One Day

‘All fine,’ she says. ‘Just went down the wrong way, that’s all.’

‘We’ll send someone to fix your make-up. Two minutes, people. And Dexter, keep it together, will you?’

Yes, keep it together, he tells himself, but the monitors tell him there are fifty-six minutes and twenty-two seconds to go, and he’s really not sure if he can.

* * *

Applause! Applause like she has never heard, rebounding off the walls of the sports hall. And yes, the band were flat and the singers sharp, and yes there were a few technical problems with missing props and collapsing sets, and of course it’s hard to imagine a more forgiving audience, but still it is a triumph. The death of Nancy leaves even Mr Routledge, Chemistry, weeping and the chase over the London rooftops, with the cast in silhouette, is a spectacular coup de th'e^atre met by the kind of cooing and gasping that usually greets fireworks displays. As predicted Sonya Richards has shone, leaving Martin Dawson grinding his teeth as she soaks up the largest round of applause. There have been ovations and encores and now people are stamping on the benches and hanging off the climbing apparatus and Emma is being dragged on stage by Sonya who is crying, God, actually crying, clutching Emma’s hand and saying well done, Miss, amazing, amazing. A school production, it is the smallest imaginable triumph but Emma’s heart is beating in her chest and she can’t stop grinning as the band play a cacophonous ‘Consider Yourself’ and she holds the hands of fourteen-year-olds and bows and bows again. She feels the elation of doing something well, and for the first time in ten weeks she no longer wants to kick Lionel Bart.

At the drinks afterwards, own-brand cola flows like wine, and there are also five bottles of sparkling perry to share among the adults. Ian sits in a corner of the sports hall with a plate of mini kievs and a plastic cup of Beecham’s Powders that he has brought to the party specially, and he massages his sinuses, smiles and waits patiently as Emma soaks up the praise. ‘Good enough for the West End!’ someone says, somewhat unrealistically, and she doesn’t even mind when Rodney Chance, her Fagin, boozy on spiked Panda Pops, tells her that she’s ‘pretty fit for a teacher’. Mr Godalming (‘please, call me Phil’) congratulates her while Fiona, ruddy-cheeked like a farmer’s wife, looks on, bored and bad tempered. ‘We should talk, in September, about your future here,’ says Phil, leaning in and kissing her goodbye, causing some of the kids, and some of the staff, to make a ‘whoooo’ noise.

Unlike most showbusiness parties it’s all over by nine forty-five, and instead of a stretch limo, Emma and Ian take the 55, the 19 and the Piccadilly Line home. ‘I’m so proud of you—’ says Ian, his head resting against hers ‘—but I think it’s settled on my lungs.’

As soon as she enters the flat she can smell the flowers. The vast bouquet of red roses lolls in a casserole on the kitchen table.

‘Oh my God, Ian, they’re beautiful.’

‘Not from me,’ he mumbles.

‘Oh. Who then?’

‘Golden Boy, I expect. They came this morning. Completely over the top if you ask me. I’m going to have a hot bath. See if I can shift it.’

She removes her coat and opens the small card. ‘Apologies for sulking. Hope it goes well tonight. Much love Dx’. That’s all. She reads it twice, looks at her watch, and quickly turns on the TV to watch Dexter’s big break.

Forty-five minutes later, as the final credits roll, she frowns and tries to make sense of what she has just seen. She doesn’t know much about television, but she is pretty sure that Dexter hasn’t shone. He has looked shaky, actually frightened sometimes. Fluffing lines, looking at the wrong camera, he has seemed amateurish and inept and as if sensing his unease the people he has interviewed — the rapper on tour, the four cocky young Mancunians — have responded with disdain or sarcasm. The studio audience glares too, like surly teenagers at a pantomime, arms crossed high on their chests. For the first time since she met him he appears to be making an effort. Might he be, well, drunk? She doesn’t know much about the media, but she can recognise a car crashing. By the time the last band plays out her hand has come to cover her face, and she knows enough about TV to know this is not ideal. There’s a lot of irony about these days, but surely not to the extent that booing is good.

She turns the TV off. From the bathroom comes the sound of Ian honking into a flannel. She closes the door and picks up the phone, moulding her mouth into a congratulatory smile and in an empty flat in Belsize Park the answering machine picks up. ‘So — talk to me!’ says Dexter, and Emma goes into her act. ‘Hey you! Hiya! I know you’re at the party so just wanted to say, well first of all, thank you for the flowers. So beautiful, Dex, you shouldn’t have. But mainly — Well! Done! You! You were fantastic, just really relaxed and funny, I thought it was fantastic, just a really, really, great, great show, really.’ She hesitates: don’t say ‘really’. If you say ‘really’ too often it sounds like ‘not-really’. She continues. ‘I’m still not sure about that t-shirt-under-suit-jacket-thing, and it’s always refreshing to see women dancing in cages, but Dexter, apart from that, it was just excellent. Really. I’m really so proudof you, Dex. In case you’re interested, Oliver!went alright too.’

She senses her own performance is losing conviction now, and decides to bring it to a close.

‘So. There you go. We’ve both got something to celebrate! Thanks again for the roses. Have a good night. Let’s talk tomorrow. I’m seeing you Tuesday, is that right? And well done, you. Seriously. Well done you. Bye.’

At the party afterwards Dexter stands alone at the bar, arms crossed, shoulders hunched. People cross to congratulate him but no-one lingers long and the pats on the shoulder have come to feel like consolation or, at best, well done on missing that penalty. He has continued to drink steadily but the champagne seems stale in his mouth and nothing seems to lift the sense of disappointment, anti-climax, creeping shame.

‘Wahey,’ says Suki Meadows in a contemplative mood. Once the co-star, now clearly the star, she sits next to him. ‘Look at you, all mean and moody.’

‘Hey, Suki.’

‘So! That went well, I thought!’

Dexter is unconvinced but they chink glasses just the same. ‘Sorry about that. . booze thing. I owe you an apology.’

‘Yes you do.’

‘It was just something to loosen me up, you know.’

‘Still, we should talk about it. Some other time.’

‘Okay.’

‘Because I’m not going out there again with you off your tits, Dex.’

‘I know. You won’t. And I’ll make it up to you.’

She leans her shoulder against his, and puts her chin on his shoulder. ‘Next week?’

‘Next week?’

‘Buy me dinner. Somewhere expensive, mind. Next Tuesday.’

Her forehead is touching his now, her hand on his thigh. He was meant to be having dinner with Emma on Tuesday, but knows that he can always cancel Emma, she won’t mind. ‘Okay. Next Tuesday.’

‘Can’t wait.’ She pinches his thigh. ‘So. You gonna cheer up now?’

‘I’ll try.’

Suki Meadows leans over and kisses his cheek, then puts her mouth very, very close to his ear.

‘NOW COME AND SAY HELLO TO MY MUUUUUUM!’

CHAPTER NINE. Cigarettes and Alcohol

SATURDAY, 15 JULY 1995

Walthamstow and Soho

Portrait In Crimson

A novel

by Emma T. Wilde

Chapter 1

DCI Penny Something had seen some murder scenes in her time, but never one as as this.

‘Has the body been moved?’ she snapped

The words glowed in bilious green on the word-processor’s screen: the product of a whole morning’s work. She sat at the tiny school desk in the tiny back room of the tiny new flat, read the words, then read them again while behind her the immersion heater gurgled in derision.

At weekends, or in the evenings if she could find the energy, Emma wrote. She had made a start on two novels (one set in a gulag, the other in a post-apocalyptic future), a children’s picture book, with her own illustrations, about a giraffe with a short neck, a gritty, angry TV drama about social workers called ‘Tough Shit’, a fringe play about the complex emotional lives of twenty-somethings, a fantasy novel for teenagers featuring evil robot teachers, a stream-of-consciousness radio play about a dying Suffragette, a comic strip and a sonnet. None had been completed, not even the fourteen lines of sonnet.

These words on the screen represented her latest project, an attempt at a series of commercial, discreetly feminist crime novels. She had read all of Agatha Christie at eleven years old, and later lots of Chandler and James M. Cain too. There seemed no reason why she shouldn’t try writing something in between, but she was discovering once again that reading and writing were not the same — you couldn’t just soak it up then squeeze it out again. She found herself unable to think of a name for her detective, let alone a cohesive original plot, and even her pseudonym was poor: Emma T. Wilde? She wondered if she was doomed to be one of those people who spend their lives tryingthings. She had tried being in a band, writing plays and children’s books, she had tried acting and getting a job in publishing. Perhaps crime fiction was just another failed project to place alongside trapeze, Buddhism and Spanish. She used the computer’s word-count feature. Thirty-five words, including the title page and her rotten pseudonym. Emma groaned, released the hydraulic lever on the side of her office chair and sank a little closer to the carpet.