ONE DAY(19)

Putting the notebook away, she reached for yesterday’s Sunday Mirror instead and began to eat the nachos, the elusive nachos, surprised all over again at how very comforting very bad food can be.

Ian was in the doorway. ‘That guy’s here again.’

‘What guy?’

‘Your friend, the handsome one. He’s got some girl with him.’ And immediately Emma knew which guy Ian was talking about.

She watched them from the kitchen, nose pressed against the greasy glass of the circular window as they slumped insolently in a central booth, sipping gaudy drinks and laughing at the menu. The girl was long and slim with pale skin, black eye make-up and black, black hair, cut short and expensively asymmetrical, her long legs in sheer black leggings and high-ankled boots. Both a little drunk, they were behaving in that self-consciously wild and reckless way that people slip into when they know they’re being watched: pop-video behaviour, and Emma thought how satisfying it would be to stride out onto the restaurant floor and cosh them both with tightly packed burritos-of-the-day.

Two big hands draped on her shoulders. ‘Schhhhhwing,’ said Ian, resting his chin on her head. ‘Who is she?’

‘No idea.’ Emma rubbed at the mark her nose had made on the window. ‘I lose track.’

‘She’s a new one then.’

‘Dexter has a very short attention span. Like a baby. Or a monkey. You need to dangle something shiny in front of him.’ That’s what this girl is, she thought: something shiny.

‘So do you think it’s true what they say? About girls liking bastards.’

‘He’s not a bastard. He’s an idiot.’

‘Do girls like idiots then?’

Dexter had stuck his cocktail umbrella behind his ear now, the girl collapsing into enchanted laughter at the genius of it.

‘Certainly seems that way,’ said Emma. What was it, she wondered, this need to brandish his shiny new metropolitan life at her? As soon as she’d met him at the arrivals gate on his return from Thailand, lithe and brown and shaven-headed, she knew that there was no chance of a relationship between them. Too much had happened to him, too little had happened to her. Even so this would be the third girlfriend, lover, whatever, that she had met in the last nine months, Dexter presenting them up to her like a dog with a fat pigeon in his mouth. Was it some kind of sick revenge for something? Because she got a better degree than him? Didn’t he know what this was doing to her, sat at table nine with their groins jammed in each other’s faces?

‘Can’t you go, Ian? It’s your section.’

‘He asked for you.’

She sighed, wiped her hands on her apron, removed the baseball cap from her head to minimise the shame and pushed the swing door open.

‘So – do you want to hear the specials or what?’

Dexter stood up quickly, untangling himself from the girl’s long limbs, and threw his arms around his old, old friend. ‘Hey there, how are you, Em? Big hug!’ Since starting to work in the TV industry he had developed a mania for hugging, or for Big Hugging. The company of TV presenters had rubbed off on him, and he spoke to her now less like an old friend, more like our next very special guest.

‘Emma, this—’ He placed one hand on the girl’s bare, bony shoulder, forming a chain between them. ‘This is Naomi, pronounced Gnome-y.’

‘Hello, Gnome-y,’ smiled Emma. Naomi smiled back, the drinking straw nipped tight between white teeth.

‘Hey, come and join us for a margarita!’ Boozy and sentimental, he tugged on Emma’s hand.

‘Can’t, Dex, I’m working.’

‘Come on, five minutes. I want to buy you a drunk. A drink! I mean a drink.’

Ian joined them now, his notebook poised. ‘So shall I get you guys something to eat?’ he asked convivially.

The girl wrinkled her nose. ‘I don’t think so!’

‘Dexter, you’ve met Ian, haven’t you?’ said Emma quickly.

‘No, no, I haven’t,’ said Dexter. ‘Yes, several times,’ said Ian, and there was a moment of silence as they stood there, the staff and the customers.

‘So, Ian, can we get two, no, three of the “Remember the Alamo” margaritas. Two or three? Em, are you joining us?’

‘Dexter, I told you. I’m working.’

‘Okay, in that case, do you know what? We’ll leave it then. Just the bill, please, um . . .’ Ian left and Dexter beckoned to Emma and in a low voice said, ‘Hey, look, is there any way I can, you know . . .’

‘What?’

‘Give you the money for the drinks.’

Emma stared blankly. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘What I mean is, is there any way I can, you know, tip you?’

‘Tip me?’

‘Exactly. Tip you.’

‘Why?’

‘No reason, Em,’ said Dex. ‘I just really, really want to tip you,’ and Emma felt another small portion of her soul fall away.

On Primrose Hill, Dexter slept in the evening sun, shirt unbuttoned, hands beneath his head, a half-empty bottle of grocer’s white wine warming by his side as he slipped from the hangover of the afternoon into drunkenness again. The parched yellow grass of the hill was crowded with young professional people, many straight from their offices, talking and laughing as three different stereos competed with each other, and Dexter lay in the centre of it all and dreamt about television.