ONE DAY(53)

‘So – talk to me!’ says the idiot on the machine.

‘Hello, Dexter, it’s your father here.’ He uses his ponderous phone voice. ‘I am just phoning to say good luck for your television show tonight. I will be watching. It’s all very exciting. Alison would have been very proud.’ There’s a momentary pause as they both realise that this probably isn’t true. ‘That’s all I wanted to say. Except. Also, don’t pay any attention to the newspapers. Just have fun. Goodbye. Goodbye—’

Don’t pay any attention to the what? Dexter grabs at the phone.

‘—Goodbye!’

His father has gone. He has set the timer on the explosives then hung up, and Dexter looks across at the pile of news papers, now full of menace. He tightens the drawstring on his linen trousers and turns to the TV pages.

When Emma steps from the bathroom, Ian is on the phone and she can tell from the flirty, larky tone of his voice that he is talking to her mother. Her boyfriend and Sue have been conducting a borderline affair ever since they met in Leeds at Christmas: ‘Lovely sprouts, Mrs M’ and ‘Isn’t this turkey moist?’ It’s electric, the mutual longing between them and all Emma and her dad can do is tut and roll their eyes.

She waits patiently for Ian to tear himself away. ‘Bye, Mrs M. Yeah I hope so too. It’s just a summer cold, I’ll pull through. Bye, Mrs M. Bye.’ Emma takes the receiver as Ian, mortally ill once more, shuffles back to bed.

Her mother is flushed and giddy. ‘Such a lovely lad. Isn’t he a lovely lad?’

‘He is, Mum.’

‘I hope you’re looking after him.’

‘I’ve got to go to work now, Mum.’

‘Now, why was I calling? I’ve completely forgotten why I was calling.’

She was calling to talk to Ian. ‘Was it to wish me good luck?’

‘Good luck for what?’

‘The school production.’

‘Oh yes, good luck for that. Sorry we can’t come down to see it. It’s just London’s so expensive . . .’

Emma ends the phone-call by pretending that the toaster is on fire then goes to see the patient, sweltering beneath the duvet in an attempt to ‘sweat it out’. Part of her is vaguely aware of failing as a girlfriend. It’s a new role for her, and she sometimes finds herself plagiarising ‘girlfriend behaviour’: holding hands, cuddling up in front of the television, that kind of thing. Ian loves her, he tells her so, if anything a little too often, and she thinks she may be able to love him back, but it will take some practice. Certainly she intends to try and now, in a self-conscious gesture of sympathy, she curls herself around him on the bed.

‘If you don’t think you can come to the show tonight—’

He sits up, alarmed. ‘No! No, no, no, I’m definitely coming—’

‘I’ll understand—’

‘—if I have to come by ambulance.’

‘It’s only a silly school play, it’s going to be so embarrassing.’

‘Emma!’ She lifts her head to look at him. ‘It’s your big night! I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’

She smiles. ‘Good. I’m pleased.’ She leans and kisses him antiseptically with closed lips, then picks up her bag and pads out of the flat, ready for her big day.

The headline reads:

IS THIS THE MOST ODIOUS

MAN ON TELEVISION?



– and for a while Dexter thinks there must be a mistake, because beneath the headline they have accidentally printed his picture, and beneath that the single word ‘Smug’ as if Smug were his surname. Dexter Smug.

With the tiny espresso cup pinched tight between finger and thumb, he reads on.



Tonight’s TV

Is there a more smug, self-satisfied smart-arse than Dexter Mayhew on TV today? A subliminal burst of his cocky, pretty-boy face makes us want to kick the screen in. At school we had a phrase for it: here’s a man who clearly thinks he’s IT. Weirdly, someone out there in MediaLand must love him as much as he loves himself because after three years of largin’ it (dontcha hate that lower case? So 1990) he’s now presenting his own late-night music show, the Late-Night Lock-In. So

He should stop reading here, just close the paper and move on, but his peripheral vision has already glimpsed a word or two. ‘Inept’ was one. He reads on – So if you really want to see a public schoolboy trying to be a new lad, dropping his aitches and flirting with the ladeez, trying to stay hip with the kidz unaware that the kidz are laughing at him, then this one is for you. It’s live, so there might be some pleasure in watching his famously inept interviewing technique, or alternatively you could brand your face with a steam iron set to ‘linen’. Co-presenter is ‘bubbly’ Suki Meadows, music from Shed Seven, Echobelly and the Lemonheads. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Dexter has a clippings file, a Patrick Cox shoebox in the bottom of a wardrobe, but he decides to let this one go. With a great deal of clatter and mess he makes himself another espresso.

Tall poppy syndrome that’s what it is, the British Disease, he thinks. A little bit of success and they want to knock you down well I don’t care I like my job and I’m bloody good at it and it’s much much harder than people think balls of steel that’s what you need to be a TV presenter and a mind like a like a well quick-thinking anyway and besides you mustn’t take it personally critics who needs critics no-one ever woke up and decided they wanted to be a critic well I’d rather be out there doing it putting myself on the line rather than be some some eunuch being spiteful for twelve grand a year well no-one ever built a statue to a critic and I’ll show them I’ll show them all.