ONE DAY(81)

But even the Thames fails to lift her spirits. This stretch of the South Bank is in the process of renovation, a mess of scaffolding and tarpaulin, Bankside Power Station looming derelict and oppressive on this midsummer day. She is hungry, but there’s nowhere to eat, no-one to eat with. Her phone rings, and she scrabbles for it in her bag, keen to vent some of her frustration and realising only too late who will be calling.

‘So – gastric flu is it?’ says the headmaster.

She sighs. ‘That’s right.’

‘In bed with it, are you? Because it doesn’t sound like you’re in bed. It sounds to me like you’re out enjoying the sun.’

‘Phil, please – don’t give me a hard time.’

‘Oh, no, Miss Morley, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t end our relationship and then expect some kind of special dispensation—’ It’s the voice he has used for months now, officious, sing-song and spiteful and she feels a fresh burst of anger at the traps she lays for herself. ‘If you want it to be purely professional, then we have to keep it purely professional! So! If you don’t mind, could you tell me why you’re not at this very import ant meeting today?’

‘Don’t do this, please, Phil? I’m not in the mood.’

‘Because I’d hate to have to make this a disciplinary issue, Emma . . .’

She takes the phone away from her ear while the headmaster drones on. Chunky and old-fashioned now, it’s the phone he bought her as a lover’s gift so that he could ‘hear her voice whenever he needed to’. My God, they had even had phone-sex on the thing. Or he had anyway—

‘You were expressly informed that the meeting was obligatory. Term’s not over yet, you know.’

—and for one moment she contemplates how pleasant it would feel to hurl the wretched thing into the Thames, watch the phone hit the water like half a brick. But she would have to remove the SIM card first, which would deaden the symbolism somewhat, and such dramatic gestures are for films and TV. Besides, she can’t afford to buy another phone.

Not now that she has decided to resign.

‘Phil?’

‘Let’s stick to Mr Godalming, shall we?’

‘Okay – Mr Godalming?’

‘Yes, Miss Morley?’

‘I resign.’

He laughs, that maddening fake laugh of his. She can see him now, shaking his head slowly. ‘Emma, you can’t resign.’

‘I can and I have and here’s something else. Mr Godalming?’

‘Emma?’

The obscenity forms on her lips, but she can’t quite bring herself to say it. Instead she mouths the words with relish, hangs up, drops the phone into her bag and, dizzy with elation and fear of the future, she keeps on walking east along the River Thames.

‘So, sorry I can’t take you for lunch, I’m meeting another client . . .’

‘Okay. Thanks, Aaron.’

‘Maybe next time, Dexy. What’s up? You seem downhearted, mate.’

‘No, nothing. I’m just a little concerned, that’s all.’

‘What about?’

‘About, you know. The future. My career. It’s not what I expected.’

‘It never is, is it? The future. That’s what makes it so f*cking EXCITING! Hey, come here you. I said come here! I’ve got a theory about you, mate. Do you want to hear it?’

‘Go on then.’

‘People love you, Dex, they really do. Problem is, they love you in an ironic, tongue-in-cheek, love-to-hate kind of way. What we need to do is get someone to love you sincerely . . .’





CHAPTER TWELVE


Saying ‘I Love You’

WEDNESDAY 15 JULY 1998

Chichester, Sussex

Then, without quite knowing how it happened, Dexter finds that he has fallen in love, and suddenly life is one long mini-break.

Sylvie Cope. Her name is Sylvie Cope, a beautiful name, and if you asked him what she is like he would shake his head and blow air through his mouth and say that she is great, just great, just . . . amazing! She is beautiful of course, but in a different way from the others – not lads-mag-bubbly like Suki Meadows, or trendy-beautiful like Naomi or Ingrid or Yolande, but serenely, classically beautiful; in an earlier TV presenter incarnation, he might have called her ‘classy’, or even ‘dead classy’. Long, straight fair hair, parted severely in the middle, small neat features set perfectly in a pale heart-shaped face, she reminds him of a woman in a painting that he can’t remember the name of, someone mediaeval with flowers in her hair. That is what Sylvie Cope is like; the kind of woman who would look perfectly at home with her arms draped around a unicorn. Tall and slim, a little austere, frequently quite stern, with a face that doesn’t move much except to frown or sometimes to roll her eyes at some stupid thing he’s said or done; Sylvie is perfect, and demands perfection.

Her ears stick out just a tiny, tiny bit so that they glow like coral with the light behind her, and in the same light you can see a fine downy hair on her cheeks and forehead. At other, more superficial times in his life Dexter might have found these qualities, the glowing ears, the hairy forehead, off-putting but as he looks at her now, seated at the table opposite him on an English lawn in high summer, her perfect little chin resting on her long-fingered hand, swallows overhead, candles lighting her face just like in those paintings by the candle-guy, he finds her completely hypnotic. She smiles at him across the table and he decides that tonight is the night that he will tell her that he loves her. He has never really said ‘I love you’ before, not sober and on purpose. He has said ‘I f*cking love you’, but that’s different, and he feels that now is the time to use the words in their purest form. He is so taken with this plan that he is momentarily unable to concentrate on what is being said.