Camden Town and Primrose Hill

"ATTENTION PLEASE! Can I have your attention? Attention everyone? Stop talking, stop talking, stop talking. Please? Please? Thank you. Right I just want to go through today's menu if I may. First of all the so-called 'specials'. We've got a sweetcorn chowder and a turkey chimi-changa."

"Now it's Monday today," continued Scott. "Should be nice and quiet, so I want this place spotless. I've checked the rota, and Ian, you're on toilets."

"Turkey? In July?" said Ian Whitehead from the bar, where he was cutting lime wedges to jam into the necks of bottles of beer.

The other staff scoffed. "Why is it always me?" moaned Ian.

"Because you do it so beautifully," said his best friend Emma Morley, and Ian took the opportunity to throw an arm around her hunched shoulders, jokily wielding a knife in a light-hearted downwards stabbing motion.

"And when you two have finished, Emma, can you come and see me in my office please?" said Scott.

The other staff sniggered insinuatingly, Emma disentangled herself from Ian, and Rashid the bartender pressed play on the greasy tape deck behind the bar, "La Cucaracha", the cockroach, a joke that wasn't funny anymore, repeated until the end of time.

"That is correct."

"I'm sorry, Scott, really. Congratulations, well done, really --" She stopped short, because she realised what was coming next.

"Called Hail Caesar's?"

"You are?"

"Head office have asked me to head up the new branch of Hail Caesar's in Ealing."

Scott lit a cigarette and Emma hoisted herself onto the bar stool opposite his large, untidy desk. A wall of boxes filled with vodka, tequila and cigarettes -- the stock deemed most "nickable" -- blocked out the July sunlight in a small dark room that smelt of ashtrays and disappointment.

"The point is --" He interlocked his fingers and leant forward on the desk, as this was something that he'd seen businessmen do on television, and felt a little aphrodisiac rush of power. "They've asked me to appoint my own replacement as manager, and that's what I wanted to talk to you about. I want someone who isn't going anywhere. Someone reliable who isn't going to run off to India without giving proper notice or drop it all for some exciting job. Someone I can rely onto stick around here for a couple of years and really devote themselves to… Emma, are you… are you crying?"

Scott kicked his feet up onto the desk. "The fact is, I'm leaving."

"Why not Mussolini's?"

Scott looked hurt. "Give me a break, will you, Emma?"

"They're going to do to Italian what they've done to Mexican."

"What's Hail Caesar's?"

"What, fuck it up?"

"Big new chain of contemporary Italians."

"So I'll come straight out with it. Take a seat."

Emma shielded her eyes with both hands. "Sorry, Scott, it's just you've caught me at a bad time, that's all."

"I think you were telling me that my life was going nowhere," and she began to laugh and cry at the same time. She grabbed a third piece of kitchen paper and wadded it against her mouth.

Scott frowned, stalled between compassion and irritation. "Here --" He yanked a roll of coarse blue kitchen paper from a catering pack. "Sort yourself out --" and he tossed the roll across the desk so that it bounced off Emma's chest. "Is it something I said?"

Scott waited until her shoulders had stopped heaving. "So are you interested in the job or not?"

"I've lost my place now, you bursting into tears like that."

"No, no, no, it's just a personal, private thing, just boils up every now and then. So embarrassing." She pressed two wads of rough blue paper against her eyes. "Sorry, sorry, sorry, you were saying."

"You mean to say --" She placed her hand on a twenty-litre tub of Thousand Island Dressing "-- all this could one day be mine?"

Emma laughed once. "Hardly. Scott, it's nothing, you just caught me at a low ebb, that's all." She shook her head vigorously. "See, all gone, right as rain. Let's forget it."

"De-pressed." Scott frowned as if hearing the word for the first time.

"You know. Bit blue."

"So what do you think? About being manager?"

"So why the waterworks then?"

"Just I've been a little… depressed that's all."

Scott smiled benignly and nodded. "Go on then! Take a break --" He stretched an arm towards the door, adding with infinite compassion: "Go get yourself some nachos."

"Can I think about it? Tell you tomorrow?"

"Right. I see." He contemplated putting a paternal arm around her, but it would mean climbing over a ten-gallon drum of mayonnaise, so instead he leant further across the desk. "Is it… boy trouble?"

"And you've done it really well, Scott --"

"And I appreciate the offer."

"The money's adequate, you'd never have to clean the toilets again --"

"Emma, if you don't want the job, just say, but I have been doing it for four years now --"

In the empty staff room, Emma glared at the plate of steaming cheese and corn chips as if it was an enemy that must be defeated.

Standing suddenly, she crossed to Ian's locker and plunged her hand into the densely packed denim until she found some cigarettes. She took one, lit it, then lifted her spectacles and inspected her eyes in the cracked mirror, licking her finger to remove the tell-tale smears. Her hair was long these days, styleless in a colour that she thought of as "Lank Mouse". She pulled a strand from the scrunchie that held it in place and ran finger and thumb along its length, knowing that when she washed it she would turn the shampoo grey. City hair. She was pale from too many late shifts, and plump too; for some months now she had been putting skirts on over her head. She blamed all those refried beans; fried then fried again. "Fat girl," she thought, "stupid fat girl" this being one of the slogans currently playing in her head, along with "A Third of Your Life Gone" and "What's the Point of Anything?"

It wasn't that she hadn't tried. The idea of a career in publishing had floated itself. Her friend Stephanie Shaw had got a job on graduation, and it had transformed her. No more pints of lager and black for Stephanie Shaw. These days she drank white wine, wore neat little suits from Jigsaw and handed out Kettle Chips at dinner parties. On Stephanie's advice Emma had written letters to publishers, to agents, then to bookshops, but nothing. There was a recession on and people were clinging to their jobs with grim determination. She thought about taking refuge in education, but the government had ended student grants, and there was no way she could afford the fees. There was voluntary work, for Amnesty International perhaps, but rent and travel ate up all her money, Loco Caliente ate up all her time and energy. She had a fanciful notion that she might read novels aloud to blind people, but was this an actual job, or just something that she'd seen in a film? When she had the energy, she would find out. For now she would sit at the table and glare at her lunch.

The city had defeated her, just like they said it would. Like some overcrowded party, no-one had noticed her arrival, and no-one would notice if she left.

Emma's mid-twenties had brought a second adolescence even more self-absorbed and doom-laden than the first one. "Why don't you come home, sweetheart?" her mum had said on the phone last night, using her quavering, concerned voice, as if her daughter had been abducted. "Your room's still here. There's jobs at Debenhams" and for the first time she had been tempted.

Once, she had thought she could conquer London. She had imagined a whirl of literary salons, political engagement, larky parties, bittersweet romances conducted on Thames embankments. She had intended to form a band, make short films, write novels, but two years on the slim volume of verse was no fatter, and nothing really good had happened to her since she'd been baton-charged at the Poll Tax Riots.

There is laughter

Hard and Cold

The steaming variegated mess like the mess of her life Summing up all that was wrong

Like Plastic

"Time for change" comes the voice from the street.

Life.

There are only The Nachos.

Cheese, like life, has become

Outside on the Kentish Town Road

Nachos

She shuddered and gave a long groan, then laughed, shaking her head as she methodically scratched out each line, crosshatching on top of this until each word was obliterated. Soon there was so much ink that it had soaked through the paper. She turned back a page to where the blots had seeped through and glanced at what was written there.

Her

But here, in the smoky attic room

Emma stopped writing, then looked away and stared at the ceiling, as if giving someone a chance to hide. She looked back at the page in the hope of being surprised by the brilliance of what was there.

And there is no laughter in the high room.

It was the nachos that did it.

The industrial cheese had set solid like plastic, and in sudden disgust Emma pushed it away and reached into her bag, pulling out an expensive new black leather notebook with a stubby fountain pen clipped to the cover. Turning to a fresh new page of creamy white paper, she quickly began to write.

With

Edinburgh morning, 4 a. m.

Blackbirds sing outside and the Sunlight warms the curtains…

We lie in the single bed and talk about the Future, make our guesses and as he speaks I look at him, think "Handsome", stupid word, and think "might this be it? The elusive thing?"

Once more she shuddered, as if peeking beneath a bandage, and snapped the notebook shut. Good God, "the elusive thing". She had reached a turning point. She no longer believed that a situation could be made better by writing a poem about it.

Putting the notebook away, she reached for yesterday's Sunday Mirror instead and began to eat the nachos, the elusive nachos, surprised all over again at how very comforting very bad food can be.

Ian was in the doorway. "That guy's here again."

"What guy?"

"Your friend, the handsome one. He's got some girl with him." And immediately Emma knew which guy Ian was talking about.

She watched them from the kitchen, nose pressed against the greasy glass of the circular window as they slumped insolently in a central booth, sipping gaudy drinks and laughing at the menu. The girl was long and slim with pale skin, black eye make-up and black, black hair, cut short and expensively asymmetrical, her long legs in sheer black leggings and high-ankled boots. Both a little drunk, they were behaving in that self-consciously wild and reckless way that people slip into when they know they're being watched: pop-video behaviour, and Emma thought how satisfying it would be to stride out onto the restaurant floor and cosh them both with tightly packed burritos-of-the-day.

Two big hands draped on her shoulders. "Schhhhhwing," said Ian, resting his chin on her head. "Who is she?"

"She's a new one then."

"No idea." Emma rubbed at the mark her nose had made on the window. "I lose track."

"Dexter has a very short attention span. Like a baby. Or a monkey. You need to dangle something shiny in front of him." That's what this girl is, she thought: something shiny.

"He's not a bastard. He's an idiot."

"So do you think it's true what they say? About girls liking bastards."

"Do girls like idiots then?"

Dexter had stuck his cocktail umbrella behind his ear now, the girl collapsing into enchanted laughter at the genius of it.

"Certainly seems that way," said Emma. What was it, she wondered, this need to brandish his shiny new metropolitan life at her? As soon as she'd met him at the arrivals gate on his return from Thailand, lithe and brown and shaven-headed, she knew that there was no chance of a relationship between them. Too much had happened to him, too little had happened to her. Even so this would be the third girlfriend, lover, whatever, that she had met in the last nine months, Dexter presenting them up to her like a dog with a fat pigeon in his mouth. Was it some kind of sick revenge for something? Because she got a better degree than him? Didn't he know what this was doing to her, sat at table nine with their groins jammed in each other's faces?

"He asked for you."

She sighed, wiped her hands on her apron, removed the baseball cap from her head to minimise the shame and pushed the swing door open.

"Can't you go, Ian? It's your section."

Dexter stood up quickly, untangling himself from the girl's long limbs, and threw his arms around his old, old friend. "Hey there, how are you, Em? Big hug!" Since starting to work in the TV industry he had developed a mania for hugging, or for Big Hugging. The company of TV presenters had rubbed off on him, and he spoke to her now less like an old friend, more like our next very special guest.

"Emma, this --" He placed one hand on the girl's bare, bony shoulder, forming a chain between them. "This is Naomi, pronounced Gnome-y."

"So -- do you want to hear the specials or what?"

"Hey, come and join us for a margarita!" Boozy and sentimental, he tugged on Emma's hand.

"Can't, Dex, I'm working."

"Hello, Gnome-y," smiled Emma. Naomi smiled back, the drinking straw nipped tight between white teeth.

"Come on, five minutes. I want to buy you a drunk. A drink! I mean a drink."

"No reason, Em," said Dex. "I just really, really want to tip you," and Emma felt another small portion of her soul fall away.

"What I mean is, is there any way I can, you know, tip you?"

"Dexter, I told you. I'm working."

"So, Ian, can we get two, no, three of the 'Remember the Alamo' margaritas. Two or three? Em, are you joining us?"

"What?"

"Okay, in that case, do you know what? We'll leave it then. Just the bill, please, um…" Ian left and Dexter beckoned to Emma and in a low voice said, "Hey, look, is there any way I can, you know…"

Emma stared blankly. "I don't understand."

"No, no, I haven't," said Dexter. "Yes, several times," said Ian, and there was a moment of silence as they stood there, the staff and the customers.

"Dexter, you've met Ian, haven't you?" said Emma quickly.

"Tip me?"

The girl wrinkled her nose. "I don't think so!"

"Exactly. Tip you."

Ian joined them now, his notebook poised. "So shall I get you guys something to eat?" he asked convivially.

"Give you the money for the drinks."

"Why?"

On Primrose Hill, Dexter slept in the evening sun, shirt unbuttoned, hands beneath his head, a half-empty bottle of grocer's white wine warming by his side as he slipped from the hangover of the afternoon into drunkenness again. The parched yellow grass of the hill was crowded with young professional people, many straight from their offices, talking and laughing as three different stereos competed with each other, and Dexter lay in the centre of it all and dreamt about television.

The idea of being a professional photographer had been abandoned without much of a fight. He knew that he was a decent amateur, probably always would be, but to become exceptional, a Cartier-Bresson, a Capa or a Brandt, would require toil, rejection and struggle, and he wasn't sure if struggle suited him. Television, on the other hand, television wanted him right now. Why hadn't he thought of it before? Growing up there had always been a television in the home, but there was something a little unwholesome about watching the thing. Now, in the last nine months it had suddenly come to dominate his life. He was a convert, and with the passion of the new recruit he found himself getting quite emotional about the medium, as if he had finally found a spiritual home.

And no, it didn't have the arty gleam of photography or the credibility of reporting from a war zone, but TV mattered, TV was the future. Democracy in action, it touched people's lives in the most immediate way, shaped opinions, provoked and entertained and engaged far more effectively than all those books that no-one read or plays that no-one went to see. Emma could say what she liked about the Tories (Dexter was no fan either, though more for reasons of style than principle) but they had certainly shaken up the media. Until recently, broadcasting had seemed stuffy, worthy and dull; heavily unionised, grey and bureaucratic, full of bearded lifers and do-gooders and old dears pushing tea-trolleys; a sort of showbiz branch of the Civil Service. Redlight Productions, on the other hand, was part of the boom of new, youthful, privately owned independent companies wresting the means of production away from those fusty old Reithian dinosaurs. There was money in the media; the fact sang out from the primary-coloured open-plan offices with their state-of-the-art computer systems and generous communal fridges.

"I work in TV"; just saying it gave him satisfaction. He liked striding down Berwick Street to an edit-suite with a jiffy bag of videotapes, nodding at people just like him. He liked the sushi platters and the launch parties, he liked drinking from water coolers and ordering couriers and saying things like "we've got to lose six seconds". Secretly, he liked the fact that it was one of the better-looking industries, and one that valued youth. No chance, in this brave new world of TV, of walking into a conference room to find a group of sixty-two-year-olds brainstorming. What happened to TV people when they reached a certain age? Where did they go? Never mind, it suited him, as did the preponderance of young women like Naomi: hard, ambitious, metropolitan. In rare moments of self-doubt, Dexter had once worried that a lack of intellect might hold him back in life, but here was a job where confidence, energy, perhaps even a certain arrogance were what mattered, all qualities that lay within his grasp. Yes, you had to be smart, but not Emma-smart. Just politic, shrewd, ambitious.

His rise through this world had been meteoric. The woman he had met on a train in India with the glossy black bob and tiny spectacles had given him his first job as a runner, then a researcher, and now he was Assistant Producer, Asst Prod, on UP4IT, a weekend magazine programme that mixed live music and outrageous stand-up with reports on issues that "really affect young people today": STDs, drugs, dance music, drugs, police brutality, drugs. Dexter produced hyperactive little films of grim housing estates shot from crazy angles through fish-eye lenses, the clouds speeded up to a soundtrack of acid house. There was even talk of putting him in front of the cameras in the next series. He was excelling, he was flying and there seemed to be every possibility that he might make his parents proud.

Soothed by these thoughts, and on the verge of sleep, he was woken by a shadow across his face. He opened one eye, squinting up.

"Yes, because I work there. I'm laughing in the face of adversity, you're just laughing in my face!"

He loved his new flat in nearby Belsize Park, all dark wood and gunmetal, and he loved London, spread out vast and hazy before him on this St Swithin's Day, and he wanted to share all this excitement with Emma, introduce her to new possibilities, new experiences, new social circles; to make her life more like his own. Who knows, perhaps Naomi and Emma might even become friends.

"She isn't my girlfriend, and we were laughing at the menu --"

"Do what?"

"You know what! Like I'm in a zoo, you poking me with a stick, laughing --"

"I wasn't laughing at you!"

"You were laughing at where I work."

"Don't you ever, ever do that again!"

"Ow!"

"I watched you, sat straddling your girlfriend, chuckling away --"

Emma kicked him sharply in the hip.

"So? You do!"

"Em, I would never, ever --"

"Hello, beautiful."

"Well I apologise."

"That's what it feels like."

"Good." She folded her legs beneath her and sat next to him. "Now do your shirt up and pass me the bottle."

"And she really isn't my girlfriend." He fastened three low shirt buttons, waiting for her to take the bait. When she didn't, he prodded again. "We're just sleeping together every now and then, that's all."

As the possibility of a relationship had faded, Emma had endeavoured to harden herself to Dexter's indifference and these days a remark like this caused no more pain than, say, a tennis ball thrown sharply at the back of her head. These days she barely even flinched. "That's nice for you both, I'm sure." She poured wine into a plastic cup. "So if she's not your girlfriend, what do I call her?"

"I don't know. 'Lover'?"

"Doesn't that imply affection?"

"Or 'victim'. I like 'victim'." Emma lay back suddenly and squeezed her fingers awkwardly into the pockets of her jeans. "You can have that back 'n' all." She tossed a tightly wadded ten-pound note onto his chest.

"How about 'conquest'?" he grinned. "Can I say 'conquest' these days?"

"-- and slipped something into my mouth with her tongue. "What was that?" I said and she just winked and said, 'You'll find out'."

"Yes way."

"-- and I'd seen her around at the office so I went over to say hi, hello, welcome to the team, very formal, hand outstretched, and she smiled up at me, winked, put her hand on the back of my head and pulled me towards her and she --" He lowered his voice to a thrilled whisper. "-- kissed me, right?"

He sighed, and stuffed the money back into his pocket. "I apologise. Again."

"Fine," she said, and lay down beside him. "Go on then. Tell me all about it."

"It's not a tip, it's a gift."

"And cash is not a gift. If you want to buy me something, that's very nice, but not cash. It's embarrassing."

Grinning, he raised himself up on his elbows. "So we were having this wrap party at the weekend --"

Wrap party, she thought. He has become someone who goes to wrap parties.

"Dexter, listen to me. You don't tip friends."

"Kissed you, right?" said Emma, as another tennis ball struck home.

"That's yours!"

"No way."

"Little dry-roasted peanut --"

A silence followed before Emma said "Was it a peanut?"

The tennis balls were coming thick and fast now, the odd cricket ball mixed in there too. Emma stretched and concentrated on the sky. "You've got to stop letting women slip drugs into your mouth, Dex, it's unhygienic. And dangerous. One day it'll be a cyanide capsule."

"No, that was another girl."

"No, it was a pill --"

But he told her anyway, the usual narrative about dark back-rooms at clubs and late-night phone-calls and taxis across the city at dawn; the endless, eat-as-much-as-you-can buffet that was Dexter's sex-life, and Emma made a conscious effort not to listen and just watch his mouth instead. It was a nice mouth as she remembered, and if she were fearless, bold and asymmetrical like this Naomi girl she would lean over now and kiss him, and it occurred to her that she had never kissed anyone, that is never initiated the kiss. She had been kissed of course, suddenly and far too hard by drunken boys at parties, kisses that came swinging out of nowhere like punches. Ian had tried three weeks ago while she was mopping out the meat locker, looming in so violently that she had thought he was going to head-butt her. Even Dexter had kissed her once, many, many years ago. Would it really be so strange to kiss him back? What might happen if she were to do it now? Take the initiative, remove your spectacles, hold onto his head while he's still talking and kiss him, kiss him --

"I don't have bad --"

"What, like a tic-tac or something? For your bad breath?"

Dexter laughed. "So do you want to hear what happened next?"

"No --"

"Haven't you told me this story before anyway?"

She placed a finger on her chin. "Do I? Nope, I don't think so. No, I don't."

"-- so Naomi calls at three in the morning, says, 'Get in a cab. Right. Now.'"

She looked back to Dexter, still narrating his own love-life, then over his shoulder at a young couple, kissing aggressively, the woman kneeling astride the man, his arms flung back in surrender, their fingers interlocked.

She had a perfectly clear mental picture of him wiping his mouth with the back of his hand: the kiss as custard-pie. She let her head loll to the other side to watch the others on the hill. The evening light was starting to fade now, and two hundred prosperous, attractive young people were throwing frisbees, lighting disposable barbecues, making plans for the evening. Yet she felt as far removed from these people, with their interesting careers and CD players and mountain bikes, as if it had been a TV commercial, for vodka perhaps or small sporty cars. "Why don't you come home, sweetheart," her mother had said on the phone last night, "Your room's still here…"

"… basically we didn't leave the hotel room for, like, three days."

"Sorry, I stopped listening a while ago."

"What do you think she sees in you?"

"I was just saying…"

"And anyway, you've got great legs." He leant across and pinched her calves. "You're gorgeous."

Dexter shrugged, as if he didn't understand the question. "She says I'm complicated."

She knocked his elbow away so that he fell back onto the grass. "Can't believe you called me Hairy Mary." Beyond him the couple were still kissing. "Look at these two here -- don't stare." Dexter peered over his shoulder. "I can actually hear them. Over this distance, I can hear the suction. Like someone unblocking a sink. I said don't stare!"

"So wax 'em then. Hairy Mary."

"Dexter!"

"Complicated. You're like a two-piece jigsaw --" She sat and brushed the grass from her shin. "-- in thick ply," then tugged the leg of her jeans a little higher. "Look at these legs." She held a tiny twist of hair between her finger and thumb. "I've got the legs of some fifty-eight-year-old fell-walker. I look like the President of the Ramblers Association."

"Well she is, I'm just saying."

He grinned. "Take E together."

"Why would you go to a public place to behave like that? It's like a nature documentary."

"What?"

"She's alright though."

"Why not? It's a public place."

"Dexter!"

"You know some people might think it's a bit weird, this obsession you've got with being in a constant state of intercourse, some people might think it's a bit desperate and sad…"

Emma, who did feel these things, said nothing. Dexter nudged her with his elbow. "You know what we should do? Me and you?"

"Looks like she's trying to fit his entire head into her mouth. She'll dislocate her jaw if she's not careful."

"Funny, I don't feel sad. Or desperate."

"Maybe they're in love."

"Sometimes it is."

"E? What's E?" she deadpanned. "Oh, yes, I believe I read an article about that. Don't think I'm cut out for mind-bending chemicals. I left the lid off the Tipp-Ex once and I thought my shoes were trying to eat me." He laughed gratifyingly and she hid her own smile in her plastic cup. "Anyway I prefer the pure, natural high of booze."

"And is that what love looks like -- all wet mouths and your skirt rucked up?"

"So. What about you?" he said, in what she thought of as his psychiatrist voice. "Any news? Any action? Love-life-wise."

"Oh you know me. I have no emotions. I'm a robot. Or a nun. A robot nun."

"I just think you might have fun, that's all."

"Oh, I don't mind. I quite like it, getting old alone --"

"-- turning into this bluestocking."

"Is that why you're hugging everybody all the time?"

"It's very disinhibiting, E."

"No you're not. You pretend to be, but you're not."

"I am having fun. You have no idea how much fun." Lying on her back and staring at the sky, she could feel him looking at her.

Dexter wasn't sure what a bluestocking was, but nevertheless still felt a Pavlovian twinge of arousal at the word "stocking". As she talked, he pictured her wearing blue stockings before deciding blue stockings wouldn't suit her, or anyone in fact, and that stockings should really only ever be black or possibly red like those ones Naomi had worn once, before deciding that maybe he was missing the point about the phrase "blue stocking". This kind of erotic reverie occupied great swathes of Dexter's mental energy, and he wondered if perhaps Emma was right, perhaps he was a little too distracted by the sexual side of things. Hourly he was rendered idiotic by billboards, magazine covers, an inch of crimson bra-strap on a passing stranger, and it was even worse in summer. Surely it wasn't natural to feel as if he'd just got out of prison all the time? Concentrate. Someone he cared for dearly was engaged in some kind of nervous collapse, and he should concentrate on that, rather than the three girls behind her who had just started a water-fight…

"You're twenty-five, Em --"

"How about that guy?" he said.

"What guy?"

Concentrate! Concentrate. He steered his thoughts away from the subject of sex, his brain as nimble as an aircraft carrier.

"Why don't you go out with Ian?"

"Ian? What about him?"

"At work, the waiter. Looks like captain of the computer club."

"Shut up, Dexter. Ian's just a friend. Now pass the bottle, will you?"

He watched as she sat and drank the wine, which had become warm and syrupy now. While not sentimental, there were times when Dexter could sit quietly and watch Emma Morley laughing or telling a story and feel absolutely sure that she was the finest person he knew. Sometimes he almost wanted to say this out loud, interrupt her and just tell her. But this was not one of those times and instead he thought how tired she looked, sad and pale, and when she looked at the floor her chin had started to pouch. Why didn't she get contact lenses, instead of those big ugly spectacles? She wasn't a student anymore. And the velour scrunchies, she wasn't doing herself any favour with the scrunchies. What she really needed, he thought, ablaze with compassion, was someone to take her in hand and unlock her potential. He imagined a sort of montage, looking on patrician and kindly as Emma tried on a series of incredible new outfits. Yes, he really should pay Emma more attention, and he would do it too if he didn't have so much happening at present.

She shook her head slowly. "Well you'll have to join the queue, I'm afraid. My friend Ian said exactly the same thing to me while we were disinfecting the meat fridge. Except he only gave me until I was thirty-five."

She looked at him with frank disgust. "Was that a proposal, Dex?"

"How do you know that?"

"Well, I'm sort of taking that as a given."

She laughed bitterly. "And what makes you think I'd want to marry you?"

"I suppose you disagree on political grounds or something."

"Not now, just at some point if we both get desperate."

"Well no offence to Ian, but I think you should definitely hold out for the extra five years."

"You know, Em, if you're still single when you're forty I'll marry you."

She shrugged. "Wise old gypsy told me."

But in the short term, wasn't there something he could do to make her feel better about herself, lift her spirits, give her self-confidence a boost? He had an idea, and reached for her hand before announcing solemnly:

"I'm not holding out for either of you! I'm never getting married anyway."

"Em, you could be mining uranium with your teeth and that would be fine as long as you were happy. But you hate that job, you hate every single moment."

They turned back to the sky, shading into night now and after a moment she said, "Actually my career took a bit an upturn today if you must know."

"Yeah, well, we can't all work in the media, can we?" She hated the tone of her voice now, sneering and sour. Worse still, she could feel hot, irrational tears starting to form in the back of her eyes.

"What, like your career, you mean?" She shot him a look. "Sorry."

"I love my job."

"Why do I have to turn it down? Nothing wrong with restaurant work."

"Just… not for me, that's all."

Dexter sat up quickly. "In that place? You've got to turn it down."

"I can see you now. Big white dress, bridesmaids, little page boys, blue garter…" Garter. His mind snagged on the word like a fish on a hook.

"As a matter of fact, I think there are more important things in life than 'relationships'."

"You got fired?"

"Promotion." She started to laugh. "I've been offered the job of manager."

"So? Most people hate their jobs. That's why they're called jobs."

"With me, at Redlight Productions!" He was warming to the idea now. "As a researcher. You'd have to start as a runner, which is unpaid, but you'd be brilliant --"

"I mean if people treated, I don't know, nursing or social work or teaching with the same respect as they do the bloody media --"

"Hey, maybe I could get you a job!"

"Dexter, thank you, but I don't want to work in the media. I know we're all meant to be desperate to work in the media these days, like the media's the best job in the world --" You sound hysterical, she thought, jealous and hysterical. "In fact I don't even know what the media is --" Stop talking, stay calm. "I mean what do you people do all day except stand around drinking bottled water and taking drugs and photocopying your bits --"

"So be a teacher then! You'd be a fantastic teacher --"

She laughed. "What job?"

"Hey, it's hard work, Em --"

"I want you to write on the board, 'I will not give my friend careers advice!'" She was talking too loud now, shouting almost, and a long silence followed. Why was she being like this? He was only trying to help. In what way did he benefit from this friendship? He should get up and walk away, that's what he should do. They turned to look at each other at the same time.

"Sorry," he said.

"I'm not even one in three."

They regarded each other for a moment. He lay down once more, and after a moment she followed and jumped a little when she found out that he had slid his arm beneath her shoulders. There was a self-conscious moment of mutual discomfort before she turned onto her side and curled towards him. Tightening his arm around her, he spoke into the top of her head.

"Just take it, will you? Just shut up and take it."

"What?"

"You're not that boring."

"Rattling on like a… mad old cow. I'm sorry, I'm tired, bad day, and I'm sorry for being so… boring."

"Well you don't bore me." He took her hand in his. "You could never bore me. You're one in a million, Em."

"No, I'm sorry."

He kicked her foot with his. "Em?"

"I am, Dex. God, I swear, I bore myself."

"What are you sorry for?"

"You know what I can't understand? You have all these people telling you all the time how great you are, smart and funny and talented and all that, I mean endlessly, I've been telling you for years. So why don't you believe it? Why do you think people say that stuff, Em? Do you think it's a conspiracy, people secretly ganging up to be nice about you?"

"No, stay a bit longer. We'll get another bottle."

"Isn't Naomi waiting for you somewhere? Her little mouth crammed full of drugs like a little druggy hamster." She puffed out her cheeks and Dexter laughed, and she began to feel a little better.

She thought of the journey home, the Northern Line, the top deck of the N38 bus, then the long perilous walk to the flat that smelt unaccountably of fried onions. When she finally got home the central heating would probably be on and Tilly Killick would be there with her dressing-gown hanging open, clinging to the radiators like a gecko and eating pesto out of the jar. There would be teeth marks in the Irish Cheddar and thirtysomething on TV, and she didn't want to go.

"I should get home," she said, standing woozily.

She pressed her head against his shoulder to make him stop or else she felt she might cry. "You're nice. But I should go."

They stayed there for a while, then walked down to the off-licence and back up the hill to see the sun set over the city, drinking wine and eating nothing but a large bag of expensive crisps. Strange animal cries could be heard from Regents Park Zoo, and finally they were the last people on the hill.

"You could stay at mine if you wanted."

"Borrow a toothbrush?" said Dexter, as if reading her thoughts. "Sleep on the sofa?"

She imagined a night spent on the creaking black leather of Dexter's modular sofa, her head spinning with booze and confusion, before deciding that life was already complicated enough. She made a firm resolution, one of the resolutions she was making almost daily these days. No more sleepovers, no more writing poetry, no more wasting time. Time to tidy up your life. Time to start again.