2000 - Thirtynothing Read online

  ‘Who said? Who said married women don’t count? That wasn’t in the rules.’

  ‘Oh Jesus, Dig. Whatever. I really don’t care any more. You go out on your stupid date with stupid Delilah and you have fun.’

  ‘OK,’ Dig says tersely, ‘but what about restaurants? Where shall I take her?’

  ‘What’s wrong with the Bengal Lancer?’

  ‘I can’t take her there.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because—because she’s Delilah, that’s why. I want to take her somewhere special.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Dig, I can’t think of anywhere.’

  ‘Fine,’ Dig says angrily, ‘just fine. I’ll sort it out myself.’ And then he hangs up, suddenly, leaving Nadine standing there in her studio, the barren receiver hanging limply from her hand and a film of tears forming rapidly over her eyes.

  SEVEN

  People come to London from all over the world to dip into its enormous wealth of diverse cuisines. There are Korean, Vietnamese, Turkish, Brazilian, Burmese and Havanese restaurants everywhere you look. There are restaurants with Michelin stars and infamous chefs, restaurants with views over the Thames and the whole of London, restaurants with live music and conveyor-belted sushi. You can sip minted Algerian tea from tiny coloured glasses or chew on the ribs of a large cow with a bib around your neck. You can eat ostrich in Chiswick and octopus in Shepherds Bush. You can, in fact, eat anything you want, wherever you want, whenever you want.

  So why was the only restaurant that Dig could think of in the whole extraordinary culinary melting-pot of London the Bengal Lancer on Kentish Town Road?

  The Bengal Lancer was his favourite restaurant, without a doubt. The proprietor, Archad, was friendly and welcoming, the naan bread was the fluffiest in all of London and, most importantly, they served until midnight. But come on—he couldn’t take Delilah Lillie there for dinner, could he?

  He’d finally called her at midday. Her phone number had sat next to his phone, burning a hole into his consciousness all morning, and he had hardly been able to contain himself. They’d had a nice little chat and he’d suggested Tuesday night, for dinner, and she’d said yes, just like that. She’d actually said, ‘Yes, that would be lovely,’ and then commented at least three more times during the conversation, how much she was looking forward to it.

  And then something vaguely surreal had happened. He’d been half-way through a sentence when Delilah had suddenly interjected with, ‘Oh my God, I have to go—the cats are holding Digby hostage in the corner—I think one of them’s got a gun.’

  Eh? ‘Digby?’

  ‘Yeah, my dog, Digby. I named him after you. Ha. Look. Phone me tomorrow. Let me know where to meet you, or whatever. OK?’

  ‘Er, yeah,’ Dig had said, losing his composure, ‘OK.’

  And then she’d gone. Hung up. Left him feeling…all…all…Digby? Digby? She’d named her dog Digby? Jesus. I mean, in one way, he supposed, it was flattering. She’d obviously remembered him, thought about him over the years. But…a dog? He felt emasculated. God, he hoped it was a big dog, a Rotty or a Ridgeback. He’d die, just die, if it was something small and yappy. He was discomfited by the image of this dog, Digby, being held hostage by a few cats. He was obviously some kind of a wimp, a poofter dog.

  It had taken Dig a while to get over the fact that Delilah had named her dog after him, before he started feeling his usual chirpy self again. It’s a compliment, he’d persuaded himself, I’ll bet she loves her dog more than anything, take it as a compliment.

  And then he’d started feeling excited, incredibly excited. This was all just amazing, the timing, the coincidence. Within minutes of his conversation with Nadine in the café on Saturday, within minutes of making that bet with her, a bet which, in reality, neither of them had any intention of or capacity for honouring, who should stumble so fortuitously into his path but the only thirty-year-old woman on the face of the earth who he could ever seriously contemplate being with. Delilah Lillie. The Love of His Life. The One Who Got Away. It was like a…sign, like a message from God. Not only did he get to spend an evening with a woman who wouldn’t look out of place on the cover of Marie-Claire, but he also got a hundred quid. Result.

  Delilah could have let him down, been a disappointment after all these years. She could have been fat, or old-looking, or happily married with loads of children. She could’ve been rude or stand offish. But she wasn’t—she was even better looking than he remembered, she was obviously unhappily married, had no children and was actually much nicer than she’d ever been when they were together—brighter, breezier, friendlier and easier to get on with.

  ‘You choose,’ she’d said, when Dig asked her where she fancied eating, ‘you know London better than me. I haven’t got a clue where’s good these days.’ Which was funny really, because neither had Dig.

  And then Nadine had phoned with her incredible news about the Ruckham’s calendar—jammy cow, she always landed on her feet—and he’d tried asking her for a recommendation for a good restaurant: she was a walking Time Out Food Guide. And now he really wished he hadn’t. She’d been awful. Really bitchy and unpleasant, not like her usual self, at all. God knows what was the matter with her. She’d just been given the best news of her career—£40,000! What Dig could do with £40,000—and she seemed just miserable. It seemed like she had something against Delilah, for some strange reason. It made no sense to Dig, no sense at all.

  So he was now desperately scanning the food pages of the Evening Standard hoping that good old Fay Maschler would provide him with some little gem of inspiration, some wonderful Moroccan place just up the road from him that he’d never realized existed, twinkling with stained glass and brass filigree, scented with cumin and rose-water and only about fifteen pounds a head.

  But no. Not today. Today she was reviewing some stark Modern European place, in Victoria of all places, that looked cold and echoey and was, anyway, horribly expensive, and a new restaurant in Mayfair that was the latest offering from one of those infamous Michelin-starred very loud chef-types. So that was out of the question—outrageously overpriced and you’d probably have had to have booked it back in January or something to secure a table.

  Just as he was losing hope of ever finding somewhere to take Delilah, Nick Jeffries, PR Superstar and general wanker, wandered into Dig’s office. Not that you could really call it ‘his office’, as such—Johnny-Boy Records was very lateral and non-hierarchical and flat-structured and all those other things that it was so fashionable for offices to be these days—it was more of an alcove, really.

  Nick knew Meg Mathews. He knew everyone. He was always hanging out in hotel bars in the centre of town where models drank things with cranberry juice and where Madonna had been seen. (Was there anywhere left in London, apart from Dig’s flat, where Madonna hadn’t been seen?) He knew other people, too, like trendy novelists and conceptual artists and DJs and stylists. He would know about things like restaurants. He was bound to know a cool place that Dig could take Delilah.

  ‘Where can I take a girl, tomorrow night, dinner, not too expensive, not too spicy, not too far away?’

  ‘What sort of girl?’

  ‘Sort of girl I’ve been in love with since I was fourteen who looks like a goddess.’ Nick had a low boredom threshold so any attempts at conversation had to be succinct and to the point.

  ‘Hmmmm’—Nick scratched at his bumfluff and perched his skinny, combats-clad butt on the edge of Dig’s table—‘she in love with you?’

  ‘She was. Not any more. Least, I don’t think she is.’

  ‘You still in love with her?’

  ‘Don’t know. Might be.’

  ‘Hmmmm.’

  ‘I was thinking Moroccan.’

  ‘Yeah…Momo. Heddon Street. Not what it was, but you could probably get a table.’

  ‘Expensive?’

  ‘Yeah. Right. Got ya. What about sushi?’

  ‘Nah. She’s been living in the country. She won’t
want raw fish.’

  ‘Got it.’ Nick clicked his fingers, reached across Dig, grabbed his phone and began punching in numbers.

  PR people always did this, Dig had noticed, brought third parties into conversations via the phone. They always had someone else’s phone number on the tips of their fingers and they always used it.

  ‘Freddie,’ Nick was saying to him, ‘mate of mine. Just opened a place in…oh, yeah, hi, Freddie. Nick. Listen. You got a table free tomorrow night? Two people? Great. Dig. Thanks, mate. Take care. You too. Tomorrow. All sorted.’ Dig started as he realized that Nick had put the phone down and was now talking to him again. ‘Eight o’clock. Exmouth Market. It’s called ex. He’ll give you a good table. He’ll give you a good night. Don’t worry. She’ll love it,’ he said with a wink and a minimal grin.

  ‘Yeah, but what sort of food is it?’ asked Dig nervously. Nick didn’t like too many questions.

  ‘God, I dunno. Meat. Or something. It’s a meat place.’

  And then he was gone. Leaving Dig with a hundred unanswered questions, like, where in Exmouth Market? What sort of meat? How much? What sort of atmosphere? ex sounded a bit poncey, not much like his kind of place. But…oh well…it was more than he’d been able to come up with, wasn’t it? And it was bound to be trendy, and at least Delilah would be able to tell people that she’d been to some new place in Clerkenwell, before anyone else, while it was still hot. Yeah. He’d go. He’d take Delilah to ex.

  It couldn’t be that bad, could it?

  EIGHT

  It is.

  That bad.

  Jesus. Look at this place. Dig isn’t actually sure whether they’ve even finished building it yet. Or is it supposed to look like this?

  A pale Spanish girl with red lipstick has just led them to their table. It’s an incredibly big table, stretching almost the entire length and width of the small concrete room. It’s fashioned from one seamless piece of oak, limewashed and varnished to a glassy finish and must have cost a small fortune. It is laid with immense white china plates and chunky tumblers. It is also the only table in the room. There is a large chandelier overhanging the table constructed from what look like—sun-bleached bones? Extremely long sun-bleached bones. The shades covering the unpleasantly high-voltage bulbs appear to be pterodactyl eggshells, fissured all over with small cracks. Very Jurassic Park. Very bright. Very weird.

  They are seated next to each other (thankfully—Dig had imagined for one worrying moment that they were going to be seated at opposite ends of this huge table, smiling regretfully at each other all night) somewhere near the middle of the table.

  ‘So,’ says Dig to the translucent Spanish girl as she helps him slide his pony-skin-clad chair towards the table, ‘expecting a busy night tonight?’

  ‘This is only our first week, you know?’ she replies somewhat defensively, having obviously read sarcasm into Dig’s innocent question. ‘First week is always quiet.’

  ‘Yeah. Of course.’ Dig smiles nervously. ‘Of course it is.’

  She disappears then and Dig turns towards Delilah who is examining her cutlery with fascination. The fork is designed to look like a bird’s leg, all gnarled and knobbly with talons for tines. The knife looks like some kind of feather thing, with vicious serrations, and the spoon is an egg, on the end of a twig. Delilah grimaces at Dig and puts them back down on the table. ‘Weird,’ she mouths, silently. Dig couldn’t agree more.

  There is no atmosphere in the place. Not one drop of it. Nothing even vaguely resembling an atmosphere is present here, in any form. Dig is suddenly blinded by the extent of his own stupidity to ever have taken a recommendation from Nick. I mean, honestly. He should have known Nick wouldn’t have been thinking about what was best for him, for Dig, he’d just have been thinking how cool it was that he had one mate who needed customers for his new restaurant and another mate who needed somewhere to eat and how cool it was that he’d managed to put the two of them together. It would have given him a great sense of satisfaction. What the hell would Nick heart-of-an-anaconda Jeffries know about romance, about an atmosphere conducive to conversation, for God’s sake? Nick didn’t have conversations; he had public relations…

  Still, thinks Dig, may as well make the most of it, the most of being alone in a room with Delilah Lillie. He turns to her and grins. ‘So,’ he says, looking around at their strangely unsettling surroundings, ‘here’s a bit of hip and happening London for you.’

  ‘Looks more like Jeffrey Dahmer’s basement to me,’ whispers Delilah, and Dig sniggers, thinking that he’s never heard Delilah crack a joke before.

  He would love to launch into a conversation now—there’s so much to talk about, so many questions to ask—but he can’t because this place has an echo, and that Spanish girl is just standing there staring into space, and how the hell can you start having a deeply personal and intimate conversation when there’s a bunch of old bones looming over your head and thirty empty places at your table and no music, anyway?

  Dig has already explained to Delilah that he has no idea what the food is like at this place but that he has been told it has a meat ‘bias’. Luckily for him, Delilah hasn’t turned vegetarian in the years since school and sounded very pleased at the prospect. ‘Great,’ she said, ‘I love meat.’

  The way she said the word ‘meat’ raised a sweat on Dig’s neck. ‘Good,’ he’d managed to squeak, ‘that’s good.’

  Dig wishes they had a menu or a wine list or something that he could look at, something to do. He smiles hopefully at the waitress, who immediately snaps out of her reverie and almost runs towards them. ‘Yes?’ she demands, defensively again, obviously preparing for a complaint of some kind.

  ‘Er—I wondered if we could maybe have a look at a wine list, maybe? And a menu? If possible. Thank you.’ He grins, apprehensively, hoping she won’t take his request the wrong way.

  She positively beams at them then. Her mouth splits open from ear to ear, revealing a large set of intensely white teeth adorned with a small smudge of her lipstick. And then she shakes her head. Still smiling, she says, ‘No.’

  Dig decides he must have misheard her. ‘Sorry,’ he says, returning her wide smile.

  ‘No menus. You are at home tonight. You understand?’

  Dig and Delilah shake their heads slowly.

  ‘ex is our home. You,’ she points at them, ‘are our guests. Chef is your host. This…’—she indicates the table—‘is our dinner table. This is like dinner party. You see?’

  Dig and Delilah nod slowly.

  ‘So. Chef has prepared one meal, four courses, for his guests and our sommelier will give you wine which will complement the food of the chef. And you will eat and you will drink and then, you will pay!’ She has brightened considerably by this point. ‘It is brilliant new concept!’ she trills. ‘So. You are comfortable?’

  They nod again, and she smiles again. ‘Sommelier will be with you soon,’ she says, before walking to the counter and going back into a trance.

  Dig and Delilah exchange looks and shrug. Dig is imagining how pissed off she must be about him bringing her here and is just about to embark upon a nervous apology, try and explain about Nick and how this wasn’t really his idea, and how they could leave if she wanted and how dreadful he is to have dragged her all the way out here to this awful communist-style place where their basic right to freedom of choice is being withheld, when he suddenly realizes that she’s smiling.

  ‘Damn,’ she says, theatrically, ‘I feel so rude. I should have brought our host a box of Black Magic.’ Delilah begins giggling like a naughty kid.

  Dig is confused for a second and then realizes with wonder that Delilah has cracked another joke. He sniggers and joins in. ‘Wonder where they’ve taken our coats? D’you reckon they’ve put them on a bed upstairs?’

  Delilah giggles even more and then pulls a serious face and pretends to get up from her seat. ‘Just going to see if he needs a hand in the kitchen,’ she says, before laughing uncontr
ollably and collapsing back into her chair.

  ‘Here,’ says Dig, leaning in to Delilah’s ear, ‘I hope we’re getting Viennetta for pudding.’

  They both dissolve into helpless laughter then, and the ice, it seems, is well and truly broken. Delilah Lillie, circa 1999, has a sense of humour! The Spanish girl finally has the sense to put some music on, lifting the atmosphere an iota above ‘morgue’, and Dig turns to Delilah, breathes in a lungful of her beauty and holds it inside, next to his heart, which is close to bursting with joy.

  NINE

  Nadine slouches on her cracked-brown-leather Deco sofa in her marabou-trimmed fifties-starlet negligé and her Bart Simpson slippers, sipping Cadbury’s Highlights from one of her South Park mugs and trying desperately not to think about what might be happening with Dig and Delilah tonight. She’s failing miserably.

  She looks at the time display on her video: 12.20. Which means that it’s actually 9.45 a.m. Because that display’s been wrong since 1994.

  *.45 a.m. They’re probably eating pudding by now. Nadine’s mind fills up with images of Dig spoon-feeding strawberries into Delilah’s soft, red welcoming mouth and laughing as a pink trickle of juice dribbles seductively down her chin. She imagines him in his new Jigsaw Menswear jumper, the camel cashmere one with the V-neck which she helped him choose and which he looks so cuddly in, and his big leather coat which makes him look chunkier than he is. It’s his best outfit of the moment, his special-occasion outfit, and he’s bound to be wearing it tonight. He’d have made an extra-special effort tonight, polished his teeth, perfumed his neck, deodorized his trainers, combed his eyebrow, shined his hair. She knows what he’s like.

  Nadine feels awful. She still can’t get over the way she behaved yesterday on the phone to Dig. She still can’t believe that she’s fallen out with him, that he hung up on her, that they argued. It’s all so out of character. What must Dig be thinking? she wonders. What must he be thinking of me? Nadine has always been his equal, someone he credits with a good, orderly, male rationale, someone he holds in high esteem in terms of her lack of what he sees as overtly female traits such as bitchiness, gossip-mongering, excessive vanity and general cloying girliness. He’s always told her that she has just the right balance of oestrogen and testosterone, but for a few awful, poisonous moments she’d let her oestrogen wear the trousers and she’d been bitchy and catty and out of control.