‘You too, Dexter. Look after yourself, won’t you?’ she says, her voice unsteady, then hangs up. Dexter continues to work through the list, speaking to his sister, his father, his ex-wife, his daughter. The conversations are brief, ostentatiously light-hearted and don’t mention the significance of the day, but the subtext is always the same: ‘I’m fine.’ He phones Tilly Killick, but she is mawkish and over-emotional: ‘But how are you
really
sweetheart? I mean,
really?
Are you by yourself? Are you
okay
by yourself? Do you want us to come over?’ Irritated, he reassures her, then ends the call as quickly and politely as he can. He calls Ian Whitehead in Taunton, but he’s putting the kids to bed, the little sods, and it’s not a good time. Ian promises he’ll call back in the week and maybe even come down and see him sometime, and Dexter says that it’s a great idea in full knowledge that it will never happen. There’s a general sense, as in all the calls, that the worst of the storm has passed. Dexter will probably never speak to Ian Whitehead again and this is fine too, for both of them.
He eats supper with the television on, hopping channels and restricting himself to the solitary beer that came free with the delivery. But there’s something saddening about eating alone, hunched over on the sofa in this strange house and for the first time that day he feels a rush of despair and loneliness. These days grief seems like walking on a frozen river; most of the time he feels safe enough, but there is always that danger that he will plunge through. Now he hears the ice creak beneath him, and so intense and panicking is the sensation that he has to stand for a moment, press his hands to his face and catch his breath. He exhales slowly through his fingers, then rushes into the kitchen and throws dirty plates into the sink with a clatter. He has a sudden overwhelming need to drink, and to keep on drinking. He finds his phone.
‘What’s up?’ says Maddy, concern in her voice.
‘Just a little panic that’s all.’
‘Are you sure you don’t want me to come up?’
‘I’m fine now.’
‘I can get a taxi? I can be with you in—’
‘No, really. I’d rather be alone.’ He finds that the sound of her voice is enough to calm him, and he reassures her once more then says goodnight. When he is sure that there is no conceivable reason for anyone to call him back, he turns the phone off, draws the blinds, goes upstairs and begins.
The spare bedroom contains nothing but a mattress, an open suitcase and seven or eight cardboard boxes, two of which are labelled ‘Emma 1’ and ‘Emma 2’ in her own handwriting in thick black marker pen. The last of Emma’s possessions from his flat, the boxes contain notebooks, letters, wallets of photographs, and he carries them down to the living room and spends the rest of the evening unpacking them, sorting the meaningless ephemera – ancient bank statements, receipts, old take-away menus, all of which he stuffs into a black bin-liner – from the stuff he will send to her parents, and the items he would like to keep for himself.
The process takes some time, but is carried out in an entirely dry-eyed, pragmatic way, and he stops only occasionally. He avoids reading the journals and notebooks with their scraps of youthful poetry and plays. It seems unfair – he imagines Emma wincing over his shoulder or scrambling to knock them from his hand – and instead he concentrates on the letters and photographs.
The way the material has been packed means that he works through it in reverse chronological order, digging back through the strata, starting with their years together as a couple, back through the Nineties and eventually, at the bottom of box 2, into the Eighties. First there are dummy covers from the ‘Julie Criscoll’ novels, correspondence with her editor Marsha, press cuttings. The next layer reveals postcards and photos of Paris, including a snap of the famous Jean-Pierre Dusollier, dark-skinned and very handsome, the one that got away. In an envelope with Metro tickets, folded menus, a rental agreement in French, he stumbles on something that’s so startling and affecting that he almost drops it on the floor.
It’s a Polaroid, taken in Paris during that summer, of Emma lying naked on a bed, legs crossed at the ankle, her arms stretched languidly above her head. The photo was taken on a drunken, amorous evening after watching
Titanic
in French on a black and white TV, and even though he found the photograph beautiful, she had snatched it from him and insisted that she would destroy it. The fact that she kept the Polaroid and secreted it away should please him, suggesting as it does that Emma liked the photo more than she let on. But it also slams him up against her absence once more, and he has to take a moment to catch his breath. He places the Polaroid back in the envelope and sits in silence to gather himself. The ice creaks beneath him.
He continues. From the late Nineties he finds an assortment of birth announcements, wedding invitations and orders of service, an over-sized farewell card from the staff and pupils of Cromwell Road Comprehensive School and, stuffed in the same
envelope, a series of letters from someone called Phil which are so sexually fixated and pleading that he quickly folds them up and stuffs them back into the envelope. There are flyers from Ian’s comedy-improv nights and some tedious paperwork from solicitors concerning the purchase of the flat in E17. He finds a selection of witless picture postcards that he sent while travelling in the early Nineties – ‘Amsterdam is MAD’, ‘Dublin ROCKS’. He is reminded of the letters he got in return, wonderful little packets of pale blue air-mail paper that he re-reads occasionally, and is embarrassed afresh by his callow twenty-four-year-old self: ‘VENICE COMPLETELY FLOODED!!!!’. There’s a copy of the photostat programme of ‘Cruel Cargo – a play for young people by Emma Morley and Gary Cheadle’ and then old essays, dissertations on ‘Donne’s Women’ and ‘Eliot and Fascism’, a pile of postcard reproductions marked with the tiny holes from the pin-boards of student houses. He finds a cardboard tube and in it, rolled up tight, Emma’s graduation certificate, untouched, he imagines, for nearly twenty years. He verifies this by looking at the date – 14 July 1988. Eighteen years ago yesterday.
In a torn paper wallet he finds the graduation photographs and flicks through them without any great nostalgia. Because the photos were taken by Emma herself she barely features in them, and he has forgotten many of the other students anyway; she was part of a different crowd in those days. Still, he is struck by the youth of the faces and also by the fact that Tilly Killick has the power to annoy him, even in a photo at a distance of nineteen years. A snap of Callum O’Neill, skinny and self-satisfied, is swiftly torn in two and plunged deep into the bin-bag.
But at some point she must have handed the camera to Tilly, because there is finally a sequence of Emma by herself, pulling mock-heroic faces in mortar board and gown, her spectacles perched bookishly on the end of her nose. He smiles, then gives a groan of amused shame as he finds a photo of his old self.
He is pulling an absurd male model’s face, sucking in his
cheekbones and pouting while Emma wraps one arm around his neck, her face close to his, eyes wide, one hand pressed to her cheek as if star-struck. After this photo was taken they had gone to the graduation tea-party, the pub and then to the party at that house. He can’t remember who lived there, only that the house was packed and virtually destroyed, the party spilling out onto the street and the back garden. Hiding from the chaos, they had found a spot on a sofa in the living room together and stayed rooted there all evening. This was where he had kissed her for the first time. He examines the graduation photo once again, Emma behind thick black frames, her hair a bottle red and badly cut, a little plumper in the face than he remembers her now, mouth split in a wide smile, her cheek pressed to his. He puts the photo to one side, and looks at the next.
It is the morning after. They are sitting together on a mountainside, Emma in 501s cinched at the waist and black Converse All-Stars, Dexter a little way off in the white shirt and black suit that he had worn the day before.
The summit of Arthur’s Seat was disappointingly crowded with tourists and other graduating students, all whey-faced and shaky from last night’s celebrations. Dex and Em raised their hands sheepishly in greeting to a few acquaintances, but tried to keep their distance, keen to avoid gossip even now that it was too late.
They wandered idly around the scrappy rust-coloured plateau, taking in the view from all angles. Standing at the stone column that marked the summit, they made the remarks they were obliged to make in such situations: how far they had walked and how they could see their house from here. The column itself had been scratched with graffiti: private jokes, ‘DG Was Here’, ‘Scotland Forever’, ‘Thatcher Out’.
‘We should carve our initials,’ suggested Dexter, weakly.
‘What, “Dex 4 Em”?’
‘4 Ever.’
Emma sniffed doubtfully and examined the most striking graffiti, a large penis drawn with indelible green ink. ‘Imagine climbing all this way just to draw that. Did he bring the pen with him, d’you think? “It’s a lovely view, natural beauty and all that, but what this spot really needs is a massive cock and balls.”’
Dexter laughed mechanically, but once again, self-consciousness was starting to creep in; now they were here it felt like a mistake, and independently they wondered if they should skip the picnic and simply clamber back down and head home. But neither of them was quite prepared to suggest this, and instead they found a hollow a short way from the summit where the rocks seemed to provide some natural furniture, and they settled here and unpacked the rucksack.
Dexter popped the champagne, which was warm now and foamed forlornly over his hand and onto the heather. They took it in turns to swig but there was little sense of celebration and after a brief silence Emma resorted once more to remarking on the view. ‘Very nice.’
‘Hm.’
‘No sign of rain!’
‘Hm?’
‘St Swithin’s Day, you said it was. “If on Swithin’s Day it do rain …”’
‘Absolutely. No sign of rain.’
The weather; she was talking about the weather. Embarrassed by her own banality, she lapsed into silence before trying a more direct approach. ‘So, how are you feeling, Dex?’
‘Bit rough.’
‘No, I mean about last night? Me and you.’
He glanced at her and wondered what he was expected to say. He was wary of a confrontation with no immediate means of escape, save hurling himself from the mountainside. ‘I feel fine! How about you? How are you feeling about last night?’
‘Fine. Bit embarrassed, I s’pose, harking on like that, you
know, ’bout the future. Changing the world, and all that. Bit corny in the harsh light of day. Must have sounded corny anyway, specially to someone with no principles or ideals—’
‘Hey, I have ideals!’
‘Sleeping with two women at the same time is not an ideal.’
‘Well, you
say
that …’
She tutted. ‘You can be really seedy sometimes, d’you know that?’
‘I can’t help it.’
‘Well you should try.’ She grabbed a handful of heather and tossed it limply towards him. ‘You’re much nicer when you do. Anyway. The point is, I didn’t mean to sound such a drip.’
‘You didn’t. It was interesting. And like I said, I had a really nice time. It’s just a shame the timing’s not better.’
He was giving her an annoying little consolatory smile and she wrinkled her nose in irritation. ‘What, you mean otherwise we’d be
boy
friend and
girl
friend?’
‘I don’t know. Who knows?’
He held out his hand, palm upwards, and she looked at it for a moment with distaste, then sighed and took it resignedly, and they sat there, their hands linked uselessly, feeling idiotic until their arms got tired and they both let go. The best solution, he decided, was to feign sleep until it was time to go, and with this in mind he removed his jacket, padded it into a pillow and closed his eyes against the sun. His body ached, the alcohol pulsed in his head, and he began to feel himself slipping into unconsciousness, when she spoke.
‘Can I say something? Just to put your mind at rest?’
Groggily he opened his eyes. She was sitting with her legs raised to her chest, arms wrapped round them, chin resting on her knees. ‘Go on.’
She inhaled, as if gathering her thoughts, then spoke.
‘I don’t want you thinking that I’m bothered or anything. I mean, what happened last night, I know it was only ’cause you were drunk …’
‘Emma …’
‘Let me finish, will you? But I had a really nice time anyway. I’ve not done a lot of … that kind of thing. I’ve not made a study of it, not like you, but it was nice. I think you’re nice, Dex, when you want to be. And maybe it’s just bad timing or whatever, but I think you should head off to China or India or wherever and find yourself, and I’ll get on quite happily with things here. I don’t want to come with you, I don’t want weekly postcards, I don’t even want your phone number. I don’t want to get married and have your babies either, or even have another fling. We had one really, really nice night together, that’s all. I’ll always remember it. And if we bump into each other sometime in the future at a party or something, then that’s fine too. We’ll just have a friendly chat. We won’t be embarrassed ’cause you’ve had your hand down my top and there’ll be no awkwardness and we’ll be, whatever, “cool” about it, alright? Me and you. We’ll just be … friends. Agreed?’
‘Alright. Agreed.’
‘Right, that’s that then. Now—’ She reached for her rucksack and fumbled around inside, producing a battered Pentax SLR.
‘What are you doing?’
‘What does it look like? Taking a photo. Something to remember you by.’
‘I look terrible,’ he said, already adjusting his hair.
‘Don’t give me that, you love it …’
He lit a cigarette for a prop. ‘What do you want a photo for?’
‘For when you’re famous.’ She was balancing the camera on a boulder now, framing the shot through the viewfinder. ‘I want to be able to say to my kids, see him there, he once stuck his hand up Mummy’s skirt in a crowded room.’