2000 - Thirtynothing

by Lisa Jewell

  Outside a pink pub, she turned right, and Dig followed her down a steep footpath, his heartbeat increasing with every loose pebble his trainered feet dislodged. At the bottom of the footpath Dig stopped and caught his breath and had his first reality check of the day. What the fuck was he doing? I mean—what the fuck? Where was he? Where was he going? Why was he here? He didn’t do things like this, people in films did things like this, not him.

  He looked down with disgust when he noticed that Digby was greedily licking the salty sweat off the palm of his hand with a hot little pink tongue, sneered and wiped his hand down the leg of his jeans. And then he felt guilty again when he realized that the poor creature was probably parched, not to mention starving, and possibly, probably, almost definitely, in need of voiding some part or parts of his body. Dig looked at Digby. Digby looked back at him, blinked and gulped. There were tears in his eyes, and he looked desperately unhappy. Dig felt mean beyond belief.

  The river lay beyond the fringe of trees in which Dig was hiding. Despite the name of the town, Dig was slightly surprised to find it there, wide and curved and sparkling, small flotillas of rented boats peopled by families in overcoats skimming the surface, a large lock to the left, a small reservoir to the right. Behind him sat a fantastic clapboard pub covered in flaking white paint and lichen, a large balustraded balcony on the first floor and several tables outside. What a gem of a place, thought Dig, as he mentally added it to the ‘summer’ section of his infinite list of nice-looking pubs he’d like to drink in one day.

  A panting pack of varied dogs scampered by on the sand-covered towpath, followed by strolling, Barboured owners clutching limp, unclipped leads. Digby twitched in his arms and Dig soothed him by purring into his ear.

  Finally, Delilah came off the path and disappeared up a small turning, and Dig breathed a sigh of relief as he realized that they were probably there. They had to be. The sun was beating down on him even harder now and he was boiling. There were big damp patches under his arms and he could feel sweat trickling down his back and collecting in his sternum. He pulled at the collar of his T–shirt with a crooked index finger and blew down his top on to his chest. He just wanted to sit down now. He didn’t want to walk any further.

  At the top of the turning were three houses, set well back from the road and all backing directly on to the river. These weren’t the mini-mansions that Dig had seen on the way from the station, these were the real McCoy. Gravel drives that hadn’t just been tipped off the back of a delivery van, tangles of ancient laburnum climbing to the top floors, uncurtained sash windows, old estate cars in the driveways, hexagonal turrets and warped old boot-scrapers embedded into doorsteps. Delilah was walking towards the middle of the three houses, her pace diminishing, the Hamley’s bag no longer swinging. Even from fifty feet away, Dig could hear her nervously clearing her throat.

  He stationed himself behind a small skiff that was being decorated and had been left upturned and unfinished, painted half white and half green. It was called ‘Sun King’ and had been pulled on to the verge next to a mulberry bush, where it provided Dig with more than sufficient cover.

  Delilah slowed down even more as she approached the large, handsome house. And then she did something really annoying. After all this, after a ten quid cab ride at the crack of dawn, after nearly being done for fare evasion, after walking through some godforsaken bit of Surrey for nearly half an hour, after everything that Dig had been through this peculiar and surreal morning to discover what Delilah was up to, she rewarded him by placing both of her bags side by side on a bench and sitting on it.

  Dig grimaced and ground his teeth. What was she doing? For God’s sake. What the hell was she doing? Sitting down. In Walton-on-Thames. Sitting down—on a bench—for no discernible reason—apropos of nothing at all—just sitting there. In Walton-on-Thames. Why?

  The bench was situated between the middle and right-hand houses and faced away from the road, directly towards the river. It afforded, it had to be said, a very attractive view of the river and a small eyot accessed by a charming wooden bridge. It was very pretty indeed. Extremely pretty. But, why?

  Dig took the weight off his toes and sat back on his bottom. The ground underneath was cold and damp, but he didn’t care—he was knackered and hot, and now he was also deeply frustrated. He searched his coat pockets for a piece of chewing gum or a packet of mints—his breath tasted like curdled milk—and sighed with ever-increasing frustration when he failed to find either.

  Delilah had crossed her legs on the bench and draped one elbow across the back of it. Dig watched her knock her sunglasses from the top of her head to her nose and then do something vaguely peculiar with her hair, arranging it over her face, almost as if she were drawing curtains, and then she turned up the collar of her sheepskin jacket. She was, Dig realized with a sense of mounting excitement, attempting to disguise herself. This was more like it, he thought gleefully, this was more like it. He was about to witness some kind of illicit rendezvous, some kind of espionage, something a bit…exciting.

  As he sat behind the boat and the bush, clasping a very-keen-to-escape Digby to his chest and keeping an eye on Delilah, Dig’s imagination began to run away with itself. His mind filled with images of wartime escapades, of James Bond shenanigans, of the trench-coated woman in Allo Allo who says, ‘Listen very carefully’, of excellent bits of electronic surveillance equipment, of false moustaches and video cameras in briefcases. This was starting to look more interesting than he’d imagined. He rubbed his hands gleefully and waited for the excitement to begin.

  Nearly an hour later Dig was starting to run out of enthusiasm.

  His body had lost every degree of the heat it had built up on the walk here. His hands and nose were freezing and his arse had gone numb. He was starving hungry and bored stiff.

  Nothing had happened in Eyot Reach for nearly an hour—not a single thing. Someone’s dog had strayed from the towpath at one point and come haring towards Dig when it spied the tasty morsel sitting shivering on his lap, but had been quickly recovered by its owner. The weather-vane on top of one of the houses had turned a few times. A car had used the road for a three-point-turn a few minutes ago. And that was it.

  Delilah was still sitting on the bench, still wearing her sunglasses and still hiding behind her hair.

  Five more minutes, Dig told himself, five more minutes and then I’m going home.

  And then he heard something—a click, followed by another click, followed by laughter. Someone was finally coming out of one of the houses. He tucked Digby into his coat and rearranged himself to give himself a better view of the proceedings.

  The front door of the middle house was wide open now and Dig could see the silhouetted form of a family as they jostled to leave the house, bickering and squawking and shouting. Delilah, he noticed, had swivelled slightly on the bench and was regarding the open door with interest, her fingertips touching the arm of her sunglasses.

  ‘Maddie, stop it!’ he heard a woman’s voice shouting, in perfect Surrey tones. ‘Leave the dog alone!’

  A large Newfoundland bounded through the door and across the gravel, bearing a small child on his back, who was gently whipping the dog’s bottom with a plastic ruler. ‘Gee up, Monty! Gee up!’ squeaked the pretty, dark-haired little girl.

  ‘Get off the dog, Maddie!’ A tall woman emerged from the house, carrying a large duvet and a pressure cooker. She was too thin and had obviously been extremely beautiful in her youth. Her hair was jet black and cut into a big tousled wedge which suited her. She was wearing an enormous ex-army greatcoat with a fur collar and green wellingtons.

  She was followed by a young boy of about ten, who had his nose stuck in a Harry Potter book while simultaneously dribbling a football across the crackling gravel.

  The mother pulled a clunking set of keys from her battered old handbag, selected one with her teeth and thrust it into the keyhole at the back of her silver Mercedes estate. The door sprung open, and the d
og, the duvet and the pressure cooker landed in the boot.

  Maddie was now pretending to ride a horse, trotting round and round in circles, kicking up the gravel and making neighing and clip-clopping noises.

  ‘Maddie, stop it! Get into the car!’

  The dark-haired boy kicked his football towards the garage and slid into the back seat, his eyes still glued to his Harry Potter book, and Maddie continued to ignore her mother, who was getting into the driver’s seat, tucking her acres of coat around her.

  ‘Maddie! Get into the car right now or I shall leave you here and you won’t get a McDonald’s.’

  Maddie immediately dropped her ruler and skidded across the gravel towards the car, hopping into the back seat next to her brother and strapping herself into some kind of harness. The Newfoundland in the back snuffled at the top of Maddie’s head and she turned towards him and beamed.

  Well, thought Dig, this is all very sweet—cute dog, cute girl, wonderful domestic vignette and all that—but what the hell has this got to do with anything? Where’s the swarthy stranger in the raincoat, where’s the mysterious package, where’s the excitement?

  The woman sounded her car horn and Dig jumped a mile. Jesus, he muttered, clutching his heart, Jesus. She wound down her car window and stuck her head through it.

  ‘Sophie!’ she roared, banging the car horn with the heel of her hand again in exasperation. ‘Will you get down here immediately!’

  Dig had the feeling that she was one of those women who made everything in life far more complicated and dramatic than it needed to be.

  The front door squeaked open a few seconds later and Dig saw Delilah stiffening on the bench, cupping the side of her face with one hand in a further attempt, he presumed, to disguise herself, as a very tall and slim young girl emerged into the sunshine.

  ‘Honestly, mother, ’ the young girl shouted, turning to look at her while she locked the front door behind her, ‘the neighbours must think you’re a bloody child-abuser.’ She tutted and tucked her door keys into the pocket of her rucksack. She looked about twelve years old, and was wearing black pedal-pushers, chunky fluorescent trainers and an outsized grey fleece. Her hair was long and parted in the centre and was a warm, shining golden-brown, in stark contrast to that of the other members of her dark-haired family. She was the sort of fresh-faced, lanky and even-featured young girl who Dig could imagine being approached in shopping centres by scouts from modelling agencies. She might have been only twelve, thirteen years old, but she was gorgeous, completely drop-dead, slaveringly, put-a-spring-in-an-old-man’s-step gorgeous.

  Stop it, you pathetic pervert, he chastised himself, stop it.

  As she walked around the car and approached the passenger door, Dig got a better look at her. Full, plump lips, like silken cushions, wide blue eyes with dark lashes, creamy skin and a sulky, resentful attitude. Her mother said something to her as she slid into the passenger seat, and she smiled—a reluctant smile, he noticed, her mouth trying to persuade the rest of her face to join in—and as she smiled she turned towards Dig and, like a brick lobbed through a window, a thought splintered his mind.

  Oh my God, he thought, she looks just like Leslie Ash in Quadrophenia.

  He turned to look at Delilah, who hadn’t moved a muscle since the young girl emerged from the house, and then he turned back to the girl, who was strapping herself into her seatbelt. Uncanny, he thought, uncanny the resemblance between the two, the same height, attitude, lips and smile, the same rangy figure, swaying hips and peaches-and-cream complexion. The same…exactly the same. Realization coursed through him and he began to experience difficulty breathing. He was back in the playground at the Holy T, cross-legged on the grass, perusing his new timetable and experiencing the character-forming shock of seeing Delilah for the very first time. Jesus, he thought, this is eerie. That girl, he thought, that girl is the spitting bloody image of Delilah.

  He turned to look at Delilah again, who was clutching the back of the bench with two white-knuckled hands and staring helplessly at the Mercedes as it reversed out of the driveway and away from her. Her hair had fallen away from her face and her jaw was slack with shock and dismay. As the car straightened itself out on the street, Delilah mindlessly pushed her sunglasses from her nose to her hair, and Dig could see tears shimmering on her cheeks. He felt bad. He felt elated. He felt cheated. He felt horrified. He felt scared. He felt excited.

  He looked back at the car and at the girl in the passenger seat, who was now arguing with her brother in the back. Is it possible, he thought to himself, that that girl, that that beautiful, sullen, wonderful girl, is my daughter?

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Nadine hadn’t had time today to think about Dig and Delilah, about Phil in her flat, about anything very much apart from exposure levels, light readings and F-stops. Which was a good thing. But then, after four hours of lugging all her equipment around the streets of Barcelona, sweet-talking policemen and bribing shopkeepers into letting her use locations, not to mention holding back the drooling crowds of men trying to get a look at Fabienne, the eighteen-year-old star of the new Renault advertising campaign, in a gold-sequinned bikini, it had started raining. Absolutely bucketing down. And Nadine had had to abandon the shoot for the day.

  She was sitting in her hotel room now, listening to the rain ricocheting off the tiled roof overhead, sorting narrow yellow canisters of film into piles and trying desperately to resist the temptation to phone home. It would do her no good at all to hear the sound of Phil’s voice echoing down the line from hundreds of miles away. It would only upset her. Better not to know. But the second she managed to tear her thoughts away from Philip Rich, lying in all his underpanted splendour on her bed, in her flat, her mind filled instead with the equally alarming image of Delilah in Dig’s flat, all scrubbed and shining and ready to have sex with Dig. Urgh. She shuddered at the thought.

  Jesus, thought Nadine, last night was just horrible.

  She looked at her watch. It was only three o’clock, but the dark, low cloud that hung over Barcelona, inches, it seemed, from the roof-tops, made it feel more like early evening. She yawned, stretched out on her lovely, firm, quilty hotel bed and closed her eyes. A little snooze would be nice—just a few moments of luxurious, foreign hotel-room shut-eye. After all, she had been up since five thirty.

  The sounds from outside her window soothed her. Angry cabs, impatient trucks, the doorman at the front entrance whistling for taxis, rain beating in treble off the roof and in bass off the canvas awning stretched over the front door, like long fingernails tapping a drum. Every few seconds muffled foreign voices would drift past her door, reminding her that it was the middle of the day and other people were busy doing things, didn’t have time to lie around.

  She pulled up the bedcover and wrapped it over her cold bare feet and naked arms. Her thoughts drifted as she warmed up and snuggled down. Ideas for tomorrow’s shoot, plans for dinner tonight, a reminder to herself to get some more Polaroid from the camera shop downstairs because she hadn’t packed enough…just…stuff…nice, normal, boring…stuff.

  And then—wallop—there it was. Bang—right there, in the midst of all that lovely driftiness. Delilah. In her fucking towel. In Dig’s fucking flat. About to have fucking sex with fucking Dig. And bang—there she is again, silhouetted in the back of a black cab at two in the morning, with her arms around Dig’s neck and her lips against his mouth. Crack—Delilah in the playground at the Holy T, sitting on Dig’s lap, throwing Nadine ice-blue daggers, making Nadine feel small and fat and ugly, insufficient, inconsequential and inadequate.

  Nadine threw the quilted cover off her and leaped to her feet. Delilah was even robbing her of her sleep. She wanted to scream at the injustice of it all.

  Delilah, Delilah, Delilah.

  She threw open the door of the mini-bar and eyed it furiously, challenging it to offer her a real drink, something that could even begin to take the edge off her wretchedness and misery, and sheer, belly-rotti
ng jealousy. Come on you pathetic excuse for a fridge, what have you got, eh? What have you got?

  She eyed a quarter-bottle of Louis Roederer and a dinky little bottle of José Cuervo. There was something horribly sad about the idea of doing tequila slammers alone, in the middle of the afternoon but, in her current frame of mind, it appealed to her. To fuck with it. The rain outside was even heavier, the sky was growing darker, she was in a foreign country and she was in a foul mood. If there had ever been a moment to pay a visit to Alcy-land, this was it.

  She pulled a tooth mug off her bedside table, poured in the little bottle of tequila, filled it to the top with lovely, cold, frothing champagne, covered it with her hand, slammed it down hard on the table-top and necked it in one.

  The bubbles and the taste made her shudder. Disgusting. She burped loudly and licked the champagne off the palm of her hand.

  The alcohol reacted immediately, lending a lovely soft focus to the room, the view from her window and her mood. Now she wanted a cigarette. Not just wanted but craved a cigarette. Her room was non-smoking. Her window was fixed closed.

  She poured the remainder of the champagne into the mug, gulped it down, put on her shoes and a cardigan, picked up her door key and made her way downstairs to the hotel bar.

  Hotels, especially extremely posh hotels like this one, were like another world, for Nadine. She could quite happily spend the rest of her life in a hotel, absolve herself of all responsibility for the minutiae of life like housework and cooking and plumbers and paying bills and calling mini-cabs and remembering to buy Cornflakes and ironing things and polishing your own shoes and deciding where to eat and buying stamps and ordering newspapers.

  But the best thing about smart hotels was that they were the same the world over. From continent to continent, from First World to Third World you could always depend upon the availability of a boiled egg or a decent bottle of champagne, a safety-deposit box or a mini-bar. Wherever you were, the moment you stepped into a smart hotel you were in another country, entirely unconnected to the land in which it happened to have been constructed. You were in Hotel-land, one of the nicest countries in the world as far as Nadine was concerned.