One Day

CHAPTER TEN. Carpe Diem

MONDAY 15 JULY 1996

Leytonstone and Walthamstow

Emma Morley lies on her back on the floor of the headmaster’s office, with her dress rucked up around her waist and exhales slowly through her mouth.

‘Oh, and by the way. Year Nine need new copies of Cider With Rosie.’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ says the headmaster, buttoning up his shirt.

‘So while you’ve got me here on your carpet, is there anything else you’d like to discuss? Budget issues, Ofsted inspection? Anything you want to go over again?’

‘I’d like to go over you again,’ he says, laying down again and nuzzling her neck. It’s the kind of meaningless innuendo that Mr Godalming — Phil — specialises in.

‘What does that mean? That doesn’t mean anything.’ She tuts and shrugs him away and wonders why sex, even when enjoyable, leaves her so ill-tempered. They lie still for a moment. It’s six-thirty in the evening at the end of term and Cromwell Road Comprehensive has the eerie quiet of a school after hours. The cleaners have been round, the office door is closed and locked from the inside, but still she feels uneasy and anxious. Isn’t there meant to be some sort of afterglow, some sense of communion or well-being? For the last nine months she has been making love on institutional carpet, plastic chairs and laminated tables. Ever considerate of his staff, Phil has taken the foam cushion from the office armchair and it now rests beneath her hips, but even so she would one day like to have sex on furniture that doesn’t stack.

‘You know what?’ says the headmaster.

‘What?’

‘I think you’re sensational,’ and he squeezes her breast for emphasis. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do without you for six weeks.’

‘At least it’ll give your carpet burn a chance to heal.’

‘Six whole weeks without you.’ His beard is scratching at her neck. ‘I’ll go crazy with desire—’

‘Well you’ve always got Mrs Godalming to fall back on,’ she says, hearing her own voice, sour and mean. She sits and pulls her dress down over her knees. ‘And anyway, I thought the long holidays were one of the perks of teaching. That’s what you told me. When I first applied. .’

Hurt, he looks up at her from the carpet. ‘Don’t be like this, Em.’

‘What?’

‘The woman-scorned act.’

‘Sorry.’

‘I don’t like it anymore than you do.’

‘Except I think you do.’

‘No I don’t. Let’s not spoil it, eh?’ He places one hand on her back, as if consoling her. ‘This is our last time ’til September.’

‘Alright, I said sorry, okay?’ To mark a change in subject, she twists at the waist and kisses him, and is about to pull away when he places one hand on the nape of her neck and kisses her again with a gentle scouring action.

‘Christ, I’m going to miss you.’

‘You know what I think you should do?’ she says, her mouth on his. ‘It’s quite radical.’

He looks at her anxiously. ‘Go on. .’

‘This summer, soon as term’s over. .’

‘Tell me.’

She places one finger on his chin. ‘I think you should shave this off.’

He goes to sit. ‘No way!’

‘All this time and I don’t know what you actually look like!’

‘This IS what I look like!’

‘But your face, your actual face. You might even be quite handsome.’ She puts her hand on his forearm, and pulls him back down. ‘Who’s behind the mask? Let me in, Phil. Let me know the real you.’

They laugh for a while, comfortable again. ‘You’d be disappointed,’ he says, rubbing it like a favoured pet. ‘Anyway, it’s either this or shave three times a day. I used to shave in the morning but I looked like a burglar by lunch time. So I thought I’d let it grow, let it be my trademark.’

‘Oh, a trademark.’

‘It’s informal. The kids like it. Makes me look anti-authority.’

Emma laughs again. ‘It’s not 1973, Phil. A beard means something different these days.’

He shrugs defensively. ‘Fiona likes it. Says I have a weak chin otherwise.’ A silence follows, as it always does when his wife is mentioned. To lighten things he says, self-deprecatingly: ‘Of course you know the kids all call me The Beard.’

‘I wasn’t aware of that, no.’ Phil laughs and Emma smiles. ‘And anyway it’s not The Beard, it’s just Beard. No definite article, Monkey Boy.’

He sits suddenly, frowning sternly. ‘Monkey Boy?’

‘That’s what they call you.’

‘Who?’

‘The kids.’

‘Monkey Boy?’

‘Didn’t you know?’

‘No!’

‘Oops. Sorry.’

He flops back down on the floor, sulky and hurt. ‘Can’t believe they call me Monkey Boy!’

‘Only in fun,’ she says, soothingly. ‘It’s affectionate.’

‘Doesn’t sound very affectionate.’ He rubs his chin, as if comforting a pet. ‘It’s because I’ve got too much testosterone, that’s all.’ The use of the word ‘testosterone’ is enough to perk him up, and he pulls Emma back towards the floor and kisses her once more. He tastes of staffroom coffee and the bottle of white wine he keeps in his filing cabinet.

‘I’ll get a rash,’ she says.

‘So?’

‘So people’ll know.’

‘Everyone’s gone home.’ His hand is on her thigh when the phone rings on the desk and he recoils as if bitten. He staggers to his feet.

‘Leave it!’ groans Emma.

‘I can’t leave it!’ He’s dragging on his trousers, as if talking to Fiona whilst naked from the waist down would be a betrayal too far, as if he’s terrified of sounding in some way bare-legged.

‘Hi, there! Hello, love! Yes, I know! Just walking out the door. .’ Domestic issues are debated — pasta or stir-fry, TV or a DVD — and Emma distracts herself from her lover’s home life by retrieving her rolled-up underwear from beneath the desk where it lies with the paper-clips and pen tops. Dressing, she crosses to the window. There’s dust on the blades of the venetian blinds, outside a pink light hits the science block, and suddenly Emma wishes that she were in a park or on a beach or a European city square somewhere, just anywhere but here in this airless institutional room with a married man. How does it happen that you wake up one day, find yourself in your thirties and someone’s mistress? The word is repulsive, servile and she would rather not have it present in her mind, but can come up with no other. She is the boss’s mistress and the best that can be said of the circumstances is that at least there are no children involved.

The affair — another awful word — began the previous September, after the disastrous holiday in Corfu, the engagement ring in the calamari. ‘I think we want different things’ was the best that she could come up with, and the rest of the long, long fortnight passed in a haze of sunburn and sulking, self-pity and anxiety about whether the jewellers would take the ring back. Nothing in the world could be more melancholy than that unwanted engagement ring. It sat in the suitcase in their hotel room, emanating sadness like radiation.

She returned from the holiday looking brown and unhappy. Her mother, who knew about the proposal, who had practically bought her own dress for the wedding, raged and moaned at Emma for weeks until she began to question her rejection of the offer. But saying yes would feel like caving in, and Emma knew from novels that you should never cave in to marriage.

The affair had settled it. During a routine meeting she had burst into tears in Phil’s office, and he had crossed from behind the desk, put his arm round her, and pressed his mouth to the top of her head, almost as if to say ‘at last’. After work, he took her to this place he’d heard of, a gastropub, where you could get a pint but the food was great too. They had rib-eye steaks and goat’s cheese salad, and as their knees made contact beneath the big wooden table she had let it all flood out. After the second bottle of wine, it was all just a formality; the hug that became a kiss in the taxi home, the brown internal envelope in her pigeon hole (about last night, can’t stop thinking about you, felt this way for years, we need to talk, when can we talk?).

Everything Emma knew about adultery had come from TV dramas of the Seventies. She associated it with Cinzano and Triumph TR7s and cheese and wine parties, thought of it as something the middle-aged did, the middle classes mainly; golf, yachts, adultery. Now that she was actually involved in an affair — its paraphernalia of secret looks, hands held under tables, fondles in the stationery cupboard — she was surprised at how familiar it all was, and what a potent emotion lust could be, when combined with guilt and self-loathing.

One night, after sex on the set of her Christmas production of Grease, he had solemnly handed her a gift-wrapped box.

‘It’s a mobile phone!’

‘In case I need to hear your voice.’

Sitting on the bonnet of the Greased Lightning, she stared at the box and sighed. ‘Well I suppose it was bound to happen eventually.’

‘What’s up? Don’t you like it?’

‘No, it’s great.’ She smiled, remembering. ‘I just lost a bet with someone, that’s all.’

Sometimes, walking and talking on a clear autumn evening in a secret part of Hackney Marshes, or giggling at the school carol service, drunk on mulled wine with their hips touching — sometimes she thought she was in love with Phillip Godalming. He was a good, principled, passionate teacher, if a little pompous sometimes. He had nice eyes, he could be funny. For the first time in her life she was the subject of an almost obsessive sexual infatuation. Of course, at forty-four he was far too old and his body, beneath the pelt, had that slipped doughy quality, but he was an earnest and intense lover, sometimes a little too intense for her liking; a face-puller, a talker. She found it hard to believe that the same man who stood in assembly to talk about the charity fun run would use that kind of language. Sometimes she wanted to break off during sex and say ‘Mr Godalming — you swore!’

But nine months have passed now, the excitement has faded and she finds it harder to understand why she’s here, loitering in a school corridor on a beautiful summer’s evening. She should be with friends, or with a lover whom she’s proud of and can mention in front of other people. Sulky with guilt and embarrassment, she waits outside the boys’ loos while Phil washes himself with institutional soap. His Deputy Head of English and Theatre Studies and his mistress. Oh good God.

‘All done!’ he says, stepping out. He takes her hand in his, still damp from the washbasin, dropping it discreetly as they step out into the open air. He locks the main door, sets the alarm, and they walk to his car in the evening light, a professional distance apart, his leather briefcase occasionally banging the back of her shin.

‘I’d drive you to the tube, but—’

‘—best be on the safe side.’

They walk a little further.

‘Four more days to go!’ he says jauntily, to fill the silence.

‘Where are you off to again?’ she asks, even though she knows.

‘Corsica. Walking. Fiona loves to walk. Walking, walking, walking, always walking. She’s like Gandhi. Then in the evening, off come the walking boots, out like a light. .’

‘Phil, please — don’t.’

‘Sorry. Sorry.’ To change the subject, he asks, ‘How about you?’

‘Might see family in Yorkshire. Staying here, working mostly.’

‘Working?’

‘You know. Writing.’

‘Ah, the writing.’ Like everyone, he says it as if he doesn’t believe her. ‘It’s not about you and me, is it? This famous book?’

‘No it’s not.’ They’re at his car now, and she is keen to be gone. ‘And anyway, I don’t know if you and me are all that interesting.’

He’s leaning against his blue Ford Sierra, gearing up for the big farewell, and now she has spoilt it. He frowns, bottom lip showing pink through his beard. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘I don’t know, just. .’

‘Go on.’

‘Phil, this, us. It doesn’t make me happy.’

‘You’re unhappy?’

‘Well, it’s not ideal is it? Once a week on an institutional carpet.’

‘You seemed pretty happy to me.’

‘I don’t mean satisfied. Good God, it’s not about sex, it’s the. . circumstances.’

‘Well it makes me happy—’

‘Does it? Does it really though?’

‘As I recall it used to make you happy too.’

‘Excited I suppose, for a while.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Emma!’ He glares down at her as if she has been caught smoking in the girls’ loos. ‘I’ve got to go now! Why bring this up just as I’ve got to go?’

‘I’m sorry, I—’

‘I mean for fuck’s sake, Emma!’

‘Hey! Don’t talk to me like that!’

‘I’m not, I just, I’m just. . Let’s just get through the summer holiday, shall we? And then we’ll work out what to do.’

‘I don’t think there’s anything we can do, is there? We either stop or we carry on, and I don’t think we should carry on. .’

He lowers his voice. ‘There is something else we can do. . I can do.’ He looks around, then when he’s sure it’s safe he takes her hand. ‘I could tell her this summer.’

‘I don’t want you to tell her, Phil. .’

‘While we’re away, or before even, next week. .’

‘I don’t want you to tell her. There’s no point. .’

‘Isn’t there?’

‘No!’

‘Because I think there is, I think there might be.’

‘Fine! Let’s talk next term, let’s, I don’t know — pencil-in a meeting.’

Heartened, he licks his lips, and checks once more for onlookers. ‘I love you, Emma Morley.’

‘No you don’t,’ she sighs. ‘Not really.’

He tilts his chin down, as if peering at her over imaginary glasses. ‘I think that’s for me to decide, don’t you?’ She hates that headmasterly look and tone of voice. She wants to kick him in the shins.

‘You had better go,’ she says.

‘I’ll miss you, Em—’

‘Have a nice holiday, if we don’t talk—’

‘You’ve no idea how much I’ll miss you—’

‘Corsica, lovely—’

‘Every day—’

‘See you then, bye—’

‘Here. .’ Raising his briefcase, using it a shield, he kisses her. Very discreet, she thinks, standing impassively. He opens the car door and steps in. A navy blue Sierra, a proper headmaster’s car, its glove compartment packed with Ordnance Survey maps. ‘Still can’t believe they call me Monkey Boy. .’ he mumbles, shaking his head.

She stands for a moment in the empty car park and watches him drive off. Thirty years old, barely in love with a married man, but at least there are no kids involved.

Twenty minutes later, she stands beneath the window of the long, low red-brick building that contains her flat, and notices a light on in the living room. Ian is back.

She contemplates walking off and hiding in the pub, or perhaps going round to see friends for the evening, but she knows that Ian will just sit in that armchair with the light off and wait, like an assassin. She takes a deep breath, and looks for her keys.

The flat seems much bigger since Ian moved out. Stripped of the video box-sets, the chargers and adapters and cables, the vinyl in gatefold sleeves, it feels as if it has been recently burgled, and once again Emma is reminded of how little she has to show for the last eight years. She can hear a rustling from the bedroom. She puts down her bag and walks quietly towards the door.

The contents of the chest of drawers are scattered on the floor: letters, bank statements, torn paper wallets of photographs and negatives. She stands silent and unobserved in the doorway and watches Ian for a moment, snorting with the effort of reaching deep into the back of the drawer. He wears unlaced trainers, track-suit bottoms, an un-ironed shirt. It’s an outfit that has been carefully put together to suggest maximum emotional disarray. He is dressed to upset.

‘What are you doing, Ian?’

He is startled, but only for a moment, after which he glares back indignantly, a self-righteous burglar. ‘You’re home late,’ he says, accusingly.

‘What’s that got to do with you?’

‘Just curious as to your whereabouts, that’s all.’

‘I had rehearsals. Ian, I thought we agreed you can’t just drop in like this.’

‘Why, got someone with you, have you?’

‘Ian, I am so not in the mood for this. .’ She puts down her bag, takes off her coat. ‘If you’re looking for a diary or something, you’re wasting your time. I haven’t kept a diary for years. .’

‘As a matter of fact I’m just getting my stuff. It is my stuff, you know, I do own it.’

‘You’ve got all your stuff.’

‘My passport. I don’t have my passport!’

‘Well I can tell you right now, it’s not in my underwear drawer.’ He is improvising of course. She knows that he has his passport, he just wanted to poke through her belongings and show her that he’s not okay. ‘Why do you need your passport? Are you going somewhere? Emigrating maybe?’

‘Oh you’d love that, wouldn’t you?’ he sneers.

‘Well I wouldn’t mind,’ she says, stepping over the mess and sitting on the bed.

He adopts a gumshoe voice. ‘Well, tough shit, sweetheart, ’cause I ain’t going nowhere.’ As a jilted lover, Ian has found a commitment and aggression that he never possessed as a stand-up comedian, and he is certainly putting on quite a show tonight. ‘Couldn’t afford to anyway.’

She feels like heckling him. ‘I take it you’re not doing a lot of stand-up comedy at the moment, then, Ian?’

‘What do you think, sweetheart?’ he says, putting his arms out to the side, indicating the stubble, the unwashed hair, the sallow skin; his look-what-you’ve-done-to-me look. Ian is making a spectacle of his self-pity, a one-man-show of loneliness and rejection that he’s been working up for the last six months and, tonight at least, Emma has no time for it.

‘Where’s this “sweetheart” thing come from, Ian? I’m not sure if I like it.’

He returns to his search and mumbles something into the drawer, ‘fuck off, Em’ perhaps. Is he drunk, she wonders? On the dressing table, there’s an open can of strong cheap lager. Drunk — now there’s a good idea. At that moment, Emma decides to set out to get drunk as soon as possible. Why not? It seems to work for everyone else. Excited by the project, she walks to the kitchen to make a start.

He follows her through. ‘So, where were you then?’

‘I told you. At school, rehearsing.’

‘What were you rehearsing?’

‘Bugsy Malone. It’s a lot of laughs. Why, you want tickets?’

‘No thanks.’

‘There’s splurge guns.’

‘I reckon you’ve been with someone.’

‘Oh, please — here we go again.’ She opens the fridge. There’s half a bottle of wine, but this is one of those times when only spirits will do. ‘Ian, what is this obsession with me being with someone? Why can’t it just be that you and me weren’t right for each other?’ With a hard yank, she cracks the seal of the frosted-up freezer compartment. Ice scatters on the floor.

‘But we are right for each other!’

‘Well fine then, if you say so, let’s get back together!’ Behind some ancient minced beef crispy pancakes, there is a bottle of vodka. ‘Yes!’ She slides the crispy pancakes to Ian. ‘Here — these are yours. I’m granting you custody.’ Slamming the fridge, she reaches for a glass. ‘And anyway, what if I was with someone, Ian? So what? We broke up, remember?’

‘Rings a bell, rings a bell. So who is he then?’

She’s pouring the vodka, two inches. ‘Who’s who?’

‘Your new boyfriend? Go on, just tell me, I won’t mind,’ he sneers. ‘We’re still friends after all.’

Emma gulps from her glass then stoops for a moment, elbows on the counter top, the heels of her hands pressed against her eyes as she feels the icy liquid slide down her throat. A moment passes.

‘It’s Mr Godalming. The headmaster. We’ve been having this affair on and off for the past nine months, but I think it’s mainly been about the sex. To be honest, the whole thing’s a bit degrading for both of us. Makes me a bit ashamed. Bit sad. Still, like I keep saying, at least there are no kids involved! There you go—’ She speaks into her glass. ‘Now you know.’

The room is silent. Eventually. .

‘You’re kidding me.’

‘Look out the window, have a look, see for yourself. He’s waiting in the car. Navy blue Sierra. .’

He sniffs, incredulous. ‘It’s not fucking funny, Emma.’

Emma places her empty glass on the counter and exhales slowly. ‘No, I know it’s not. In no way could the situation be described as funny.’ She turns and faces him. ‘I’ve told you, Ian, I’m not seeing anyone. I’m not in love with anyone and I don’t want to be. I just want to be left alone. .’

‘I’ve got a theory!’ he says, proudly.

‘What theory?’

‘I know who it is.’

She sighs. ‘Who is it then, Sherlock?’

‘Dexter!’ he says, triumphantly.

‘Oh for Christ’s sake—’ She drains the glass.

‘I’m right, aren’t I?’

She laughs bitterly. ‘God, I wish—’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Nothing. Ian, as you well know, I haven’t spoken to Dexter for months—’

‘Or so you say!’

‘You’re being ridiculous, Ian. What, you think we’ve been having this secret love affair behind everyone’s back?’

‘That’s what the evidence seems to suggest.’

‘Evidence? What evidence?’

And for the first time, Ian looks a little sheepish. ‘Your notebooks.’

A moment, then she puts her glass out of reach so that she won’t be tempted to throw it. ‘You’ve been reading my notebooks?’

‘I’ve glanced. Once or twice. Over the years.’

‘You bastard—’

‘The little bits of poetry, those magical ten days in Greece, all that yearning, all that desire—’

‘How dare you! How dare you go behind my back like that!’

‘You left them lying round! What do you expect!’

‘I expected some trust and I expected you to have some dignity—’

‘And anyway I didn’t need to read them, it was so bloody obvious, the two of you—’

‘—but I have limited reserves of sympathy, Ian! Months of you moaning and moping and whining and hanging round like a kicked dog. Well if you ever turn up out of the blue like this and start going through my drawers, I swear I will call the fucking police—’

‘Go on then! Go on, call them!’ and he steps towards her, his arms out to the side filling the little room. ‘It’s my flat too, remember?’

‘Is it? How come? You never paid the mortgage! I did that! You never did anything, just lay around feeling sorry for yourself—’

‘That’s not true!’

‘And whatever money you did earn went on stupid videos and take-away—’

‘I chipped in! When I could—’

‘Well it wasn’t enough! Oh, God I hate this flat, and I hate my life here. I have got to get out of here or I will go crazy—’

‘This was our home!’ he protests, desperately.

‘I was never happy here, Ian. Why couldn’t you see that? I just got. . stuck here, we both did. Surely you must know that.’

He has never seen her like this, or heard her say these things. Shocked, his eyes wide like a panicked child, he stumbles towards her. ‘Calm down!’ He’s gripping her arm now. ‘Don’t say things like that—’

‘Get away from me, Ian! I mean it, Ian! Just get away!’ They’re shouting at each other now and she thinks, Oh God, we’ve become one of those crazy couples you hear through the walls at night. Somewhere, someone’s thinking, should I call the police? How did it come to this? ‘Get out!’ she shouts as he desperately tries to put his arms around her. ‘Just give me your keys and get out, I don’t want to see you anymore—’

And then just as suddenly, they’re both crying, slumped on the floor in the narrow hallway of the flat they had bought together with such hope. Ian’s hand is covering his face, and he’s struggling to speak between great sobs and gulps of air. ‘I can’t stand this. Why is this happening to me? This is hell. I’m in hell, Em!’

‘I know. I’m sorry.’ She wraps her arms around his shoulder.

‘Why can’t you just love me? Why can’t you just be in love with me? You were once, weren’t you? In the beginning.’

‘Course I was.’

‘Well why can’t you be in love with me again?’

‘Oh Ian, I can’t. I’ve tried, but I can’t. I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry.’

Some time later they lie together on the floor in the same spot, as if they’ve been washed up there. Her head is on his shoulder, her arm across his chest, taking in the smell of him, the warm, comfortable smell that she had become so used to. Eventually, he speaks.

‘I should go.’

‘I think you should.’

Keeping his red, swollen face averted, he sits and nods towards the mess of paper, notebooks and photographs on the bedroom floor. ‘You know what makes me sad?’

‘Go on.’

‘That there aren’t more photographs of us. Together I mean. There’s thousands of you and Dex, hardly any of just you and me. Not recent anyway. It’s like we just stopped taking them.’

‘No decent camera,’ she says weakly, but he chooses to accept it.

‘Sorry for. . you know, flipping out like that, going through your stuff. Completely unacceptable behaviour.’

‘S’alright. Just don’t do it again.’

‘Some of the stories are quite good, by the way.’

‘Thank you. Though they were meant to be private.’

‘What’s the point of that? You’ll have to show them to someone someday. Put yourself out there.’

‘Okay, maybe I will. One day.’

‘Not the poems. Don’t show them the poems, but the stories. They’re good. You’re a good writer. You’re clever.’

‘Thank you, Ian.’

His face starts to crumple. ‘It wasn’t so bad, was it? Living here with me?’

‘It was great. I’m just taking it all out on you, that’s all.’

‘Do you want to tell me about it?’

‘Nothing to tell.’

‘So.’

‘So.’ They smile at each other. He is standing by the door now, one hand on the handle, not quite able to leave.

‘One last thing.’

‘Go on.’

‘You’re not seeing him, are you? I mean Dexter. I’m just being paranoid.’

She sighs and shakes her head. ‘Ian, I swear to you on my life. I am not seeing Dexter.’

‘’Cos I saw in the papers that he’d split up with his girlfriend and I thought, you and me breaking up, and him being single again—’

‘I haven’t seen Dexter for, God, ages.’

‘But did anything happen? While you and I were together? Between you and Dexter, behind my back? Because I can’t bear the idea—’

‘Ian — nothing happened between me and Dexter,’ she says, hoping he’ll leave without asking the next question.

‘But did you want it to?’

Did she? Yes, sometimes. Often.

‘No. No, I didn’t. We were just friends, that’s all.’

‘Okay. Good.’ He looks at her, and tries to smile. ‘I miss you so much, Em.’

‘I know you do.’

He puts his hand to his stomach. ‘I feel sick with it.’

‘It’ll pass.’

‘Will it? Because I think I might be going a bit mad.’

‘I know. But I can’t help you, Ian.’

‘You could always. . change your mind.’

‘I can’t. I won’t. I’m sorry.’

‘Righto.’ He shrugs and smiles with his lips tucked in, his Stan Laurel smile. ‘Still. No harm in asking is there?’

‘I suppose not.’

‘I still think you’re The Bollocks, mind.’

She smiles because he wants her to smile. ‘No, you’re The Bollocks, Ian.’

‘Well I’m not going to stand here and argue about it!’ He sighs, unable to keep it up, and reaches for the door. ‘Okay then. Love to Mrs M. See you around.’

‘See you around.’

‘Bye.’

‘Bye.’

He turns and pulls the door open sharply, kicking the bottom so that it gave the illusion of having hit him in the face. Emma laughs dutifully, then Ian takes a deep breath and is gone. She sits on the floor for one minute more then stands suddenly, and with a renewed sense of purpose grabs her keys and strides out of the flat.

The sound of a summer evening in E17, shouts and screams echoing off the buildings, a few St George’s flags still hanging limply. She strides across the forecourt. Isn’t she meant to have a close circle of kooky friends to help her get through all this? Shouldn’t she be sitting on a low baggy sofa with six or seven attractive zany metropolitans, isn’t that what city life is meant to be like? But either they live two hours away or they’re with families or boyfriends, and thankfully in the absence of kooky pals, there is the off-licence called, confusingly, depressingly, Booze’R’Us.

Intimidating kids are cycling in lazy circles near the entrance, but she’s fearless now, and marches through their centre, eyes fixed forward. In the shop she picks out the least dubious bottle of wine and joins the queue. The man in front of her has a cobweb tattooed on his face, and while she waits for him to count out enough small change for two litres of strong cider, she notices the bottle of champagne locked in a glass cabinet. It’s dusty, like a relic of some unimaginably luxurious past.

‘I’ll have that champagne too, please,’ she says. The shopkeeper looks suspicious, but sure enough the money is there, bunched tightly in her hand.

‘Celebration, is it?’

‘Exactly. Big, big celebration.’ Then, on a whim. ‘Twenty Marlboro too.’

With the bottles swinging in a flimsy plastic bag against her hip, she steps out of the shop, cramming the cigarette into her mouth as if it were the antidote to something. Immediately she hears a voice.

‘Miss Morley?’

She looks around, guiltily.

‘Miss Morley? Over here!’

And striding towards her on long legs is Sonya Richards, her protégé, her project. The skinny, bunched-up little girl who played the Artful Dodger has transformed, and Sonya is startling now: tall, hair scraped back, self-assured. Emma has a perfect vision of herself as Sonya must see her; hunched and red-eyed, fag in mouth on the threshold of Booze’R’Us. A role model, an inspiration. Absurdly, she hides the lit cigarette behind her back.

‘How are you, Miss?’ Sonya is looking a little ill at ease now, eyes flicking from side to side as if regretting coming over.

‘I’m great! Great? How are you, Sonya?’

‘Okay, Miss.’

‘How’s college? Everything going alright?’

‘Yeah, really good.’

‘A-levels next year, right?’

‘That’s right.’ Sonya is glancing furtively at the plastic bag of booze chinking at Emma’s side, the plume of smoke curling from behind her back.

‘University next year?’

‘Nottingham, I hope. If I get the grades.’

‘You will. You will.’

‘Thanks to you,’ says Sonya, but without much conviction.

There’s a silence. In desperation Emma holds up the bottles in one hand, the fags in the other and waggles them. ‘WEEKLY SHOP!’ she says.

Sonya seems confused. ‘Well. I’d better get going.’

‘Okay, Sonya, really great to see you. Sonya? Good luck, yeah? Really good luck,’ but Sonya is already striding off without looking back and Emma, one of those carpe diem-type teachers, watches her go.

Later that night, a strange thing happens. Half asleep, lying on the sofa with the TV on and the empty bottle at her feet, she is woken by Dexter Mayhew’s voice. She doesn’t understand quite what he’s saying — something about first-person-shooters and multiplayer options and non-stop shoot-em-up action. Confused and concerned she forces her eyes open, and he is standing right in front of her.

Emma hauls herself upright and smiles. She has seen this show before. Game On is a late-night TV programme, with all the hot news and views from the computer games scene. The set is a red-lit dungeon composed of polystyrene boulders, as if playing computer games were a sort of purgatory, and in this dungeon whey-faced gamers sit hunched in front of a giant screen as Dexter Mayhew urges them to press their buttons faster, faster, shoot, shoot.

The games, the tournaments, are inter-cut with earnest reviews in which Dexter and a token woman with orange hair discuss the week’s hot new releases. Maybe it’s just Emma’s tiny television, but he looks a little puffy these days, a little grey. Perhaps it’s just that small screen, but something has gone missing. The swagger she remembers has gone. He is talking about Duke Nukem 3D and he seems uncertain, a little embarrassed even. Nevertheless she feels a great wave of affection for Dexter Mayhew. In eight years not a day has gone by when she hasn’t thought of him. She misses him and she wants him back. I want my best friend back, she thinks, because without him nothing is good and nothing is right. I will call him, she thinks, as she falls asleep.

Tomorrow. First thing tomorrow, I will call him.