2000 - Thirtynothing Read online

  But he’d run out of mindless prattle now, spent the last dollar in his jolly-bank. He wanted to walk over to the stereo, turn it off and switch on the telly instead. That would take the pressure off. But he couldn’t, because that would be an acknowledgement of the fact that something was wrong, that they weren’t talking. It would make a mockery of the candles and the lollo rosso fronds and the shiny cutlery.

  Delilah was pushing a tiny, ant-like ball of caviar around her plate with the tine of her fork, and Dig could feel her long bare feet tap-tap-tapping against the table leg. This latest silence had lasted about two minutes, so far. The longest yet. What was it, thought Dig, what was it that was so painfully unbearable about silences between people? It was like a failure. A silence in the midst of a lively conversation could negate in a second everything that had come before, as if the rest of the evening’s seamless chatter had been just a fluke and it had always been only a matter of time before the truth emerged—that nobody really had anything to say to each other. Why couldn’t people just sit together in silence without feeling inadequate, boring and distanced from their companions? Silence also seemed to act as a laxative for bullshit, desperation to fill the hole in the conversation leading to ever more frantic and tedious commentary.

  ‘So,’ began Dig, admitting defeat, breaking the silence, splitting open a prawn, belly-up, ‘what are you up to tomorrow?’ He felt like an emotionally withdrawn father trying to make conversation with a recalcitrant teenage daughter.

  Delilah gently rested her fork on the side of her plate and sighed again.

  ‘I’ve…er…I’ve got a lot to do tomorrow…’ She trailed off.

  Dig sensed an opening. Finally. He took a deep breath. ‘Anything I can help with?’

  Delilah shrugged and picked up her fork again. ‘No,’ she said, eventually, ‘no—I’ll be fine. But thanks.’ She looked up briefly through heavy eyes and then down again.

  Dig sighed with frustration.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘What?’ replied Dig, slightly shocked by Delilah’s first opening gambit of the evening.

  ‘Tomorrow. What are you doing tomorrow?’

  ‘Oh. Right. I don’t know.’ That was a point, thought Dig. It was Saturday tomorrow, and for as long as he could remember, Saturday had been Nadine day. A fry-up either round the corner from her, or round the corner from him, and then, depending on the weather, a walk in the park, flying the kites, or just sitting in and watching some sport on the telly before getting ready to go out. That was what he did on Saturdays. Well, that was what he used to do on Saturdays, before he and Nadine had fallen out with each other. He wasn’t quite sure what he would do now that they weren’t talking to each other.

  The thought made him feel single. Which struck him as odd, because he’d been single, pretty much, for the last ten years. But, with Nadine in his life, he’d never actually felt single. He’d never had to contemplate huge, empty weekends with no one to share the minutiae. Even when Nadine was going out with someone, she usually spent her Saturdays with him, grateful to have whichever hugely unsuitable man she currently had in her life out of her hair for a few hours.

  Dig felt his stomach swill with unexpected anxiety. What would life be like, without Nadine? It was impossible to imagine. Horrible, probably, absolutely horrible. That settled it. He would definitely, definitely make things up with her, tomorrow. He would phone her first thing and they would go out for breakfast and everything would be back to normal.

  He smiled and looked up. Delilah was still pushing the bead of caviar around her plate and appeared to be having trouble controlling her breathing. Her chest was rising and falling like billows and her mouth was slightly puckered.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  As he watched her, he saw a slick of sweat appear on her upper lip and the colour drain entirely from her face.

  ‘Are you OK? Delilah?’

  She dropped her fork noisily on to her plate, scraped back her chair, cupped her hands to her mouth and ran towards the bathroom, her napkin falling from her lap as she went.

  A moment later Dig heard his prawns, his caviar, his blinis and his smoked salmon hitting the toilet bowl in a dramatic stampede from Delilah’s stomach.

  He sighed and began clearing away the food. He heard the shower being operated and the lock going on the bathroom door. Well, that was that, then. It looked as if Delilah’s problems and her secret mission to uncover the past were to remain a mystery for at least another night.

  Dig was just about to blow out the candles, when he heard the doorbell ring.

  Dig’s disembodied voice on the entry phone sounded surprised to hear her—‘Oh, Nadine. Hi’—almost like he’d been expecting someone else.

  She took the linoleum-clad steps two at a time, oblivious to her already tender, post-gym leg muscles screaming at her to stop. She hadn’t yet thought about how she was going to tell Dig that she’d had E’d-up sex with Philip Rich within hours of meeting up with him again and how he was now turning out to be a bit of a psycho, plaguing her with phone calls and scaring her half to death. She hadn’t thought about any of that. None of that mattered any more. All she wanted to do was make up and be friends again.

  She rounded the corner at the top of the last flight of stairs and stood nervously outside Dig’s front door. He was standing in his hallway, looking tired and uncomfortable, wearing his best shirt, his new jeans and a pair of oatmeal socks.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, squeezing out a smile. She felt suddenly and inexplicably tearful.

  ‘Er—hi.’ Dig scratched his head and looked distinctly unthrilled to see her.

  ‘Sorry to—er—turn up like this.’

  ‘That’s OK.’

  ‘Are you going to invite me in then, or what?’ She grinned, attempting to bring a little levity to the tense atmosphere.

  Dig didn’t smile, didn’t say anything, just scratched his head again and moved out of her way.

  ‘So—how’ve you been?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh—fine. Fine. You?’

  ‘Yeah. Fine.’

  There was a silence. It was awkward.

  She dropped her bag and coat where she always left them and made her way into the living room—which was when she became slowly aware of the seductive surroundings, of the veritable come-on spread out all over the table, and candles, and the music—it sounded like—sounded like—Robbie Williams? Couldn’t be, couldn’t possibly be. Dig wouldn’t be listening to Robbie Williams. And the lights were very low, and what was that thing, that furry little thing on the sofa? It looked like one of those Russian hats, except smaller and hairier. Nadine jumped in her skin when the Russian hat thing wriggled and then she screamed when it jumped off the sofa and started walking towards her.

  ‘Oh God!’ she exclaimed, clutching at her heart. ‘What the fuck is that?’

  As it approached it revealed itself to be a very, very small dog.

  ‘It’s a dog,’ said Dig, helpfully.

  ‘Yes. I can see it’s a dog. But what’s it doing here?’ She crouched down to pet the trembling little creature, who immediately flopped on to his back and offered up his stomach.

  ‘It’s—er—he’s Digby.’

  It took a second for Nadine to twig. She thought it was a feeble joke at first, and then it dawned on her. Digby. Delilah’s dog. This was Delilah’s dog. What the hell was Delilah’s dog doing in Dig’s flat? Nadine was starting to think that she’d stumbled into some parallel universe; empty prawn shells, jars of caviar, Robbie Williams, small dogs—she fully expected a wife and kids to appear from nowhere at any second.

  And then her thought processes began to clarify.

  Sexy food—low lighting—Delilah’s dog.

  Oh God.

  Oh God.

  Oh no.

  At the very second that Nadine worked out what was going on she heard a click and there was a sudden blast of light and steam from the bathroom door. And there she stood, emerging from the s
team like a rock star coming on stage through a cloud of dry ice, her hair tied up in a towelling turban and her body wrapped in a minute towel that barely covered the tops of her thighs. She smiled widely when she saw Nadine standing there.

  ‘Deen,’ she said, ‘what are you doing here? We weren’t expecting you.’

  Oh God. Oh God. Nadine’s chest constricted and her breath came fast and furious.

  She looked at Delilah, towelled and scrubbed and steaming.

  She looked at Dig, shirted and combed and blushing.

  She looked at the table, laden and clothed and sparkling.

  Nadine had never felt less like she belonged somewhere before, in her life. The flat stank of Delilah. She’d scented it, like a cat. She saw Dig and Delilah exchange a look. There was single moment of dreadful silence.

  ‘You two-faced, conniving, lying BITCH!’

  The words came from nowhere. Nadine’s anger was uncontrollable.

  She stood rooted to the spot for a while, staring at Delilah through teary eyes. Delilah was staring back at her in horror.

  ‘No…no,’ she began, ‘you don’t understand, honestly, it’s fine, Nadine.’ She put a hand out towards Nadine.

  Nadine shook it off, picked up her coat and bag and pushed Dig out of the way. At the door she turned around. ‘You haven’t changed, have you, Delilah, you haven’t changed at all.’ She slammed the door closed behind her and ran down the stairs. Behind her she heard Dig’s door opening and his voice echoing down the stairs: ‘Deen, where the fuck are you going?’ She heard his footsteps, faster than hers, catching up with her, and she increased her pace.

  She spun herself around the twists and turns of the narrow stairwell, her hand gripping the rail, her feet moving faster than Michael Flatley’s. She snagged her tights on the pedal of a bicycle crammed into the entrance hall and threw open the front door, clattering down the stone steps leading to the pavement.

  Dig caught up with her on the street.

  ‘Nadine! What the fuck is going on?’

  ‘Nothing—I’m going home.’

  ‘But what’s the matter with you? What was all that about?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it. Just go back inside. Go and look after your precious, beautiful Delilah! Poor helpless innocent little Delilah. Go and wrap yourself back around her little finger. Go on!’

  ‘Nadine!’ Dig grabbed her arm. She shook his hand off her.

  ‘Leave me alone!’

  Dig stood back and eyed Nadine with surprise. ‘All right then,’ he sniffed, ‘all right. Fuck off then, go on—fuck off.’

  For a moment they stood and stared at one another, both breathing heavily and both wearing expressions of disbelief that something this horrible could be happening to their perfect friendship.

  Nadine opened her mouth to say something, then turned and ran away. A gap in the four lanes of traffic on Camden Road prevented her from killing herself as she sped across the road towards her car, flinging open the door and grinding her gears before screeching away.

  The last thing she saw before she took off was Dig, standing in his socked feet in the middle of Camden Road, rain pouring down his face, staring after her with his jaw hanging open and his hands outstretched in front of him in a gesture of pure bewilderment.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Nadine started talking to herself as she threw her little white car around corners, across roundabouts and over traffic lights, muttering, under her breath, like a mad woman.

  What had she done? What was happening to her? What had happened to all those years she’d spent being cool and together and happy and well adjusted? Had she actually been but a whisker’s width away from this insanity all along, without ever realizing?

  In the space of less than a week Nadine had dumped a perfectly lovely man because she didn’t like his choice of mugs, had spent an entire evening phoning Dig when she knew he was going to be out, had actually driven round to his bloody flat in the middle of the night in her Bart Simpson slippers, for Christ’s sake, to spy on him, had impulsively telephoned her horribly beautiful ex-boyfriend of ten years ago only to find that he was just horribly horrible now, had ignored this, and the fact that he was completely fucked up, and slept with him anyway, in someone’s garage, on a cocktail of drugs and alcohol, she had broken her kitchen window while in the throes of a ridiculous Delilah-induced panic and now she’d done that. That thing just now, in Dig’s flat. That hideously embarrassing, Scarlett O’Hara-style exit, all flouncing and tripping and hands-held-to-throat drama-queen.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she muttered, ‘oh my God, I’m a fucking psycho. Maybe I deserve Phil. Maybe we were made for each other. We could stalk each other and send each other sick letters and video tapes.’ Tears sprang to her eyes. ‘I’m mad,’ she sniffed, ‘I’m barking mad. I used to be sane but that part of my life is over now…oh God!’ The tears were now splashing down her cheeks as she contemplated a life of unwashed hair, episodes of uncontrolled eccentricity and stretches of residential care wearing paper clothes.

  Dig had told her to fuck off. Her stomach lurched and wriggled and rucked. She felt nauseous. She scratched at her tears distractedly and tried to ignore the little voice inside her head telling her something that she’d known all along, really, ever since Delilah had first reappeared six days ago, the little voice that was telling her that the reason she was so jealous was that she wanted Dig for herself, that she loved Dig—that she was still in love with Dig.

  ‘Ridiculous!’ she exclaimed, slamming the heels of her hands against the steering-wheel, ‘completely, totally and utterly ridiculous!’

  A woman in a Fiat Uno and a bobble hat shot her an alarmed glance and Nadine cleared her throat and collected herself. ‘Ridiculous,’ she muttered again, this time barely moving her lips, and caressing her steering-wheel apologetically.

  How could she possibly still be in love with Dig? She’d always loved him, of course she had, but this was a completely different story. She’d never felt jealous of him before. She’d sat next to him at parties and nightclubs while he was chewing young, flat-stomached girls’ faces off. She’d listened with relish to every last detail of every last encounter he’d ever had with nubile, perky-breasted little imps. They’d even shared a bedroom together once, at some cottage in the country, him with a girlfriend, her with a boyfriend, and they’d giggled at each other’s half-hearted attempts to keep their respective noises down. All without even the smallest sign of the green-eyed monster.

  ‘“You two need each other” ’—she mimicked Delilah’s husky voice—‘ “you two were made for each other. You two should be together.” Pah!’ she exclaimed, under her breath. ‘Pah! Two-faced, sneaky, conniving, secretive, lying BITCH!

  ‘He’s my Dig, Delilah Lillie,’ she moaned, as she drove past her house for the fourth time, frantically looking out for a parking space, ‘he’s my Dig, not your Dig. Go and get your own Dig, you bitch. Leave mine alone. He’s my Dig, my Dig, my Dig, my Dig…’

  But it was too late, she knew that now, too late for her and Dig. She was never going to see Dig again, ever. It was over…

  At this thought, yet more tears sprung from her churning stomach and erupted like a geyser all over her face. Rain cascaded down her windscreen and tears ran down her cheeks, and she couldn’t see a bloody thing. The world was a blur of orange and white saucers, splintered discs of light that grew and danced and converged together.

  She indicated left to make one final attempt at parking somewhere within walking distance of her home and swung her car violently around the corner. ‘Why do I live in this fucking city?’ she muttered. ‘Can’t even park outside your own fucking home, bloody palaver, every single fucking time…’ Her eyes swivelled this way and that, looking desperately through tear-soaked lashes for a space, or a gap, or a person getting into a car, or anything, anything a-fucking-t’all…

  And then she saw it—there it was, definitely—a car, about to pull out of a space, literally twenty fe
et from her own front door. She felt a moment of elation, slammed her indicator to the right and brought her car to a screeching halt parallel to the car behind it, so full of determination and defensive territorialism, so paranoid that another car would appear from nowhere and claim the space before her, her eyes so clouded with tears and her vision so obstructed by the sheets of rain bouncing frantically off her windscreen that she didn’t see the thin, bowed-over figure in front of her, she didn’t notice that he’d stepped out into the street, without warning, from between two parked cars, and the first she knew of his existence was the sound of his knees crunching against her bumper.

  ‘Oh Jesus!’ screamed Nadine, her hands jumping off the steering-wheel to cover her mouth. ‘Oh no, oh Jesus!’ She pulled on her handbrake till it almost came off in her hand and started desperately trying to get out of her car, her hands shaking, the old handle clunking and creaking but refusing to budge. ‘Jesus Jesus Jesus, oh Jesus, let me out of this car!’ She suddenly remembered that she’d locked it from the inside, force of habit, to stop car-jackers, and finally threw the car door open. A passing car swerved out of the way and let loose a loud and frightening blast of its horn. Nadine’s handbag fell from her lap and everything in it fell on to the wet, black Tarmac. She skipped over the pile of her belongings and ran to the front of her car. ‘Oh God, oh God, oh God!’

  There was a small, raggedy bunch of bones lying at the foot of her bonnet, not moving, its limbs arranged at strange angles.

  ‘Oh no oh no oh no,’ she thought to herself, whimpering slightly, ‘I’ve killed someone, I’ve only gone and killed someone.’

  She crouched down next to the crumpled figure and leaned in towards his face.

  ‘Hello,’ she ventured tentatively, gently prodding his shoulder, ‘hello. Can you hear me? Are you all right? Oh Jesus oh Jesus…hello…hello…hello.’ The figure remained still. Nadine started thinking ER, thinking recovery position, thinking mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, thinking ‘mustn’t move him, mustn’t move him,’ thinking ‘Defib! Clear!’, thinking ‘oh my God will someone please call an ambulance?’ The rain cascaded down her damp curls and all over her face. She was paralysed with fear and indecision.