ONE DAY(21)

‘I don’t know. “Lover”?’

‘Doesn’t that imply affection?’

‘How about “conquest”?’ he grinned. ‘Can I say “conquest” these days?’

‘Or “victim”. I like “victim”.’ Emma lay back suddenly and squeezed her fingers awkwardly into the pockets of her jeans. ‘You can have that back ’n’ all.’ She tossed a tightly wadded ten-pound note onto his chest.

‘No way.’

‘Yes way.’

‘That’s yours!’

‘Dexter, listen to me. You don’t tip friends.’

‘It’s not a tip, it’s a gift.’

‘And cash is not a gift. If you want to buy me something, that’s very nice, but not cash. It’s embarrassing.’

He sighed, and stuffed the money back into his pocket. ‘I apologise. Again.’

‘Fine,’ she said, and lay down beside him. ‘Go on then. Tell me all about it.’

Grinning, he raised himself up on his elbows. ‘So we were having this wrap party at the weekend—’

Wrap party, she thought. He has become someone who goes to wrap parties.

‘—and I’d seen her around at the office so I went over to say hi, hello, welcome to the team, very formal, hand outstretched, and she smiled up at me, winked, put her hand on the back of my head and pulled me towards her and she—’ He lowered his voice to a thrilled whisper. ‘—kissed me, right?’

‘Kissed you, right?’ said Emma, as another tennis ball struck home.

‘—and slipped something into my mouth with her tongue. “What was that?” I said and she just winked and said, “You’ll find out”.’

A silence followed before Emma said ‘Was it a peanut?’

‘No—’

‘Little dry-roasted peanut—’

‘No, it was a pill—’

‘What, like a tic-tac or something? For your bad breath?’

‘I don’t have bad—’

‘Haven’t you told me this story before anyway?’

‘No, that was another girl.’

The tennis balls were coming thick and fast now, the odd cricket ball mixed in there too. Emma stretched and concentrated on the sky. ‘You’ve got to stop letting women slip drugs into your mouth, Dex, it’s unhygienic. And dangerous. One day it’ll be a cyanide capsule.’

Dexter laughed. ‘So do you want to hear what happened next?’

She placed a finger on her chin. ‘Do I? Nope, I don’t think so. No, I don’t.’

But he told her anyway, the usual narrative about dark back-rooms at clubs and late-night phone-calls and taxis across the city at dawn; the endless, eat-as-much-as-you-can buffet that was Dexter’s sex-life, and Emma made a conscious effort not to listen and just watch his mouth instead. It was a nice mouth as she remembered, and if she were fearless, bold and asymmetrical like this Naomi girl she would lean over now and kiss him, and it occurred to her that she had never kissed anyone, that is never initiated the kiss. She had been kissed of course, suddenly and far too hard by drunken boys at parties, kisses that came swinging out of nowhere like punches. Ian had tried three weeks ago while she was mopping out the meat locker, looming in so violently that she had thought he was going to head-butt her. Even Dexter had kissed her once, many, many years ago. Would it really be so strange to kiss him back? What might happen if she were to do it now? Take the initiative, remove your spectacles, hold onto his head while he’s still talking and kiss him, kiss him— ‘—so Naomi calls at three in the morning, says, “Get in a cab. Right. Now.”’

She had a perfectly clear mental picture of him wiping his mouth with the back of his hand: the kiss as custard-pie. She let her head loll to the other side to watch the others on the hill. The evening light was starting to fade now, and two hundred prosperous, attractive young people were throwing frisbees, lighting disposable barbecues, making plans for the evening. Yet she felt as far removed from these people, with their interesting careers and CD players and mountain bikes, as if it had been a TV commercial, for vodka perhaps or small sporty cars. ‘Why don’t you come home, sweetheart,’ her mother had said on the phone last night, ‘Your room’s still here . . .’

She looked back to Dexter, still narrating his own love-life, then over his shoulder at a young couple, kissing aggressively, the woman kneeling astride the man, his arms flung back in surrender, their fingers interlocked.

‘ . . . basically we didn’t leave the hotel room for, like, three days.’

‘Sorry, I stopped listening a while ago.’

‘I was just saying . . .’

‘What do you think she sees in you?’

Dexter shrugged, as if he didn’t understand the question. ‘She says I’m complicated.’

‘Complicated. You’re like a two-piece jigsaw—’ She sat and brushed the grass from her shin. ‘—in thick ply,’ then tugged the leg of her jeans a little higher. ‘Look at these legs.’ She held a tiny twist of hair between her finger and thumb. ‘I’ve got the legs of some fifty-eight-year-old fell-walker. I look like the President of the Ramblers Association.’