2000 - Thirtynothing Read online

  It was a golden late-summer morning when she awoke at ten o’clock. Her mother was at church—she’d long since stopped trying to drag Nadine along, faced with her daughter’s protestations of atheism and paganism and, lately, just to prove her point, Satanism—and her father and brother had gone fishing together. She ran around the flat in her bra and knickers as she got ready, the windows open, the radio blaring, singing along at the top of her voice. At eleven o’clock she phoned Dig and arranged to meet him on Primrose Hill at half past twelve.

  ‘Bring your kite,’ he said. ‘Apparently the wind’s going to pick up later.’

  Dig had two Cullens’ carrier bags with him when they met on the brow of the hill. He was draped all over a bench and smoking a cigarette. He had on the same jeans as the night before and a Happy Mondays T–shirt. He sat up straight when he saw Nadine approaching and his face broke open into a lecherous grin.

  ‘You know that dress is see-through, don’t you?’ he commented lasciviously when she sat down next to him.

  Nadine pretended to be embarrassed, but she knew full well the diaphanous qualities of her ankle-length Indian voile dress. She was wearing black-leather monkey-boots with pink laces and her hair was tied on top of her head into a cascading pony-tail. It was what her mother disparagingly referred to as her ‘hippy-dippy’ look.

  Dig peeled the Cullens’ carrier bags apart to reveal warm baguettes and tubs of taramasalata, bags of Kettle Chips and twelve bottles of beer. Nadine had brought a blanket, and they wandered around together until they found a spot that would afford them a little privacy.

  And then, for the rest of the day, from lunch-time, through the afternoon and as evening approached, they lay on Nadine’s blanket and kissed. They kissed for five hours. They kissed so much and so hard that Nadine’s lips felt like blisters, and a stubble rash broke out on her chin. Every now and then they would break apart to eat a little something or to take a swig of beer, quickly finding each other’s mouths again seconds later. They barely talked all day; when they weren’t kissing they would stare dreamily into the distance, smiling at the frisky dogs that scampered by every few minutes and at the overexcited children dashing around in circles. They watched the sun beginning to set in silence, silly smiles glued to their faces and their hands entwined.

  And then, just as they were about to leave, their litter disposed of in a plastic bin, their blanket folded and their beer drunk, a breeze blew Dig’s fringe off his forehead.

  ‘Did you see that?’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  Another breeze picked up the hem of Nadine’s skirt and tossed it sideways.

  ‘That,’ he said, pointing at her skirt, ‘that, ’ he said, pointing at the furrows in the grass, ‘THAT, ’ he said, pointing at a candy-striped carrier bag filled with wind and bouncing across the footpath. ‘Come on. Quick. Get your kite out!’

  He grabbed her hand and they ran as fast as they could up towards the peak of Primrose Hill.

  It didn’t take long for Dig and Nadine’s kites to become animated in the powerful wind that seemed to come from nowhere that evening. It was a warm wind, gentle but alive, tangling up their hair and clothes like the hands of an overenthusiastic lover. The sun sank down slowly in the sky as the last hour of daylight ebbed away, and their kites danced in front of a golden backdrop. Finally the sun dropped beneath the horizon and at the very moment that darkness descended upon Primrose Hill, the wind died away as suddenly as it had arrived and it was still and dark. Dig and Nadine looked around the hill. They were all alone, the last people there. They collected their kites from where they lay, spent, on the summer-dry grass, and arm-in-arm they began the walk back to Kentish Town.

  ‘I’ve worked it out,’ said Dig, as they walked down Prince of Wales Road. ‘Even if I give my mum £20 a week rent and start payments on a car, say £20 a week, plus a Travelcard at £5 a week, I’ll still be able to afford to come up and see you at least once a fortnight—I mean, it’s not going to be much more than fifteen quid, is it, with a Young Person’s Railcard?’

  He turned to Nadine and smiled, squeezing her shoulders with his arm. She smiled tightly.

  ‘And then, of course,’ he continued, ‘there’ll be holidays as well, won’t there? You’ll come home for holidays, won’t you? Do you have half-terms on degree courses?’

  Nadine shrugged and smiled nervously.

  ‘Yeah, anyway. So what with holidays and weekends we should get to see quite a bit of each other. The three years should go in a flash and you’ll be back in London before you know it and…’

  Oh God. Oh Jesus, thought Nadine, this is exactly what I didn’t want to happen.

  Hang on just a minute, buddy-boy, she wanted to shout out, hold your horses. If I was some girl you’d just met in a wine bar last night, you’d be taking it slowly right now, feeling your way. You wouldn’t be making these enormous assumptions about what happens next, but because you knew me when I had scabs on my knees and buckle-up shoes, you think you know the score.

  But you don’t, actually, you don’t know anything about what’s going on in my head, about what I want or who I want. And I’m a strong woman, I have dreams and a direction and I have things I want to do, things that don’t involve you, believe it or not. Just because Delilah-bitch-of-the-century-Lillie fell for your charms, it doesn’t make you irresistible, it doesn’t mean that I am going to drop my hopes and dreams for my future. I am the priority in my life, Digby Ryan, not you, not any more, never again. I am stronger than you. Yes! It’s true! I am stronger than you and I don’t need you.

  Nadine felt a flush of excitement as these thoughts buzzed around her head. After all those miserable years at Holy T, watching Delilah Lillie slowly steal away her best friend and take apart her dreams, after so many years of wanting what she couldn’t have and feeling like a third wheel, she was now firmly installed in the driver’s seat and totally in control. She had Dig Ryan exactly where she’d always wanted him and now she was going to show him that she didn’t need him.

  ‘Dig,’ she said, coming to a halt outside a record shop on Kentish Town Road and turning to face him, ‘actually, I don’t think this is a very good idea…’

  ‘What?’ Dig’s face clouded over in confusion.

  ‘This,’ she said. ‘You and me. I don’t think it’s going to work out.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Nadine sighed. ‘Maybe we should just take things a bit slower, you know.’ She explained her feelings to him, about her new life at Manchester, wanting a clean break from London, needing to be unfettered by the past. Dig blinked a lot and nodded stiffly.

  ‘D’you understand, Dig?’ she asked. ‘It’s just not the right time. It wouldn’t be fair on either of us.’

  Dig nodded again and attempted a smile.

  ‘So you understand?’

  Once again, Dig nodded, but the nod slowly became a shake.

  ‘No!’ he shouted, shrugging Nadine’s hand from his arm and backing away from her. ‘No, actually, I don’t fucking understand. I don’t fucking understand at all. I think it’s all bollocks. Jesus, Deen. Since the minute I set eyes on you last night I have been…I have been…oh God, I don’t even know what I’ve been, but it’s been great. Feeling the way you’ve made me feel has been great and I want to carry on feeling like this. I want to look forward to the weekends. I want to queue up at Euston station on a Friday evening with a change of clothing in a bag and ask for a return ticket to Manchester Piccadilly. I want to sit on a train for three hours and imagine you waiting for me on the concourse wearing a see-through dress with your hair all over the place and dream about the weekend ahead. I want a chance to get to know you properly, not just as Nadine Kite, my old mate, but as this new wonderful person I only met last night, this amazing, amazing person who I’ve only known for forty-eight hours.’

  ‘You’ve known me for years, Dig.’

  ‘No! No I haven’t! You were different before. You’re a new person now and
I can’t just let you go without getting to know you properly, without giving us a chance. Jesus, Deen—I can’t believe this is happening!’

  Nadine stared at the ground. She couldn’t believe this was happening either. She couldn’t look into Dig’s eyes. She was too scared of what she might find there. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, ‘I’m sorry. But that’s just the way things are. It’s called bad timing and it’s been the story of you and me, all through the years.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Nadine took a deep breath, opened her mouth and then closed it again. There was no point, no point whatsoever, in raking up the past. She shook her head. ‘Nothing,’ she sighed, ‘nothing.’

  ‘Look. Deen. Can’t we even give it a try? Can’t we at least see if things would work out, you know, instead of just writing it off from the outset? I know what you’re saying, I really do, about new lives and fresh starts and all that, but, Deen, I have never felt like this before and I don’t think I could cope if we didn’t at least try.’

  ‘Oh Dig! You don’t understand, do you! Of course it will work! That’s the whole fucking point. It will work. You and I would be perfect together and that’s exactly why I don’t want to get involved with you. Not now. Not the day before I leave London. It’s not what I want!’

  ‘But you want me?’ asked Dig, his hand on his chest. ‘You do want me?’

  Nadine shrugged. Of course she wanted him. More than anything. But she’d made up her mind. If she said yes now, then she would lose control once again. ‘No’—she shook her head firmly—‘no, Dig. I don’t want you. I know you might find that hard to believe, but I don’t want you. OK? I hate to dent your big macho ego, but that’s just the way it is.’ She spun around and began walking brusquely down Kentish Town Road. There were tears tickling at the back of her throat and she refused to let Dig see her crying.

  Dig chased after her and grabbed her arm, forcing her to face him. ‘So that’s it, is it? Hmm? That’s…it?’

  Nadine nodded.

  ‘And you’re happy just to walk away tonight, are you? Just walk away and get on with your life without ever finding out what it could have been like?’

  She nodded again. Dig sucked in his breath and eyed her with scepticism. ‘I don’t believe you, Nadine Kite’—he shook his head slowly from side to side—‘I really don’t believe you.’

  ‘That’s your prerogative,’ she replied sniffily, avoiding his gaze.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘yeah. I suppose it is. And it’s my prerogative to let you know that this isn’t finished yet. I’ve never felt like this about anyone, ever. You are so beautiful and so special and so fucking amazing, Nadine, and this’—he indicated the two of them—‘us, this isn’t finished yet. Just remember I said that, OK? You’re wrong, tonight, you’re in the wrong. You’re making a mistake, Nadine.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, as they turned to face each other outside her parents’ house. ‘I should have been more honest with you—I just didn’t think things were going to work out like this. I had no idea—I’m really sorry.’

  ‘Look—Deen.’ Dig took her hands and looked deep into her eyes. ‘I hear everything you’re saying about not wanting to get involved but can’t we at least be friends? I have to know that you’ll still be in my life. Can I write to you? Maybe just see you to hang out with when you’re home for the holidays? Please?’

  Nadine nodded. ‘Sure,’ she said, desperate now to finish what she’d started, to get indoors and away from Dig. ‘Sure. Why not?’ And then she turned away abruptly as tears started rising again in her throat and her eyes began shimmering. ‘See ya,’ she managed to squeak before sliding her key in the lock and stumbling through the door, letting it slam loudly behind her.

  ‘Is that you, love?’ She heard her mother’s concerned voice drifting across the hallway from the living room, where her family were watching television.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, brittlely, holding back a choke. ‘I’ll be in in a minute.’ She ran then, two steps at a time, towards her bedroom and collapsed sobbing on to her bed. As she lay there she heard a strange scuffling noise coming from outside. She peered between her curtains and saw Dig slowly backing away from the front door with his hands in his pockets and then she watched him walking down Bartholomew Road, dragging his feet awkwardly and heavily along the pavement.

  ‘Nadine. Nadine, what is this on the carpet?’ Her mother was hollering up the stairs. ‘I really do wish you’d learn to pick up after yourself—you won’t have me to do it for you after tomorrow, you know.’

  Nadine waited until she heard her mother’s slippers shuffling back into the living room before slipping down the stairs.

  Sitting at the bottom of the stairs was something that looked like a very brightly coloured cat, with an extra long tail. As she approached it she saw that it wasn’t a cat at all, but Dig’s kite, the one with the red, white and yellow chequers, the one he’d brought with him to the park today.

  She sat down heavily on the bottom stair and gently picked up the grubby old kite. She brought it to her nose and sniffed it. It smelled of fresh air and plastic. It smelled of today, her day with Dig. It smelled of their picnic and Dig’s breath and the woollen blanket and the dried-out grass of Primrose Hill. It smelled of Kettle Chips and warm baguettes. It smelled of sunshine and hope and happiness. It smelled of her childhood, Dig’s father. It smelled of the past.

  She turned it over in her hands and noticed something written on the other side, in black Biro. Some of the letters hadn’t come out properly, the Biro ink not taking to the plastic, so she held it up to the light and was eventually able to make out the words:

  Dig ‘n’ Deen

  13 September 1987

  For ever ♥

  She sadly folded the string around the kite, got to her feet and went back to her bedroom.

  FOURTEEN

  Nadine had been expecting the inevitable gushing phone call from Dig all morning, the phone call that would crushingly confirm what she already knew: that he’d had a fantastic time with Delilah last night, that they’d had a laugh, stayed out late and kissed in the back of a black cab, that he’d never been happier, that Delilah was the most amazing woman he’d ever met, that he was in love.

  She was working on an advertorial feature for Him magazine and had been casting models all day with the magazine’s art director and some tedious little marketing person from the Korean car company whose brief it was. The client wanted an Emma Peel-type who’d look good in black PVC while brandishing a derringer on the bonnet of one of their nasty little cars. The normal procedure was to call in some girls who would arrive minimally made up and casually dressed, have a two-minute chat with them, look politely at their portfolios and tell them you’d be in touch.

  However, the small and rather sweaty marketing person from Poowoo cars, or whatever they were called, had insisted that each girl in turn, all fifteen of them, squeeze themselves into the catsuit, pout, brandish a can of Spray-Mount in lieu of the derringer and pose for a Polaroid, which he deftly pocketed at the end of the casting, claiming that he had to take them to a ‘top level’ marketing meeting that afternoon.

  Top-level bedside drawer, more like, Nadine had thought distastefully.

  She hated advertorial work. Horrid businessmen. Had no idea about art, no idea about creativity. Thought that Him magazine was just a lower-shelf, more credible version of Penthouse or Playboy. Thought it was just a load of tits and arses. Which it was, to a certain extent. But there was more to it than that—articles on how to be a better boyfriend, how to be a better cook, dozens of pages of beautiful fashion photography, travel articles, sports, hobbies, health, music and film.

  It was a quality magazine written by quality journalists and this was how Nadine justified her dependence on the magazine for her living.

  So when nasty little businessmen turned up, all hot and sweaty under the collar at the prospect of leering over a parade of nubile women young enough to be their daughte
rs, rustling the metaphorical rolls of banknotes in their trouser pockets and treating Nadine like she was some kind of pornmonger, it made her feel very angry.

  They’d left her after lunch amid a sea of leftover Prêt sandwiches and empty sushi containers and she’d finally been able to give in to her feelings of total and utter abject misery by throwing herself on to her pink couch and having a tantrum.

  ‘Men!’ she shouted at Pia, her tiny, hyperactive assistant. ‘Bloody fucking men. All they want is perfection, all they want is tits like this and arses like that and legs this long and thighs that firm and youth and sex and lots of it.’

  Pia, twenty-two, with tits like this and an arse like that, nodded wholeheartedly in agreement.

  ‘They don’t want reality, they don’t want longevity, they don’t want character or personality or anything even vaguely three-dimensional. They want fantasy and unattainability and when will they all finally grow up and realize that they can’t have it!

  ‘Even Dig!’ she continued. ‘Even lovely, sane, together Dig. I thought he was different, but he’s not. He’s just the same. Show him a pair of long legs and a pair of 34Cs, show him perfect bone structure and long blonde hair and he’s away—whoosh—just watch him go.’

  Pia nodded sympathetically and handed Nadine half a satsuma she’d just unpeeled.

  ‘So shallow’—Nadine shook her head slowly in disappointment—‘so very shallow. And he thinks he can win the bet—ha! Thinks that this counts! Well, it doesn’t. When I said “over twenty-six” I meant a nice girl who was over twenty-six, not some blonde bimbo with a husband and a “To Let” sign where her personality should be. Delilah does not count.’

  Pia shook her head sagely and plopped another segment of satsuma into her uncharacteristically silent mouth.