2000 - Thirtynothing Read online

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want a proper drink?’ he said, when Delilah asked if she could have an orange juice and lemonade.

  ‘No. Really,’ she said, ‘I won’t.’

  ‘It’s all right, you know. I’m not trying to get you drunk. I’m not going to try and take advantage of you, or anything,’ he said, smiling, feeling quite giddy at the thought.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, disconcertingly quickly, ‘I know you’re not. It’s not that.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’ve given up drinking, too.’ He laughed. ‘I don’t know—Delilah Lillie, given up the fags, given up the booze—what have they been doing to you up there in yokel-land?’

  ‘Course I haven’t given up,’ she laughed, ‘course I haven’t. I’m just trying to cut back, that’s all. You know, turning thirty and everything. Besides,’ she said, patting his arm, ‘who needs drink when you’re having such a great time stone-cold sober, hmm?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ He smiled, ordering himself a double scotch on the rocks.

  They took a table very close to the stage and spent half an hour celebrity-spotting.

  ‘That’s another great thing about London—you get to see famous people just sort of wandering about, don’t you? Just shopping and eating and stuff. Not very common in Chester, although that fat girl from Emmerdale did come into Alex’s Oldham branch for dinner once.’

  Dig could listen to Delilah all night. He was so used to being with cynical people, people who’d lived and worked in London for so long, spent so many years struggling with the Tube every morning, trying to negotiate the tourists jamming up Oxford Street, dealing with truly dreadful, pretentious arseholes on a daily basis, that he’d forgotten how exciting and magical it could seem when seen through the eyes of someone less jaded.

  Delilah’s face was tinted pink from candle-light glowing through a red glass dome on the table, and her glossy hair swung backwards and forwards as she talked and laughed and looked around her. Her teeth were extraordinarily white and straight and she seemed to have an awful lot of them. As the support band left the stage, and the lights dimmed, the excitement mounted and Delilah turned towards him, smiled the most beautiful smile he’d ever seen and squeezed his hand on top of the table.

  She turned back to watch the stage, but Dig’s eyes remained glued to her, glued to her kneecap, where the sharp dome of bone pushed into the black twill of her tailored trousers, accentuating the length of thigh and calf, to the line of her nose in profile, the tiny fold in her stomach where she was bent at the waist and the indentations made by her breasts into the charcoal grey cashmere of her tight sweater.

  She was perfect. In every way. Perfect.

  Dig finally took his eyes from her and turned to watch the band.

  THIRTEEN

  The heater in Nadine’s Spider had packed up, and she was freezing, even in her furry coat and slippers. She’d been parked opposite Dig’s flat for more than two hours now, and there was still no sign of him. She was listening to the Supernaturals on her Discman and smoking many, many cigarettes, her deep-violet fingernails tapping up and down on the synthetic wood of her steering-wheel. Where the hell was he? It was nearly two in the morning. She’d counted twelve cabs pull up in the vicinity since she’d arrived, twelve pairs of headlights, twelve sets of rumbling baritone diesel engines and twelve complete strangers disembarking. She’d crouched down in her seat every time she’d heard the familiar sound of a black cab applying its brakes and then sat up straight again when it wasn’t Dig.

  Her breath was leaving her lips in big icy clouds and she slipped her hands under her bottom to keep them warm. She knew she was being ridiculous. She knew that if anyone else had been doing what she was doing she would have felt terribly sorry for them, imagined them to be emotionally and psychologically deficient. But she wasn’t someone else, she was herself, and it was her sitting in a freezing-cold car in a starlet negligé, fake-fur coat and Bart Simpson slippers at two in the morning, waiting for her best friend to get home from a date so that she could stand even the slightest chance of getting any sleep tonight at all. She knew she wasn’t emotionally or psychologically deficient—she was just concerned for Dig’s welfare. And besides, if she let herself admit that she was here because she was rancidly jealous, then she would never be able to look herself in the eye again.

  Another rumble broke the silence of the traffic-free road. Nadine checked in her rear-view mirror: another cab. She slunk down in her seat as the cab passed her and took a deep breath when she heard the engine slowing down. It pulled up a few metres ahead and Nadine craned her neck to catch sight of the two silhouetted heads in the back seat.

  ‘Are you sure you’ll be all right?’ Dig asked, as the cab pulled up outside his flat, ‘I really don’t mind walking back from yours.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Dig. Of course I’ll be all right.’

  ‘Here,’ he said, forcing a ten-pound note into her hand, ‘I want to get this.’

  ‘Why? Honestly, Dig. After everything you’ve done tonight, organized for me, I’m not going to let you pay for the cab, too.’ She pushed his hand away from hers. ‘Keep it. I don’t want it.’

  Dig finally gave up and tucked the note back into his pocket.

  ‘So,’ he said, pulling his leather coat around him and getting ready to get out of the cab, ‘erm. Maybe see you at the weekend, or something?’ He gulped.

  ‘Yeah,’ smiled Delilah, ‘maybe.’

  Dig nodded happily. ‘Cool,’ he said, ‘that’s great.’ He leaned towards the door handle, took hold of it and then turned abruptly to Delilah. ‘I’ve had a really, really good time tonight, you know. Really. Best night, in a long time. Thank you.’

  ‘Me too,’ she said warmly. ‘Thank you for the restaurants! And for the gig and for reintroducing me to London. I haven’t had so much fun in years. And you’ve been fantastic company. Isn’t it funny—I thought I knew you so well when we were together, thought I knew everything about you, but in just one night, I feel like I know you a hundred times better than I ever did before. It’s been a real pleasure getting to know you again, Digby Ryan!’ She laughed then and leaned in towards him.

  When Dig looked back on this moment afterwards, it took on a strange stretched-out quality, as if it had happened over a period of a few minutes rather than the second and a half it had actually lasted. He could remember every last detail, the rhythmic ticking of the cab’s engine, the sound of a Heart FM DJ announcing the two o’clock news, the orange streetlight shining through Delilah’s golden hair as she moved towards him, the little creases that formed in her lips as they puckered together, the shiver that ran down his spine as her hair whipped gently across his cheek and the spasm that rocked his body as he felt his lips being dampened by hers.

  She pulled away slowly but left her arms where they were, loosely draped around his neck. She was staring deeply into his eyes and smiling. ‘Mmm,’ she drawled, touching her lips with the tip of her tongue, ‘that was nice.’

  Dig nodded and smiled and leaned in towards her again, his eyes slanting closed and his lips softening up for a repeat, but his descent towards her lips was impeded by her hands on his shoulders, gently pushing him away. ‘That was nice,’ she said, using a more measured intonation and raising her eyebrows, ‘thank you.’ She smiled. ‘Thank you,’ she said again.

  Dig took his cue. He knew what she was saying. She was a married woman. She’d come to London to sort out her problems, not to get involved in any more. There’d be time. He lifted her hand and kissed the back of it. ‘It’s good to have you back,’ he said as he stepped out of the cab and on to the freezing pavement, ‘really good.’

  Delilah slid across the seat and leaned through the open window. She grabbed his hand. ‘Sleep tight, lovely Digby Ryan,’ she said. And then the cab pulled off, executed a perfect turning circle and bore Delilah away towards Primrose Hill.

  Dig stood where he’d been dropped, on the side of Camden Road, and watched the r
eceding cab, his hands in his pockets, his heart in his mouth and a smile on his face.

  As the cab pulled away from the traffic lights at the next junction and disappeared from view, Dig slowly pulled his hands from his pockets, bunched them up into triumphant fists and brought them down from the air above his head towards his chest. ‘Yes!’ he said under his breath, ‘YES!’

  Oh my God, thought Nadine, watching him from the shadows across the road, her face in her hands, her jaw slack, oh my God.

  It’s happening again.

  Dig’s in love.

  Lime-Green Teeth

  One morning, when Nadine was eighteen years old, an invitation dropped on to the doormat of her family home. Little did she know when she opened it that it was going to lead to one of the most unexpected nights of her life.

  It was an invitation to a Holy T reunion. It had been organized by Anna O’Riordan, one of the perky, popular, button-nosed girls in their year, and was to be held at a wine bar in Camden Town. According to the invite it was meant as an ‘opportunity to catch up with old friends and renew contact before we spread our wings to all four corners of the globe in the pursuit of a Higher Education’.

  Anna O’Riordan always had been a pretentious cow.

  The party was taking place on 12 September, Nadine’s last weekend in London. She was all packed up, had passed her driving test, chucked in her summer job and cleared out her bedroom, which now stood empty and sad, nothing left of her eighteen years but her Enid Blyton books and her etiolated kite.

  It had been a scorching-hot summer and Nadine’s usually chalky-white complexion had been toasted to a shimmery golden-brown festooned with freckles, and her auburn hair had picked up strands of honey-coloured highlights. She didn’t know it at the time—what eighteen-year-old girl does?—but she was at her peak. Her skin was as fresh as it would ever be, her hair as thick and shiny, her thighs as firm and her energy as boundless. Her life was free of worries, commitments and entanglements, her sights set firmly on the future. She was a vision to behold, a picture of youth, strength and vitality. When Nadine walked down the street men would stop and stare because she was more than just a good-looking girl—she was special, she was sexy, and energy oozed from her. She was the sort of girl who made middle-aged women want to weep for their lost youth and middle-aged men want to start afresh.

  Nadine was, of course, blissfully unaware of her all-round gorgeousness and the power of her youth, and as she got ready for the party she felt incredibly nervous. Who was going to be there? What would they think of her? Would they even remember her? Would she have anything to say to anyone?

  But, most importantly, would Dig and Delilah be there? The thought unleashed a mob of epileptic butterflies in her stomach. How was she going to handle that possibility? She envisaged herself walking into the wine bar and clapping eyes on them for the first time in two years. What should she be expecting? Delilah possibly full-term pregnant with three inches of black roots and a fag hanging out of her mouth? Dig looking like a man whose dreams have withered and died? That was a pleasing thought. Or maybe they just wouldn’t turn up at all…Nadine began hoping nervously for this last option.

  But as she walked from Bartholomew Road towards Camden that evening, the air still warm, the sun just starting to sink and a gentle breeze ruffling the crinkle cotton of her Indian skirt, she began to feel brave and strong. Why was she still bothered about Dig and Delilah after all this time? Who cared if they were there or not, happy or unhappy, together or apart? She’d just spent two of the best years of her life at St Julian’s, one of only twelve girls in a sixth form of ninety boys. Her confidence had grown beyond belief while she was there. She was a different person now and she had more important things to worry about than Dig and bloody Delilah. She had a future, a degree, a career to think about. She didn’t need anyone else’s approval and she refused to be intimidated ever again by Delilah or her allegiance with her former best friend.

  She was a kid then; she was an adult now.

  She walked into the wine bar with her shoulders back and her head held high. She would show them, she would show everyone just how far mousy little Nadine Kite had come.

  Dig was the first person she saw when she walked in.

  He was standing on his own, wearing ripped jeans, moccasins and an old check flannel shirt. His thick hair had grown untidily long, flopping on to his forehead and covering his ears and he was sporting a sleeper in his right earlobe. He was holding a bottle of Sol and examining the slice of lime in the neck with some confusion, unsure what it was there for or what he was supposed to do with it. Nadine watched him with gentle amusement as he attempted to push the segment down the neck and into the bottle and, when this didn’t work, pull it out again and try daintily to squeeze its juice into the beer. The slice released one drop of liquid and refused to yield any more, so Dig transferred it from his fingers to his mouth and began sucking on it.

  And so it was that when Dig looked up and noticed Nadine staring at him, when their eyes locked for the first time in two years and their faces broke open into wide smiles of recognition, Dig Ryan was wearing a dazzling set of lime-green teeth.

  ‘It’s just meant to be for decoration, you daft bugger!’

  ‘Deen!’ he exclaimed, the lime segment falling from his lips and on to the floor. ‘Didn’t recognize you for a moment there. You look really…totally…shit. I didn’t think you were going to come.’

  ‘Of course I was going to come!’ she laughed, hugging him to her. ‘Why on earth wouldn’t I?’

  ‘I dunno,’ he shrugged, smiling, ‘I thought a St Julian’s girl like you would be too posh for a do like this, it might be a bit beneath you.’

  Nadine rolled her eyes at him. ‘You shouldn’t believe everything you hear.’ Her gaze wandered up and down his face and she realized that Dig looked different. Not just older, but intrinsically different. Was it the hair? Or the increased facial shadow? No. Neither of those. Was it his manner—nervous, uncomfortable, slightly arrogant? No. So what was it? Her eyes traversed his face and then she saw it.

  ‘Dig Ryan,’ she laughed, staring at him intently and making him squirm, ‘what the fuck happened to your eyebrow?!’

  ‘What?’ he demanded, affronted, putting a finger up to it.

  ‘It’s…it’s separated!’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Your eyebrow. It’s two eyebrows. What have you done to the middle bit?!’

  Dig blushed, looked away. ‘Phphphphphph,’ he mumbled.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I shaved it off, all right!—I shaved it off.’ He brought his beer bottle to his lips and took a large mouthful, his eyes swivelling self-consciously around the room.

  Nadine was doubled over with mirth. ‘Oh Dig,’ she cried, ‘that’s hysterical! You look so weird with two eyebrows. I just can’t take it in! Oh come on,’ she laughed, nudging him in the ribs, ‘loosen up.’

  A smile began to twitch at the corners of Dig’s lips, and before long they were both laughing. ‘It was Delilah’s idea,’ he wheezed through his laughter, ‘she thought…she thought…’ He fought to control himself. ‘She thought it would make me look…more intelligent.’ He dissolved again, and Nadine slapped her thighs and screamed with laughter. ‘Oh don’t,’ she breathed, ‘don’t. I’m going to wet myself! You look so funny! Oh grow it back, Dig, please. For the love of God, grow it back! You just don’t look like you any more!’

  ‘Maybe,’ laughed Dig, slowly regaining his composure, ‘maybe. Anyway,’ he said, indicating her empty hands, ‘what about a drink? Do you want to go to the bar?’

  Nadine shrugged, wiping a tear from under her eyes. ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘I guess so.’

  They turned to survey the rest of the party then, and Nadine felt her spirits drop as she looked around her. ‘Oh God,’ she complained.

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ said Dig. ‘Depressing, isn’t it?’

  ‘God. Just look at them all. They’re al
l so boring.’

  ‘I know. I know. I was going to leave after this drink. I tried to make an effort when I got here, but I got trapped in the corner with Anna O’Riordan for quarter of an hour, telling me all about her summer in the States and her American boyfriend in this pathetic pretend American accent. She must have told me how “neat” he was and how “cute” about a hundred times.’ Dig put two fingers into his mouth and mock-gagged.

  Nadine sneered in sympathy. ‘So,’ she said, looking around her, trying to appear unbothered, ‘Delilah not here?’

  Dig shook his head, took another slurp of beer. ‘Nah.’

  ‘Couldn’t face it, eh?’ she smiled. ‘Don’t really blame her.’

  Dig shrugged. ‘Don’t even know if she was invited. I haven’t seen her since March.’

  Nadine quelled the wave of excitement in her belly and tried to look unfazed. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘why not?’

  ‘You tell me,’ he said bluntly. ‘One minute everything was fine between us. Then she started behaving really oddly.’

  ‘Oddly?’

  ‘Yeah. After her eighteenth birthday. She just…Here’—he stopped suddenly—‘look. How d’you fancy making an escape. I’ll tell you all about it over a decent pint. No one’s noticed you’re here yet. We could just go somewhere?’

  Nadine nodded. There was nothing she would like more.

  They wandered down Chalk Farm Road, past pine-furniture shops and window displays of black leather and studded belts, fluorescent wigs and enormous silver rings in the shapes of skulls. They stopped for a moment on the hump-backed bridge over the canal and watched the black water below shimmering with reflections of the purple streaks that the setting sun had left in the sky.

  Someone was having a party on one of the roof terraces overhead and music blared out loudly as they passed by.

  In a canalside pub, they bought pints at the bar and took them outside to a table overlooking the water. ‘Pooh,’ said Nadine, waving her hand in front of her nose, ‘it stinks out here. It smells like rotten eggs.’