ONE DAY(52)

The machine beeps. ‘Oh. Okay then. Hi there. It’s me.’ He feels the familiar relief at the sound of Emma’s voice, and is about to pick it up when he remembers that they’ve argued and he is meant to be sulking. ‘Sorry to call so early and all that, but some of us have proper jobs to go to. Just wanted to say, big night tonight so really, really good luck. Seriously, good luck. You’ll be fine, more than fine, you’ll be great. Just wear something nice and don’t talk in that weird voice. And I know you’re annoyed with me for not coming but I’ll be watching and cheering at the TV like some idiot—’

He is out of bed now, naked, staring at the machine. He contemplates picking up.

‘I don’t know what time I’ll get back, you know how wild these school plays can get. This crazy business we call show. I’ll call later. Good luck, Dex. Loads of love. And by the way, you’ve got to change that answering machine message.’

And she’s gone. He contemplates calling straight back, but feels that tactically he ought to sulk a little longer. They have argued again. She thinks that he doesn’t like her boyfriend, and despite his passionate denials there’s no getting over the fact that he doesn’t like her boyfriend.

He has tried, really he has. The three of them have sat together in cinemas and cheap restaurants and dingy old boozers, Dexter meeting Emma’s eyes and smiling his approval as Ian snuffles at her neck; love’s young dream with a pair of pints. He has sat at the tiny kitchen table of her tiny Earls Court flat and played a game of Trivial Pursuit so savagely competitive that it was like bare-knuckle boxing. He has even joined the blokes from Sonicotronics at The Laughter Lab in Mortlake to watch Ian’s observational stand-up, Emma grinning nervously at his side and nudging him so that he knows when to laugh.

But even on his best behaviour the hostility is tangible, and mutual too. Ian takes every opportunity to imply that Dexter is a fake because he happens to be in the public eye, a snob, a fop just because he prefers taxis to night buses, members’ clubs to saloon bars, good restaurants to take-away. And the worst of it is that Emma joins in with the constant belittling, the reminders of his failings. Don’t they appreciate how hard it is, staying decent, keeping your head on straight when so much is happening to you and your life is so full and eventful? If Dexter picks up the bill at dinner, or offers to pay for a taxi instead of the bus, the two of them mumble and mope as if he has insulted them in some way. Why can’t people be pleased that he’s doing so well, grateful for his generosity? That last excruciating evening – a ‘vid night’ on a decrepit sofa, watching Star Trek: Wrath of Khan and drinking ‘tinnies’ while a curry leaked fluorescent ghee onto his Dries van Noten trousers – that was the last straw. From now on if he’s going to see Emma, then he’s going to see her alone.

Irrationally, unreasonably, he has become – what? Jealous? No, not jealous, but resentful perhaps. He has always expected Emma to be there, a resource he can call upon at any time like the emergency services. Since the cataclysm of his mother’s death last Christmas he has found himself more and more reliant on her at exactly the point that she has become less available to him. She used to return phone-calls immediately, now days go by without a word. She’s been ‘away with Ian’ she says, but where do they go? What do they do? Buy furniture together? Watch ‘vids’? Go to pub quizzes? Ian has even met Emma’s parents, Jim and Sue. They love him, she says. Why has Dexter never met Jim and Sue? Wouldn’t they love him more?

Most annoyingly of all, Emma seems to be relishing this newfound independence from Dexter. He feels as if he’s being taught a lesson, as if he’s being slapped round the face with her newfound contentment. ‘You can’t expect people to build their lives around you, Dexter,’ she has told him, gloatingly, and now they’ve argued once again, and all because she won’t be there in the studio for the live broadcast of his show.

‘What do you want me to do, cancel Oliver! because you’re on telly?’

‘Can’t you come along afterwards?’

‘No! It’s miles!’

‘I’ll send a car!’

‘I need to talk to the kids afterwards, the parents—’

‘Why do you?’

‘Dexter, be reasonable, it’s my job!’

And he knows he’s being churlish, but it would help to see Emma in the audience. He’s a better person when she’s around, and isn’t that what friends are for, to raise you up and keep you at your best? Emma is his talisman, his lucky charm, and now she won’t be there and his mother won’t be there and he will wonder why he’s doing it at all.

After a long shower he feels a little better and pulls on a light v-neck cashmere sweater worn with no shirt, some pale linen drawstring trousers worn with no underpants, steps into a pair of Birkenstocks and bounds down to the paper-shop to read the TV previews and check that Press and Publicity have been doing their job. The newsagent smiles at his celebrity customer with a due sense of occasion, and Dexter trots home with his arms full of newspapers. He feels better now, full of trepidation but exhilarated too, and while the espresso machine is warming up, the phone rings once again.

Even before the machine picks up something tells him that it will be his father and that he will screen the call. Since his mother’s death the calls have become more frequent and more excruciating: stuttering, circular and distracted. His father, the self-made man, now seems defeated by the simplest of tasks. Bereavement has unmanned him and on Dexter’s rare visits home he has seen him staring helplessly at the kettle as if it were some alien technology.