ONE DAY(116)

‘I know, but that was Paris.’

‘We more or less live together now.’

‘I know, I just—’

‘And it’s insane for you to rent, renting is money down the drain, in the current property market.’

‘You sound like my independent financial adviser. It’s very romantic.’ She pouts her lips and kisses him, a cautious morning kiss. ‘This isn’t just about sound financial planning, is it?’

‘Mainly, but I also think it’d be . . . nice.’

‘Nice.’

‘You living here.’

‘And what about Jasmine?’

‘She’ll get used to it. Besides, she’s only two and a half, it’s not up to her, is it? Or her mother.’

‘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 panties or 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-café 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 café 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 café/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 cafés 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.