‘Don’t tease me, Em.’
‘I’m not, I just . . . it was nothing to do with pity, and you know it. But it’s . . . complicated. Us. Come here, will you?’ She nudged him once more with her foot and after a moment he tipped over like a felled tree, his head coming to rest against her shoulder.
She sighed. ‘We’ve known each other a long time, Dex.’
‘I know. I just thought it might be a good idea. Dex and Em, Em and Dex, the two of us. Just try it for a while, see how it worked. I had thought that’s what you wanted too.’
‘It is. It was. Back in the late Eighties.’
‘So why not now?’
‘Because. It’s too late. We’re too late. I’m too tired.’
‘You’re thirty-five!’
‘I just feel our time has passed, that’s all,’ she said.
‘How do you know, unless we give it a try?’
‘Dexter – I have met someone else!’
They sat in silence for a moment, listening to the children shouting in the courtyard below, the sound of distant televisions.
‘And you like him? This guy.’
‘I do. I really, really like him.’
He reached down, and took her left foot in his hand, still dusty from the street. ‘My timing isn’t great, is it?’
‘No, not really.’
He examined the foot he held in his hand. The toenails were painted red, but chipped, the smallest nail gnarled and barely there. ‘Your feet are disgusting.’
‘I know they are.’
‘Your little toe’s like this little nub of sweetcorn.’
‘Stop playing with it then.’
‘So that night—’ He pressed his thumb against the hard skin of her sole. ‘So was it really so terrible?’
She poked him sharply in the hip with her other foot. ‘Don’t fish, Dexter.’
‘No really, tell me.’
‘No, Dexter, it was not such a terrible night, in fact it was one of the more memorable nights of my life. But I still think we should leave it at that.’ She swung her legs off the sofa and sidled up until their hips were touching, taking his hand, her head on his shoulder now. Both stared forwards at the bookshelves, until Emma finally sighed. ‘Why didn’t you say all this, I don’t know – eight years ago?’
‘Don’t know, too busy trying to have . . . fun, I suppose.’
She lifted her head to look at him sideways. ‘And now you’ve stopped having fun, you think “good old Em, give her a go—”’
‘That’s not what I meant—’
‘I’m not the consolation prize, Dex. I’m not something you resort to. I happen to think I’m worth more than that.’
‘And I think you’re worth more than that too. That’s why I came here. You’re a wonder, Em.’
After a moment she stood abruptly, picked up a cushion, threw it sharply at his head and walked towards the bedroom. ‘Shut up, Dex.’
He reached for her hand as she passed, but she shook it free. ‘Where are you going?’
‘To have a shower, get changed. Can’t sit around here all night!’ she shouted from the other room, angrily pulling clothes from the wardrobe and dropping them onto the bed. ‘After all, he’ll be here in twenty minutes!’
‘Who’ll be here?’
‘Who do you think? My NEW BOYFRIEND!’
‘Jean-Pierre’s coming here?’
‘Uh-huh. Eight o’clock.’ She started unbuttoning the tiny buttons on her shirt, then gave up, pulled it impatiently over her head and whipped it at the floor. ‘We’re all going out for dinner! The three of us!’
He let his head fall backwards and let out a long low groan. ‘Oh God. Do we have to?’
‘I’m afraid so. It’s all been arranged.’ She was naked now, and furious, at herself, at the situation. ‘We’re taking you to the very restaurant where we first met! The famous bistro! We’re going to sit there at the same table and hold hands and tell you all about it! It’s all going to be very, very romantic.’ She slammed the bathroom door, shouting through it. ‘And in no way awkward!’
Dexter heard the sound of the shower running, and lay back on the sofa, looking at the ceiling, embarrassed now at this ridiculous expedition. He had thought that he had the answer, that they could rescue each other, when in truth Emma had been fine for years. If anyone needed rescuing, it was him.
And maybe Emma was right, maybe he was just feeling a little lonely. He heard the ancient plumbing gurgle as the shower ceased, and there it was again, that terrible, shameful word. Lonely. And the worst of it was that he knew it was true. Never in his life had he imagined that he would be lonely. For his thirtieth birthday he had filled a whole night-club off Regent Street; people had been queuing on the pavement to get in. The SIM card of his mobile phone in his pocket was overflowing with telephone numbers of all the hundreds of people he had met in the last ten years, and yet the only person he had ever wanted to talk to in all that time was standing now in the very next room.
Could this be true? He scrutinised the notion once again and finding it to be accurate he stood suddenly with the intention of telling her straightaway. He walked towards the bedroom then stopped.
He could see her through the gap in the door. She was sitting at a small 1950s dressing table, her short hair still wet from the shower, wearing a knee-length old-fashioned black silk dress, unzipped at the back to the base of her spine, opened wide enough to see the shade beneath her shoulder blades. She sat motionless and erect and rather elegant, as if waiting for someone to come and zip the dress up, and there was something so appealing about the idea, something so intimate and satisfying about that simple gesture, both familiar and new, that he almost stepped straight into the room. He would fasten the dress, then kiss the curve between her neck and her shoulder and tell her.
Instead he watched silently as she reached for a book on the dressing table, a large well-thumbed French/English dictionary. She began to leaf through the pages then stopped suddenly, her head slumping forwards, both hands spanning her brow and pushing her fringe back as she groaned angrily. Dexter laughed at her exasperation, silently he thought, but she glanced towards the door and he quickly stepped backwards. The floorboards popped beneath his feet as he pranced absurdly towards the kitchen area, running both taps and moving cups around uselessly under running water as an alibi. After a while he heard the ting of the old-fashioned phone being picked up in the bedroom, and he turned off the taps so that he might overhear the conversation with this Jean-Pierre. A low, lover’s murmur, in French. He strained to listen, failing to understand a single word.
The bell sounded once again as she hung up. Some time passed, then she was standing in the doorway behind him. ‘Who was that on the phone?’ he asked over his shoulder, matter-of-factly.
‘Jean-Pierre.’
‘And how was Jean-Pierre?’
‘He’s fine. Just fine.’
‘Good. So. I should get changed. What time is he coming round again?’
‘He isn’t coming round.’
Dexter turned.
‘What?’
‘I told him not to come round.’
‘Really? You did?’
He wanted to laugh—
‘I told him I had tonsillitis.’
—wanted to laugh so much, but he mustn’t, not yet. He dried his hands. ‘What is that? Tonsillitis. In French?’
Her fingers went to her throat. ‘Je suis très désolé, mais mes glandes sont gonflées,’ she croaked feebly. ‘Je pense que je peux avoir l’amygdalite.’
‘L’amy . . . ?’
‘L’amygdalite.’
‘You have amazing vocab.’
‘Well, you know.’ She shrugged modestly. ‘Had to look it up.’
They smiled at each other. Then, as if an idea had suddenly occurred to her, she quickly crossed the room in three long strides, took his face between her hands, and kissed him, and he placed his hands upon her back, finding the dress still unfastened, the skin bare and cool and still damp from the shower. They kissed like this for some time. Then, still holding his face in her hands, she looked at him intently. ‘If you muck me about, Dexter.’
‘I won’t—’
‘I mean it, if you lead me on or let me down or go behind my back, I will murder you. I swear to God, I will eat your heart.’
‘I won’t do that, Em.’
‘You won’t?’
‘I swear, I won’t.’
And then she frowned, and shook her head, then put her arms around him once more, pressing her face into his shoulder, making a noise that sounded almost like rage.
‘What’s up?’ he asked.
‘Nothing. Oh, nothing. Just . . .’ She looked up at him. ‘I thought I’d finally got rid of you.’
‘I don’t think you can,’ he said.