One Day

by David Nicholls

Things should look right. Fun; there should be a lot of fun and no more sadness than absolutely necessary.

The trick of it, she told herself, is to be courageous and bold and make a difference. Not change the world exactly, just the bit around you.

Letters, like compilation tapes, were really vehicles for unexpressed emotions and she was clearly putting far too much time and energy into them.

When will you stop trying to educate me, I wonder? Never I hope.

Emma had endeavoured to harden herself to Dexter’s indifference and these days a remark like this caused no more pain than, say, a tennis ball thrown sharply at the back of her head. These days she barely even flinched.

‘You know what I can’t understand? You have all these people telling you all the time how great you are, smart and funny and talented and all that, I mean endlessly, I’ve been telling you for years. So why don’t you believe it?

Sometimes she thinks how nice it would be to be woken by a call in the night: ‘get in a taxi now’ or ‘I need to see you, we need to talk’.

Dexter had been led to believe, by TV, by films, that the only up-side of sickness was that it brought people closer, that there would be an opening-up, an effortless understanding between them. But they have always been close, always been open, and their habitual understanding has instead been replaced by bitterness, resentment, a rage on both their parts at what is happening. Meetings that should be fond and comforting descend into bickering and recrimination. Eight hours ago he was telling complete strangers his most intimate secrets, and now he can’t talk to his mother. Something isn’t right.

as he speaks the voice he hears is of someone he despises.

One day quite soon, probably within the year, he will walk out of a room and never see her again, and this thought is so hard to conceive of that he shoves it away violently, concentrating instead on himself: his hangover, how tired he feels, how the pain throbs in his temples as he trots down the stairs.

But he isn’t forty-five, he is twenty-eight years old. His mother is forty-nine. There has been some terrible mistake, the timing is out, and how can he possibly be expected to deal with this, the sight of his extraordinary mother diminishing like this?

‘I think …’ She lifts her head from his shoulder. ‘I think that you have it in you to be a fine young man. Exceptional even. I have always thought that. Mothers are supposed to, aren’t they? But I don’t think you’re there yet. Not yet. I think you’ve got some way to go. That’s all.’

‘Dexter, your mother loves you very, very much. And I do too. We always have and we always will. I think you know that. But in whatever time your mother has left to her—’ He falters, glances down as if looking for the words, then up. ‘Dexter, if you ever come and see your mother in this state again, I swear, I will not let you into the house. I will not let you through our door. I will close the door in your face. I mean this.’

Dexter's father says this to him after he shows up to their home high/drunk.

I love him, she thought, I’m just not in love with him and also I don’t love him. I’ve tried, I’ve strained to love him but I can’t. I am building a life with a man I don’t love, and I don’t know what to do about it.

‘Those who can, do, those who can’t, teach …’ She spat the words. ‘And those who teach say go fuck yourself.’

‘Dexter, I love you so much. So, so much, and I probably always will.’ Her lips touched his cheek. ‘I just don’t like you anymore. I’m sorry.’ And then she was gone, and he found himself on the street, standing alone in this back alley trying to imagine what he would possibly do next.

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.

‘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.’

‘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.’

‘Amazing, isn’t it, how quickly this stopped being fun.’

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.

Deserved

‘I think that you were very upset and a little bit drunk and you came to see me that night and it just … happened. I think with all the misery of breaking up with Sylvie, and moving out and not seeing Jasmine, you were feeling a little lonely and you just needed a shoulder to cry on. Or to sleep with. And that’s what I was. A shoulder to sleep with.’

‘I’m not the consolation prize, Dex. I’m not something you resort to. I happen to think I’m worth more than that.’

you muck me about, Dexter.’ ‘I won’t—’ ‘I mean it, if you lead me on or let me down or go behind my back, I will murder you. I swear to God, I will eat your heart.’ ‘I won’t do that, Em.’ ‘You won’t?’ ‘I swear, I won’t.’

Finally, she loved someone and felt fairly confident that she was loved in return. If someone asked Emma, as they sometimes did at parties, how she and her husband had met, she told them: ‘We grew up together.’

Then Emma Mayhew dies, and everything that she thought or felt vanishes and is gone forever.

In the future, I’ll be braver, she told herself. In the future, I will always speak my mind, eloquently, passionately.

Whatever happened between them in the future, whatever rows and repercussions loomed, he knew that he very much wanted to kiss her now.