One Day

‘And might it not get a bit. .?’

‘What?’

‘Cramped. The three of us at weekends.’

‘We’ll manage.’

‘Where will I work?’

‘You can work here while I’m out.’

‘And where will you take your lovers?’

He sighs, a little bored of the joke after a year of almost maniacal fidelity. ‘We’ll go to hotels in the afternoon.’

They lapse into silence again as the radio burbles on and Emma closes her eyes once more and tries to imagine herself unpacking cardboard boxes, finding space for her clothes, her books. In truth, she prefers the atmosphere of her current flat, a pleasant, vaguely Bohemian attic off the Hornsey Road. Belsize Park is just too neat and chi-chi, and despite her best efforts and the gradual colonisation of her books and clothes, Dexter’s flat still retains an atmosphere of the bachelor years: the games console, the immense television, the ostentatious bed. ‘I keep expecting to open a cupboard and be buried under, I don’t know. . a cascade of pantiesor something.’ But he has made the offer, and she feels as if she should offer something in return.

‘Maybe we should think of buying somewhere together,’ she says. ‘Somewhere bigger.’ Once again, they have grazed against the great unspoken subject. A long silence follows, and she wonders if he has fallen asleep again, until he says:

‘Okay. Let’s talk about it tonight.’

And so another weekday begins, like the one before and the ones to come. They get up and get dressed, Emma drawing on the limited store of clothes she keeps jammed into her allocated cupboard. He has the first shower, she has the second, during which time he walks to the shop and buys the newspaper and milk if necessary. He reads the sports pages, she the news and then after breakfast, eaten for the most part in comfortable silence, she takes her bike from the hallway and pushes it with him towards the tube. Each day they kiss each other goodbye at approximately eight twenty-five.

‘Sylvie’s dropping Jasmine off at four o’clock,’ he says. ‘I’ll be back at six. You’re sure you don’t mind being there?’

‘Course not.’

‘And you’ll be okay with Jasmine?’

‘Fine. We’ll go to the zoo or something.’

Then they kiss again, and she goes to work, and he goes to work, and so the days go by, faster than ever.

Work. He is working again in his own business, though ‘business’ feels a little too high-powered a word at present for this little delicatessen-caf'e on a residential street between Highgate and Archway.

The idea was hatched in Paris, during that long strange summer in which they had dismantled his life, then put it back together again. It had been Emma’s idea, sitting outside a caf'e near the Parc des Buttes Chaumont in the north-east. ‘You like food,’ she had said, ‘you know about wine. You could sell really good coffee by the pound, imported cheeses, all that swanky stuff that people want these days. Not pretentious or chi-chi, just this really nice little shop, with tables outside in the summer.’ Initially he had bridled at the word ‘shop’, not quite able to see himself as a ‘shopkeeper’ or, even worse, a grocer. But an ‘imported food specialist’ had a ring to it. Better to think of it as a caf'e/restaurant that also sold food. He would be an entrepreneur.

So in late September, when Paris had finally, finally started to lose some of its gleam, they had travelled back on the train together. With light tans and new clothes they walked arm-in-arm along the platform and it felt like they were arriving in London for the very first time, with plans and projects, resolutions and ambitions.

Their friends nodded sagely, sentimentally, as if they had known it all along. Emma was introduced once again to Dexter’s father — ‘Of course I remember. You called me a fascist’ — and they put forward the idea of the new business in the hope that he might want to help with the financing. When Alison had died there had been a private understanding that some money might go to Dexter at an appropriate time, and this seemed like the moment. Privately, Stephen Mayhew still expected his son to lose every penny, but that was a small price to pay to know that he would never, ever appear on television ever again. And Emma’s presence helped. Dexter’s father liked Emma, and for the first time in some years found himself liking his son because of her.

They had found the property together. A video rental shop, already an anomaly with its shelves of dusty VHS, had finally given up the ghost, and, with one last push from Emma, Dexter had made his move and taken the property on a twelve-month lease. Through a long wet January they ripped out the metal shelving and distributed the remaining Steven Seagal videos around local charity shops. They stripped and painted the walls a buttery white, installed dark wooden panelling, scoured other bankrupt restaurants and caf'es for a decent industrial coffee machine, chill cabinets, glass-fronted refrigerators; all those failed businesses reminding him of what was at stake, how likely he was to fail.

But all the time Emma was there, pushing him on, keeping him convinced that he was doing the right thing. The area was up-and-coming the estate agents said, slowly filling with young professionals who knew the value of the word ‘artisan’ and wanted jars of duck confit, customers who didn’t mind paying two pounds for an irregular loaf of bread or a lump of goat’s cheese the size of a squash ball. The caf'e would be the kind of place where people came to ostentatiously write their novels.

On the first day of spring they sat in the sun on the pavement outside the partly refurbished shop and wrote down a list of possible names: corny combinations of words like magasin, vin, pain, Paris pronounced ‘Paree’, until they settled on Belleville Caf'e, bringing a flavour of the 19th arrondissement to just south of the A1. He formed a limited company, his second after Mayhem TV plc, with Emma as his company secretary and, in a small but significant way, his co-investor. Money was starting to come in from the first two ‘Julie Criscoll’ books, the animated TV series had been commissioned for its second series, there was talk of merchandising: pencil cases, birthday cards, even a monthly magazine. There was no denying it, she was now what her mother would term ‘well off’. After a certain amount of throat-clearing, Emma found herself in the strange, slightly unnerving position of being able to offer Dexter financial help. After a certain amount of foot shuffling, he accepted.

They opened in April, and for the first six weeks he stood by the dark wood counter, watched people walk in, look round, sniff and walk out again. But then word began to spread, things began to pick up and he found himself able to take on some staff. He began to acquire regulars, even to enjoy himself.

And now the place has become fashionable, albeit in a more sedate, domesticated way than he is used to. If he is famous now it is only locally, and only for his selection of herbal teas, but he’s still a mild heartthrob to the flushed young mums-to-be who come in to eat pastries after their pram-ercise class, and in a small way he is almost, almost a success again. He unlocks the heavy padlock that holds down the metal shutters, already hot to the touch on this radiant summer’s morning. He pulls them up, unlocks the door and feels, what? Content? Happyish? No, happy. Secretly, and for the first time in many years, he is proud of himself.

Of course there are long boring wet Tuesdays, when he wants to pull down the shutters and methodically drink all the red wine, but not today. It’s a warm day, he is seeing his daughter tonight and will be with her for much of the next eight days while Sylvie and that bastard Callum go on another of their constant holidays. By some strange mystery Jasmine is now two and a half years old, self-possessed and beautiful like her mother, and she can come in and play shops and be fussed over by the other staff, and when he gets home tonight Emma will be there. For the first time in many years he is more or less where he wants to be. He has a partner whom he loves and desires and who is also his best friend. He has a beautiful, intelligent daughter. He does alright. Everything will be fine, just as long as nothing ever changes.

Two miles away, just off the Hornsey Road, Emma climbs the flights of stairs, unlocks the front door and feels the cool, stale air of a flat that has been unoccupied for four days. She makes tea, sits at her desk, turns on her computer, and stares at it for the best part of an hour. There’s a lot to do — scripts for the second series of ‘Julie Criscoll’ to read and approve, five hundred words of the third volume to write, illustrations to work on. There are letters and emails from young readers, earnest and often disconcertingly personal notes that she must give some attention to, about loneliness and being bullied and this boy I really, really like.

But her mind keeps slipping back to Dexter’s proposal. During the long, strange summer in Paris last year they had made certain resolutions about their future together — if in fact they did have a future together — and central to the scheme was that they would not live together: separate lives, separate flats, separate friends. They would endeavour to be together, and faithful of course, but not in any conventional way. No traipsing around estate agents at the weekend, no joint dinner parties, no Valentine’s Day flowers, none of the paraphernalia of coupledom or domesticity. Both of them had tried it, neither had succeeded.