ONE DAY(36)

The club is expensive and supposedly upmarket, though Dexter rarely pays for anything these days. It’s also a little quiet for a Thursday night, but at least there’s none of that scary techno marching music here, or those scary kids, the bony shaven-headed ones who take their shirts off and leer in your face with their teeth bared, their jaws clenched. Instead there are mainly lots of pleasant, attractive, middle-class people in their twenties, people he belongs with, like Tara’s friends here, lolling around on big cushions, smoking and talking and chewing. He meets Gibbsy, or was it Biggsy, The Lovely Tash and her boyfriend Stu Stewpot, and Spex who wears spectacles and his boyfriend Mark who, disappointingly, seems to be just called Mark, and they all offer him their gum and water and Marlboro Lights. People make a big deal about friendship but it really does seem incredibly easy here, and soon he is imagining everyone hanging out together, going on holiday in a camper van, having barbecues on the beach as the sun goes down, and they seem to like him too, asking him what it’s like, being on TV, asking him what other famous people he’s met, and he tells them some salacious gossip and all the while Tara perches behind him, working on his neck and shoulders with her tiny bony fingers, giving him little shudders of elation until suddenly for some reason there’s a pause in conversation, perhaps five seconds of silence, but just long enough for a flash of sobriety to take him by surprise and he remembers what he has to do tomorrow, no, not tomorrow, today, oh God, later today, and he feels the night’s first shiver of panic and dread.

But it’s okay, it’s fine, because Tara is saying let’s go and dance before it wears off, so they all go and stand in the railway arches in a loose group facing the DJ and the lights, and they dance for a while in the dry ice, grinning and nodding and exchanging that strange puckered frown, eyebrows knitted, but the nodding and grinning are less from elation now, more from a need for reassurance that they’re still having fun, that it isn’t all about to end. Dexter wonders if he should take his shirt off, that sometimes helps, but the moment has passed. Someone nearby shouts ‘tune’ half-heartedly, but no-one’s convinced, there are no tunes. The enemy, self-consciousness, is creeping up on them and Gibbsy or Biggsy is the first to crack, declaring that the music is shit and everyone stops dancing immediately as if a spell has been broken.

As he heads for the exit Dexter imagines the journey home, the menacing crowd of illicit cabbies who will be outside the club, the irrational fear of being murdered, the empty flat in Belsize Park and hours of sleeplessness as he does the washing-up and rearranges his vinyl until the thumping in his head stops and he is able to sleep and face the day, and once again he feels a wave of panic. He needs company. He looks around for a payphone. He could see if Callum’s still awake, but male company is no good to him now. He could call Naomi, but she’ll be with her boyfriend, or Yolande but she’s filming in Barcelona, or Scary Ingrid but she has said that if she sees him again she’ll rip his heart out, or Emma, yes Emma, no not Emma, not in this state, she doesn’t get it, won’t approve. And yet it’s Emma that he wants to see the most. Why isn’t she with him tonight? He has all these things he wants to ask her like why have they never got together, they’d be great together, a team, a pair, Dex and Em, Em and Dex, everybody says so. He is taken aback by this sudden rush of love he feels for Emma, and he decides to get in a cab to Earls Court and tell her how great she is, how he really, really loves her and how sexy she is if only she knew it and why not just do it, just to see what happens, and if none of that works, even if they just sit up and talk, at least it will be better than being alone tonight. Whatever happens, he mustn’t be alone . . .

The phone is in his hand when, thank God, Biggsy or is it Gibbsy, suggests they all go back to his place, it isn’t far, and so they head out of the club, safe in a crowd as they walk back to Coldharbour Lane.

The flat is a large space on top of an old pub. Kitchen and living room, bedroom and bathroom are all laid out without walls, the one concession to privacy being the semi-transparent shower curtain that encircles the free-standing toilet. While Biggsy sorts out his decks everyone else goes and lolls in a great tangled pile on the huge four-poster bed, which is covered in ironic acrylic tiger skins and black synthetic sheets. Above the bed is a semi-ironic mirror, and they stare up at it through heavy eyelids, admiring themselves as they sprawl beneath, heads resting in laps, hands searching around for other hands, listening to the music, young and smart, attractive and successful, in the know and not in their right minds, all of them thinking how great they look and what good friends they’re going to be from now on. There will be picnics on the Heath, and long lazy Sundays in the pub, and Dexter is enjoying himself once more. ‘I think you’re amazing,’ someone says to someone else, but it doesn’t matter who, because they’re all amazing really. People are amazing.

Hours slip by with no-one noticing. Someone is talking about sex now, and they compete to make personal revelations that they’ll regret in the morning. People are kissing, and Tara is still fiddling with his neck, probing the top of his spine with her hard little fingers, but all the drugs have gone now and what was once a relaxing massage is now a series of jabs and pokes, and when he peers up at Tara’s pixie face it suddenly seems pinched and menacing, the mouth too wide, the eyes too round, like some sort of small hairless mammal. He also notices that she’s older than he thought – my God she must be like thirty-eight – and that there’s some sort of white paste between her little teeth, like grouting, and Dexter can no longer control his terror of the day ahead from crawling up his spinal column, dread, fear and shame manifesting itself as a sticky chemical sweat. He sits suddenly, shivers and drags both hands slowly down his face as if physically wiping something away.