0568188_DCD32_david_nicholls_one_day

from the armchair, his head supported by his fist. ‘Maybe I should go,’ says Emma.

‘No! Stay!’ says Stephanie, but doesn’t provide a reason.

Emma eats another Kettle Chip. What has happened to her friends? They used to be funny and fun-loving, gregarious and interesting, but far too many evenings have been spent like this with pasty, irritable hollow-eyed couples in smelly rooms, expressing wonder that baby is getting bigger with time, rather than smaller. She is tired of squealing in delight when she sees a baby crawl, as if this was a completely unexpected development, this ‘crawling’. What were they expecting, flight? She is indifferent to the smell of a baby’s head. She tried it once, and it smelt like the back of a watchstrap.

Her phone rings in her bag. She picks it up and glances at Dexter’s name but doesn’t bother answering. No, she doesn’t want to go all the way from Whitechapel to Richmond to watch him blowing raspberries on little Jasmine’s belly. She is particularly bored by this, her male friends performing their New Young Dad act: harassed but good-tempered, weary but modern in their regulation jacket with jeans, paunchy in their ribbed tops with that proud, self-regarding little look they give as they toss junior in the air. Bold pioneers, the first men in the history of the world to get a little wee on their corduroy, a little vomit in their hair.

Of course, she can’t say any of this out loud. There’s something unnatural about a woman finding babies or, more specifically, conversation about babies, boring.

They’ll think she’s bitter, jealous, lonely. But she’s also bored of everybody telling her how lucky she is, what with all that sleep and all that freedom and spare time, the ability to go on dates or head off to Paris at a moment’s notice. It sounds like they’re consoling her, and she resents this and feels patronised by it. It’s not like she’s even going to Paris! In particular, she is bored of jokes about the biological clock, from her friends, her family, in films and on TV. The most idiotic, witless word in the English language is ‘singleton’, followed closely by ‘chocoholic’, and she refuses to be part of any Sunday supplement lifestyle phenomenon. Yes, she understands the debate, the practical imperatives, but it’s a situation entirely out of her control. And yes, occasionally she tries to picture herself in a blue hospital gown, sweaty and in agony, but the face of the man holding her hand remains stubbornly blurred, and it’s a fantasy she chooses not to dwell on.

When it happens, if it happens, she will adore the child, remark on its tiny hands and even the smell of its scrofulous little head. She will debate epidurals, lack of sleep, colic, whatever the hell that is. One day she might even bring herself to coo at a pair of booties. But in the meantime she’s going to keep her distance, and stay calm and serene and above it all. Having said that, the first one to call her Aunty Emma gets a punch in the face.

Stephanie has finished expressing and is showing her breast milk to Adam, holding it up to the light like a fine wine. It’s a great little breast pump, they all agree.

‘My turn next!’ says Emma, but no-one laughs and right

on cue the baby wakes upstairs.

‘What someone needs to invent,’ says Adam, ‘is a chloroformed baby wipe.’

Stephanie sighs and trudges out, and Emma decides she will definitely head home soon. She can stay up late, work on the manuscript. The phone buzzes again. A message from Dexter, asking her to schlep out to Surrey to keep him company.

She turns the phone off.

‘ . . . I know it’s a long way, it’s just I think I might be suffering from post-natal depression. Get in a cab, I’ll pay. Sylvie’s not here! Not that it makes any difference, I know, but . . . there’s a spare bedroom, if you wanted to stay over. Anyway, call me if you get this. Bye.’ He hesitates, says another ‘Bye’ and hangs up. A pointless message. He blinks and shakes his head, and pours more wine. Scrolling through the phone’s address book, he comes to S for Suki Mobile.

Initially there is no reply, and he finds himself relieved, because after all what good can come of it, the phone-call to an old girlfriend? He’s about to hang up, when suddenly he hears the distinctive bellow.

‘HELLO!’

‘Hey there!’ He dusts off his presenter’s smile.

‘WHO IS THIS?’ She’s shouting over the sound of a party, a restaurant perhaps.

‘Make some noise!’ ‘WHAT? WHO IS THIS?’ ‘You have to guess!’

‘WHAT? I CAN’T HEAR YOU . . .’ ‘I said “guess who?” . . .’

‘I CAN’T HEAR YOU, WHO IS THIS?’ ‘You have to guess!’

‘WHO?’

‘I SAID YOU HAVE TO . . .’ The game has become exhausting, so he just says ‘It’s Dexter!’

There’s a moment’s pause. ‘Dexter? Dexter Mayhew?’

‘How many Dexters do you know, Suki?’

‘No, I know which Dexter, I’m just, like . . . WAHEY, DEXTER! Hello, Dexter! Hold on . . .’ He hears the scrape of a chair and imagines eyes following her, intrigued, as she leaves the restaurant table and walks into a corridor. ‘So how are you, Dexter?’

‘I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m just, you know, phoning to say I saw you tonight on the telly, and it got me thinking about old times, and I thought I’d phone and say Hi. You looked great by the way. On TV. And I like the show. Great format.’ Great format? You clown. ‘So. How are you, Suki?’

‘Oh, I’m fine, I’m fine.’

‘You’re everywhere! You’re doing really well! Really!’ ‘Thank you. Thanks.’

There’s a silence. Dexter’s thumb caresses the off button. Hang up. Pretend the line’s gone down. Hang up, hang up, hang up . . .

‘It’s been, what, five years, Dex!’

‘I know, I was thinking about you just now, because I saw you on TV. And you looked great by the way. And how are you?’ Don’t say that, you’ve said that already.

Concentrate! ‘I mean, where are you? It’s very noisy . . .’ ‘A restaurant. I’m having dinner, with some mates.’ ‘Anyone I know?’

‘Don’t think so. They’re kind of new friends.’

New friends. Could that be hostility? ‘Right. Okay.’ ‘So. Where are you, Dexter?’

‘Oh, I’m at home.’

‘Home? On a Saturday night? That’s not like you!’ ‘Well, you know . . .’ and he’s about to tell her that he’s

married, has a kid, lives in the suburbs, but feels that this might serve to underline the sheer futility of the phone-call, so instead stays silent. The pause goes on for some time. He notices that there’s an epaulette of snot on the cotton sweater he once wore to Pacha, and he has become aware of the new scent on his fingertips, an unholy cocktail of nappy sacks and prawn crackers.

Suki speaks. ‘So, main course has just arrived . . .’ ‘Okay, well, anyway, I was just thinking about old times,

and thinking it would be nice to see you! You know for lunch or a drink or something . . .’

The background music fades as if Suki has stepped into some private corner. In a hardened voice she says, ‘You know what, Dexter? I don’t think that’s such a good idea.’

‘Oh, right.’

‘I mean I haven’t seen you for five years now, and I think when that happens there’s usually a reason, don’t you?’

‘I just thought—’

‘I mean it’s not as if you were ever that nice to me, never that interested, you were off your face most of the

time—’

‘Oh, that’s not true!’

‘You weren’t even faithful to me, for fuck’s sake, you were usually off fucking some runner or waitress or whatever so I don’t know where you get off now, phoning up like we’re old pals and getting nostalgic about “old times”, our golden six months that were, quite frankly, pretty shitty for me.’

‘Alright, Suki, you’ve made your point.’

‘And anyway I’m with another guy, a really, really nice guy, and I’m very happy. In fact he’s waiting for me right now.’

‘Fine! So go! GO!’ Upstairs, Jasmine starts to cry, with embarrassment perhaps.

‘You can’t just get pissed-up and phone out of the blue and expect me—’

‘I’m not, I only, Jesus, okay, fine, forget it!’ Jasmine’s howl is echoing down the bare wooden stairs.

‘What’s that noise?’ ‘It’s a baby.’ ‘Whose baby?’

‘My baby. I have a daughter. A baby daughter. Seven months old.’

There’s a silence, just long enough for Dexter to visibly wither, then Suki says:

‘Then why the hell are you asking me out?’ ‘Just. You know. A friendly drink.’

‘ I have friends,’ says Suki, very quietly. ‘I think you’d better go and see to your daughter, don’t you Dex?’ and she hangs up.

For a while he just sits and listens to the dead line. Eventually he lowers the phone, stares at it, then shakes his head vigorously as if he has just been slapped. He has been slapped.

‘Well, that went well,’ he murmurs.

Address Book, Edit Contact, Delete Contact. ‘Are you sure you want to delete Suki Mobile?’ asks the phone. Fuck me, yes, yes, delete her, yes! He jabs at the buttons. Contact Deleted says the phone, but it’s not enough; Contact Eradicated, Contact Vaporised, that’s what he needs. Jasmine’s crying is reaching the peak of its first cycle, so he stands suddenly and hurls the phone against the wall where it leaves a black scratch mark on the Farrow and Ball. He throws it again to leave a second.

Cursing Suki, cursing himself for being so stupid, he makes up a small bottle of milk, screws the lid on tight, puts it in his pocket, grabs the wine then runs up the stairs towards Jasmine’s cry, an awful hoarse rasping sound now that seems to tear at the back of her throat. He bursts into the room.

‘For fuck’s sake, Jasmine, just shut up, will you?!’ he shouts, instantly clapping his hand to his mouth with shame as he sees her sitting up in the cot, eyes wide in distress. Scooping her up, he sits with his back against the wall, absorbing her cries into his chest, then lays her in his lap, strokes her forehead with great tenderness, and when this doesn’t work he starts to gently stroke the back of her head. Isn’t there meant to be some secret pressure spot that you rub with your thumb? He circles the palm of her hand as it clenches and unclenches angrily. Nothing

helps, his big fat fingers trying this, fumbling with that, nothing working. Perhaps she’s not well, he thinks, or perhaps he is just not her mother. Useless father, useless husband, useless boyfriend, useless son.

But what if she is unwell? Could be colic, he thinks. Or teething, is she teething? Anxiety is starting to grip. Should she go to hospital? Perhaps, except of course he’s too drunk to drive now. Useless, useless, useless man. ‘Come on, concentrate,’ he says aloud. There’s some medicine on the shelf, on it the words ‘may cause drowsiness’ – the most beautiful words in the English language. Once it was ‘do you have a t-shirt I can borrow?’ Now it’s ‘may cause drowsiness’.

He bounces Jasmine on his knee until she’s a little quieter, then puts the loaded spoon to her lips until he judges that 5ml has been swallowed. The next twenty minutes are spent putting on a demented cabaret, manically waggling talking animals at her. He runs through his limited repertoire of funny voices, pleading in high and low pitches and various regional accents for her to shush now, there there, go to sleep. He holds picture books in front of her face, lifting flaps, pulling tabs, jabbing at pages saying ‘Duck! Cow! Choo-choo train! See the funny tiger, see it!’ He puts on deranged puppet shows. A plastic chimpanzee sings the first verse of ‘Wheels on the Bus’ over and over again, Tinky Winky performs ‘Old MacDonald’, a stuffed pig gives her ‘Into the Groove’ for no reason. Together they squeeze beneath the arches of the baby gym and work out together. He stuffs his mobile phone into her little hands, lets her press the buttons,

dribble into the keypad, listen to the speaking clock until finally, mercifully, she’s quieter, just whimpering now, still wide awake but content.

There’s a CD player in the room, a chunky Fisher Price in the shape of a steam train, and he kicks through discarded books and toys and presses play. Relaxing Classics for Tots, part of Sylvie’s total baby-mind-control project. The ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’ sounds from tinny speakers. ‘Tuuuuuune!’ he shouts, turns up the volume by way of the steam train’s funnel and starts to waltz woozily around the room, Jasmine close to his chest. She stretches now, her tapered fingers balling into fists then flexing, and for the first time looks at her father with something other than a scowl. He catches a momentary glimpse of his own face smiling back up at him. She smacks her lips, eyes wide. She is laughing. ‘That’s my girl!’ he says, ‘that’s my beauty.’ His spirits lift and he has an idea.

Draping Jasmine over his shoulder, banging against door jambs on the way, he runs down to the kitchen where three large cardboard boxes temporarily hold all his CDs until the shelves are up. There are thousands of them, freebies mainly, the legacy of when he was held to be influential and the sight of them sends him back in time to his DJ days when he used to wander round Soho wearing those ridiculous headphones. He kneels and fishes through the box with one hand. The trick is not to make Jasmine sleep, the trick is to try and keep her awake, and to this end they’re going to have a party, just the two of them, better by far than any night-club Hoxton can offer.

Screw Suki Meadows, he’s going to DJ for his daughter. Energised now, he quarries deeper through the

geological layers of the CDs that represent ten years of fashion, picking out the occasional disc, stacking them up in a pile on the floor, warming to his plan. Acid Jazz and break-beats, 70s funk and acid house, give way to deep and progressive house, electronica and big beat and Balearic and compilations with the word ‘chill’ in and even a small, unconvincing selection of drum and bass. Looking through old music should be a pleasure, but he’s surprised to find that even the sight of the artwork makes him feel anxious and jittery, tied up as it is with memories of sleepless, paranoid nights with strangers in his flat, idiotic conversations with friends he no longer knows. Dance music makes him anxious now. This must be it then, he thinks, this is getting old.

Then he sees the spine of a CD; Emma’s writing. It’s a compilation CD she made on her flashy new computer for his 35th birthday last August, just before his wedding. The compilation is called ‘Eleven Years’ and on the homemade inlay slip is a photograph, smudgy from Emma’s cheap home printer, but nevertheless it is still possible to make out the two of them sitting on a mountainside, the peak of Arthur’s Seat, the extinct volcano that looms over Edinburgh. It must have been that morning after graduation, what, twelve years ago? In the photo, Dexter in a white shirt leans against a boulder with a cigarette dangling from his lip. Emma sits a little distance away with her knees brought up to her chest, her chin on her knees. She wears 501s cinched tight at the