on long legs is Sonya Richards, her protégé, her project. The skinny, bunched-up little girl who played the Artful Dodger has transformed, and Sonya is startling now: tall, hair scraped back, self-assured. Emma has a perfect vision of herself as Sonya must see her; hunched and red-eyed, fag in mouth on the threshold of Booze’R’Us. A role model, an inspiration. Absurdly, she hides the lit cigarette behind her back.
‘How are you, Miss?’ Sonya is looking a little ill at ease now, eyes flicking from side to side as if regretting coming over.
‘I’m great! Great? How are you, Sonya?’
‘Okay, Miss.’
‘How’s college? Everything going alright?’
‘Yeah, really good.’
‘A-levels next year, right?’
‘That’s right.’ Sonya is glancing furtively at the plastic bag of booze chinking at Emma’s side, the plume of smoke curling from behind her back.
‘University next year?’
‘Nottingham, I hope. If I get the grades.’
‘You will. You will.’
‘Thanks to you,’ says Sonya, but without much conviction.
There’s a silence. In desperation Emma holds up the bottles in one hand, the fags in the other and waggles them. ‘WEEKLY SHOP!’ she says.
Sonya seems confused. ‘Well. I’d better get going.’
‘Okay, Sonya, really great to see you. Sonya? Good luck, yeah? Really good luck,’ but Sonya is already striding off without looking back and Emma, one of those carpe diem-type teachers, watches her go.
Later that night, a strange thing happens. Half asleep, lying on the sofa with the TV on and the empty bottle at her feet, she is woken by Dexter Mayhew’s voice. She doesn’t understand quite what he’s saying – something about first-person-shooters and multiplayer options and non-stop shoot-em-up action. Confused and concerned she forces her eyes open, and he is standing right in front of her.
Emma hauls herself upright and smiles. She has seen this show before. Game On is a late-night TV programme, with all the hot news and views from the computer games scene. The set is a red-lit dungeon composed of polystyrene boulders, as if playing computer games were a sort of purgatory, and in this dungeon whey-faced gamers sit hunched in front of a giant screen as Dexter Mayhew urges them to press their buttons faster, faster, shoot, shoot.
The games, the tournaments, are inter-cut with earnest reviews in which Dexter and a token woman with orange hair discuss the week’s hot new releases. Maybe it’s just Emma’s tiny television, but he looks a little puffy these days, a little grey. Perhaps it’s just that small screen, but something has gone missing. The swagger she remembers has gone. He is talking about Duke Nukem 3D and he seems uncertain, a little embarrassed even. Nevertheless she feels a great wave of affection for Dexter Mayhew. In eight years not a day has gone by when she hasn’t thought of him. She misses him and she wants him back. I want my best friend back, she thinks, because without him nothing is good and nothing is right. I will call him, she thinks, as she falls asleep.
Tomorrow. First thing tomorrow, I will call him.