ONE DAY(117)
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 café 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 Café, 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.
She had imagined this arrangement to be sophisticated, modern, a new design for living. But so much effort is required to pretend that they don’t want to be together that it has recently seemed inevitable that one of them will crack. She just hadn’t expected it to be Dexter. One subject has remained largely unspoken, and now there seems to be no way to avoid it. She will have to take a deep breath and just say the word. Children. No, not ‘children’, best not scare him, better use the singular. She wants a child.
They have spoken about it before, in a roundabout facetious way, and he has made noises about maybe, in the future, when things are a little bit more settled. But how much more settled can things be? The subject sits there in the middle of the room and they keep walking into it. It’s there every time her parents telephone, it’s there every time she and Dexter make love (less frequently now than in the debauch of the flat in Paris, but still often enough). It keeps her awake at night. Sometimes it seems that she can chart her life by what she worries about at three a.m. Once it was boys, then for too long it was money, then career, then her relationship with Ian, then her infidelity. Now it is this. She is thirty-six years old, a child is what she wants, and if he doesn’t want it too, then perhaps they had better . . .