2000 - Thirtynothing Page 5

  Nadine squeezed a small smile through tight lips. ‘So have a nice life…’

  ‘Oh. Right. I see. You too. Yeah,’ he said, looking like he had now given the matter some thought and was beginning to get used to the idea. ‘Yeah. You have a good life, too, Nadine.’

  And then they ran out of things to say, a few moments before they lost the desire to talk, standing together awkwardly, shuffling a little, smiling, making and losing eye contact. The screaming, shouting and swearing of the other kids faded into the background and slivers of light from the ebbing sun perforated through the branches of a large elm and painted the two of them with salmon-pink stripes. Nadine leaned down to pull up her socks. Dig picked up a folder that had slid from the top of her pile and handed it back to her. The furthest tips of their fingers touched and then retracted instantly.

  In the background Delilah still sat and watched, a piece of grass between her lips, her long legs folded up beneath her, an expression of disquiet hewn into her features. Dig turned to look at her and then turned back to Nadine. He opened his mouth to say something but then realized that he didn’t need to. He shrugged instead and began to back away. Nadine shot him one last smile and then turned to leave the park.

  Outside the park, a Ford Cortina parked sideways across North Road billowed flames from an overheated engine while three firemen attacked the fire with wild hoses of water, watched by a small audience of people. A river of blackened water snaked along the pavement and Nadine skipped over it before walking blindly towards York Way, her feet leading her homewards while her heart urged her to turn around, tear through the park towards Dig, her best friend, her soulmate, to make amends and reseal their bond, before it was too late.

  But she didn’t—her pride wouldn’t let her—and she carried on walking through the darkening streets of Kentish Town, walking and walking and feeling it all slowly slip away from her grasp. She let herself into her parents’ tiny flat on Bartholomew Road, sat with them while they watched Dynasty and answered their questions about her last day at school. At eleven o’clock she yawned and padded upstairs to her bedroom. She stared around her dreary room for a while and let her mind fill up with memories and images of her and Dig. Her kite was pinned to one wall, little lines of dust forming in the creases, the bright colours starting to fade to shadows. The tail drooped sadly, looking like it had lost the will to live, ever to fly again.

  It was to be two years before Nadine would unpin her kite from the wall, blow off the dust and watch it skitting once more across the London skyline.

  FIVE

  Anticlockwise! Anticlockwise! Why had she gone anticlockwise? It was a fifty-fifty thing. She could have gone clockwise. She could have been back at Dig’s by now, safe and cosy, watching the football, instead of sitting in some hoity-toity tea-shop in Primrose Hill drinking overpriced cappuccino and watching her best friend regress within seconds to the fourteen-year-old schoolboy he’d always been.

  And oh my God, look at her. Just look at her, will you? It’s sickening. How can she look younger now than she did then? How can she be more beautiful, more poised, more everything? She has acquired polish and gloss. Her accent is now neutral. She has a dazzling smile and even a certain amount of charm. That’s definitely something with a designer label in it that she’s wearing so effortlessly. And look at the size of that rock on her ring finger—Gibraltar has nothing on it.

  She has expensive hair—what is it that hairdressers in expensive salons actually do to hair to make it look expensive like that? She’s wearing the sort of make–up that looks like you’re wearing none at all, and she has that smell about her, not quite perfume, but something more intrinsic, like cleanliness, like dew. She smells like she bathes in the morning dew. It probably costs about eighty quid a bottle.

  Nadine looks at Dig. She hasn’t seen him this excited for years. Every angle of his body is directed towards Delilah, his elbows, his knees, his head. Nadine may as well not be here, may as well not exist. She’s a big ginger gooseberry again.

  They’re talking about Delilah’s marriage, about the life she’s been living for the past twelve years. She’s not called Delilah Lillie any more, she’s called, somewhat unfortunately and much to Nadine’s delight, Delilah Biggins. Her husband is called Alex. He owns a small chain of brasserie-style restaurants in the north-west and they live together in neo-Georgian splendour in Chester. When he’s not overseeing his empire, he’s to be found on the golf course, squash court and cricket pitch. They have three horses and a swimming pool. Every couple of months Alex pays for Delilah to fly to New York first class and slips her his platinum credit card. She shops till she drops and is the envy of every other woman in Chester.

  It all sounds pretty dull to Nadine, but Dig’s riveted by every word, like it was ten years’ worth of Brookside storylines. But then, just as Nadine is about to nod off, the conversation suddenly changes direction in a most dramatic manner. All is not as it seems. Delilah admits, falteringly and nervously, her eyes glazing over with tears, that she’s left Alex. She’s taken off and left him in bed, with just a note to wake up to, which Nadine thinks is pretty cruel. But then, any man stupid enough to marry a heart-hazard like Delilah gets what he deserves, quite frankly. I mean, you can tell just by looking at her that she’s going to leave you one day.

  She doesn’t expand on the subject and Dig doesn’t ask her any of the right questions, about why she’s left her husband and come back to London, but then he’s a boy. She’d ask them herself but she’s in too much of a mood to give her voice that inquisitive, interested edge it needs to form questions.

  And that’s another thing. You’d have thought, wouldn’t you, that Dig would be demanding some sort of explanation right now, demanding to know why exactly Delilah disappeared and left him all those years ago, why she broke his heart into so many pieces that he’d never found them all to glue back together again? You’d have thought he’d be a bit frosty with her about the way she behaved back then, but he’s not. He’s acting like none of that ever happened, like everything is all right.

  Nadine makes little peaks in the froth on her coffee with a fingertip and looks around her. The place is packed full with people wearing expensive clothes, pink-cheeked after a bracing walk on Primrose Hill with their labs and retrievers, mud caked on to the soles of their Russell & Bromley walking boots, people who have so much money that they don’t so much as blanch at the outrageous £4.50 they’re charging for a rather slim slice of chocolate truffle cake in this place. Nadine decides that she doesn’t like anyone in this tea-shop, that she doesn’t, in fact, like Primrose Hill with its faux-village atmosphere, and its pretend pubs and its overpriced everything. Primrose Hill, concludes Nadine, does not belong in Inner London—it is too small and too twee and too genteel, and it should be disassembled piece by piece and taken to Esher, where it would make a charming side-street.

  ‘So,’ Dig is asking Delilah, ‘how long have you been back?’

  ‘I just arrived this morning, believe it or not. Got the first train down.’

  ‘Really?’ smiles Dig, the look of a man blessed with fantastic serendipity spreading across his face. ‘And where are you staying? At your mum’s?’

  Delilah takes a slurp of her filter coffee—black, no sugar—and puts the cup down, shaking her head. ‘Oh God no,’ she says. ‘I haven’t spoken to her since I was eighteen. I moved out and went to stay with my cousin. Remember? Marina. That’s where I’m staying now. Just around the corner, up there.’ She indicates the road opposite. ‘Elsworthy Road,’ she says.

  Why? Nadine wants to scream. Why did you move out when you were eighteen? Why did you move in with your cousin? Why didn’t you tell Dig you were going? And why the fuck isn’t Dig asking you these questions?

  ‘Very nice,’ says Dig, nodding respectfully in appreciation of the fact that Delilah’s cousin is obviously rolling in it and probably itching to ask her how another member of her Gospel Oak estate family found their way into the bo
urgeoisie. ‘Very nice.’ He controls himself. ‘And what are your plans? What are you going to do with yourself here?’

  Delilah shrugs and looks anxious. This is obviously a tricky question for her to answer. Please, thinks Nadine, please say you’re just here for a couple of days, you’re very busy, people to see, places to go. Please say that you probably won’t be seeing us again because you’re going to New York tomorrow.

  But Nadine already has this very strange, uncomfortable feeling that this isn’t to be the last time they see Delilah, that Delilah is, in fact, going to be around one hell of a lot, a portent that is borne out seconds later when Delilah smiles, tucks her Pantene-girl-eat-your-heart-out hair behind her ears with two beautifully manicured sets of fingertips and says, ‘Well, I was just going to hang out, really, you know, catch up with old friends, that sort of thing.’

  Dig’s face performs a theatre of ecstatic emotions. ‘Excellent,’ he smiles, ‘that’s fantastic.’ The two of them stop for a second then and beam, positively beam, at each other. Nadine wants to be sick.

  Dig offers Delilah a cigarette. She waves it away. ‘Not smoking any more?’ he asks, surprised. In both of their minds, Delilah Lillie invented smoking.

  She grimaces. ‘Given up,’ she says. ‘Only twelve days. Don’t want to talk about it.’ Dig sucks in his breath in appreciation of the enormity of her sacrifice and withdraws the offered packet. ‘It’s just so great to see you,’ he grins.

  ‘I’m so glad I bumped into you, too,’ smiles Delilah. ‘I felt a bit lost and lonely when I arrived and then I ran into you two and now I feel much better.’

  Nadine grits her teeth, hates Delilah for a moment, hates her and wants her dead, which makes her feel like a total bitch, the biggest bitch that ever lived. Which makes her feel ugly, makes her feel like a wicked, wart-faced witch, which in turn makes her feel like Delilah is some flaxen-haired, flawless, fucking fairy-princess type, which makes her hate her even more. Nadine smiles grimly and traces a happy face into the froth on top of her coffee, the coffee she hasn’t actually drunk yet, the coffee she is feeling far too discomfited even to contemplate drinking.

  ‘You two,’ Delilah is saying, ‘you two have changed so much. I would never have recognized you. Especially you, Deen. You’re a…you’re a babe, you really are. You’re absolutely gorgeous. I love all these little clips in your hair. And I love your fingernails’—she takes Nadine’s turquoise talons in her hands and examines them—‘how do you get them to grow so long? Mine always split down here.’ She indicates the pink of her perfect nails.

  ‘Jelly cubes,’ says Nadine, ‘I eat jelly cubes every day. Rowntrees, lemon and lime flavour.’ And she’s thinking, Oh no, don’t do this, Delilah. Don’t do this whole trying-to-make-me-like-you thing. I don’t want to like you. I can’t like you. I’ve never liked you. However many conversations we have about nails and cellulite and facial hair and cabbage-soup diets, I am not going to like you. I am never going to like you because no matter how much you might have changed, I will never be able to forget the way you treated me at school, the way you disregarded me and belittled me and broke my heart.

  I know what women like you can do to normal, sane men. Women like you have ultimate power. Women like you just have to walk into a room for all hell to let loose and for all men to become retarded. Women like you can take the heart of a warm, trusting and gentle man like Dig and make mincemeat out of it. And I am always going to resent you, Delilah, because you’re beautiful, and because the beauty you possess is something that no woman can ever buy, from a beauty counter, from a plastic surgeon or from South Molton Street. I can’t compete with you on any level. I am deeply threatened by you and I don’t want you in my life. I don’t want you in my nice, safe, happy world, where I am secure and where I know my place. It has taken me a decade and a half to emerge from your shadow, to become desirable in my own right. Call me selfish, thinks Nadine, call me an egocentric bitch, call me insecure and call me paranoid, I don’t care. I just want you out of London, out of my life and out of Dig’s life.

  ‘So, you’re a photographer, are you?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ replies Nadine, ‘that’s me. I take pictures.’ She tells Delilah briefly about the exotic locations and the financial rewards.

  ‘Wow,’ says Delilah, genuinely impressed, ‘that must be amazing. I remember talking once about what we all wanted to be when we grew up and you said that you wanted to be married and writing cookbooks, or something, wasn’t it? And look at you now. So glamorous and gorgeous and successful, with an exciting job and your own place. God, Deen’—she reaches out and squeezes Nadine’s hand—‘I’m so jealous of you, I really am.’

  Oh stop it, thinks Nadine. Just stop it. You’re not jealous at all, you’re just trying to make me feel better about not being as beautiful as you. You’ve got tons of money and satin hair and flawless skin—how could you possibly be jealous of me?

  Nadine forces a saccharine smile and pats Delilah’s hand back. ‘Oh, don’t be silly,’ she says, wishing she could rise above all the small-minded, mean-spirited jealousy she’s feeling. She looks across the table at Dig, trying to remind herself how to be nice—he always brings out the best in her—but he’s lost in Delilahland. The Dig Ryan she knows and loves is nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Well’—Delilah is knocking back the dregs of her coffee and making moves towards her handbag—‘I’d better get back. I’ve left my dog alone with a hundred starving cats. They’ve probably eaten him by now.’ She smiles and drops a pile of coins on to the bill. She fixes them both with a deeply sincere gaze, brimming with warmth and good feeling, and says, ‘I hope I’ll see you both again soon. It would so nice if we could get together some time.’

  ‘Yeah—definitely,’ oozes Dig, ‘definitely,’ and Nadine can tell he’s mentally reorganizing his entire diary to make sure there’s no question that they’ll be able to ‘get together some time’.

  ‘Actually,’ he says, reaching into the pocket of his black leather coat and pulling out a scrappy piece of paper and a Biro, ‘let me take your number at your cousin’s. I’m not up to much this week. Maybe we could go out one night. You know. Catch up on old times.’

  No, thinks Nadine. No. Please. Not again. This can’t be happening again.

  ‘That would be great, Dig. Thanks.’

  Nadine’s heart sinks.

  They all exchange phone numbers, they schmooze all over each other and act delighted (which Nadine is, because Delilah’s finally leaving) and then go their separate ways.

  Nadine watches Delilah struggling across the road with her excess of carrier bags, trying to keep the curtain of hair out of her eyes with the back of one hand, and feels a brief flickering second of sympathy for her. The hairs on her arms stand up on end and a painful little lump forms in the back of her throat. Poor Delilah, she thinks, poor old Delilah.

  Delilah gets to the other side of the road, whereupon a very handsome man who’s just climbed out of a shiny red Lotus Elise approaches her and begins charmingly to unburden her of her shopping. ‘Oh thank you, thank you so much,’ she can just make out Delilah cooing to the gorgeous stranger. ‘Really, you shouldn’t have, you’re too kind.’

  The hairs on Nadine’s arms fall flat, the lump in her throat deflates and her hands ball themselves up into tight little knots of hatred.

  SIX

  On Monday morning, Dig gets to work at half past ten.

  Late, by anybody else’s standards, but perfectly acceptable by his, especially considering that he had to pick his car up from those thieving shysters in Tufnell Park on his way in.

  Johnny-Boy Records is housed in a dinky little pink, stucco-fronted cottage in a Camden Town mews; it used to be Toby’s home, when he started the label back in 1989, but now Toby lives in a five-bedroom house in Primrose Hill with his ex-model wife, their three strangely named children and a South African nanny, and the cottage is used as an office.

  The inside hasn’t changed much since
Toby lived here; it’s very cosy and homely. The floors are all distressed reclaim boards and threadbare kilims. There are table lamps and pictures and plants and flowers all over the place. In reception there is a widescreen Nicam TV and a big squidgy jacquard sofa where they all sit and watch Neighbours every day with their feet up on the Balinese coffee table. A wrought-iron spiral staircase leads to a galleried area overhead and from there another leads on to a tiny roof terrace where everyone eats their lunch in summer.

  Dig loves the fact that his workplace is nicer than his flat. It’s just one of many reasons why he’s stayed here so long. Seven years, in fact. He’s been here since he was twenty-three. He started off as an A&R assistant and was promoted to A&R manager the following year when his boss left to form a band of his own. Not that he actually manages anyone. He has the odd work-experience student in for a few weeks here and there, but on the whole, he’s a one-man department and he likes it that way.

  The other reasons why he’s stayed here so long are:

  It’s a five-minute drive from home and he has a dedicated parking space

  Nobody bats an eyelid when he gets in late

  He gets on extraordinarily well with Toby, who is less like a boss and more like a second dad—well, one he can get stoned with, anyway

  He’s allowed to smoke at his desk, whenever and whatever he likes

  He can spend an entire day making personal phone calls and no one even notices

  He hardly has to do any work.

  Dig didn’t use to be this slack. He used to be a workaholic. He’d be in at nine, work through lunch, stay till seven and then hit the trail, going to two or three gigs every night, because in those days Dig was on a mission—a mission to find the ‘next big thing’. A label the size of Johnny-Boy Records could easily support itself with a few reasonably successful acts, the occasional Top Fifty album. But Dig wanted more. And in 1995 he found more: Fruit. The biggest sensation of the year. He found them playing in a pub in Cheltenham, of all places, back in the days when he could be bothered to go outside the M25 to see bands playing in pubs. They were eighteen years old, good-looking and brilliant. Their first single went to number one and became the summer anthem, booming out of Oxford Street jeans shops and fairground rides all over the country for weeks on end. The first album went straight in at number one and stayed in the Top Fifty for nearly a year. They were on the front cover of all the music papers and appeared on every pop show on the telly.