Dinner for Two

by Mike Gayle

  ‘I kind of guessed that,’ says Caitlin. ‘It can’t be easy for her. I’m not sure I wouldn’t be the same if the tables were turned.’

  ‘But what’s the solution? I can’t extricate Nicola from my life. She’s in there now, part of me . . . just like Izzy’s part of me.’

  ‘It must be difficult being the one stuck in the middle.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ I reply. ‘It’s more complicated than that.’ And, taking a deep breath, I tell her about the miscarriage.

  ‘That’s so sad,’ says Caitlin, when I finish. ‘No wonder she doesn’t want to meet Nicola.’

  ‘But what can I do? I don’t want Izzy to feel this way. And I don’t want Nicola to think any of this is her fault. But now that things are out in the open she’s going to think it’s strange Izzy hasn’t met her.’

  ‘I don’t want to be presumptuous, but . . . genuinely, and I mean this with my whole heart, is there anything I can do? I feel really terrible at how things have turned out. I feel bad for not trying hard enough to contact you when I knew I was pregnant and that Nicola’s never had a father in her life until now. I just feel that if there’s something I can do to make things even a little bit better I’d do it.’

  ‘Thanks. It’s really good of you to say that. But the truth is I don’t think there’s anything either of us can do. At the end of the day this is something only Izzy can come to terms with. I hope with all my heart that she will but I have to accept that there’s every chance she won’t, and that she has every right not to.’

  12’’

  It’s now nine o’clock, everyone has arrived and Nicola has begun to open her presents. In the last hour or so I’ve been introduced to Caitlin’s three brothers, David (the youngest at nineteen, studying law at UCL), Aidan (twenty-five, works in the City) and Paul (thirty and in computing), her sister Eloise (thirty-eight, the oldest of the family and mum to Nicola’s two fifteen-year-old cousins), and a whole host of friends. Everyone makes me welcome, and it would have been the perfect evening if Izzy had been there. I feel her absence like my own heartbeat – a constant reminder of what you need to survive. It doesn’t feel right being here without her. It feels disloyal. I decide to leave early.

  ‘I think I’m going to have to get off,’ I say to Caitlin, who’s standing next to me watching Nicola unwrap her presents. She looks at me, concerned, but doesn’t try to persuade me to stay, for which I’m grateful as I already feel like I’m letting Nicola down.

  ‘Are you going to take some birthday cake with you?’ she asks.

  I refuse with a smile. ‘I’ll just say goodbye to Nicola.’

  She taps Nicola on the shoulder, whispers in her ear, and Nicola announces to the whole room that she’s going to take a break from opening presents for a moment to spend some time with her dad who has to go. I’ve never heard her refer to me as her dad before in anything other than the biological sense; I’d certainly never heard it said so proudly, like it was some sort of new must-have fashion item.

  ‘I still haven’t opened your presents yet,’ she tells me. ‘I was going to save them until last.’

  I laugh. ‘I don’t think you should go that far, Nicola. They’re not going to be that good.’

  She ignores me and picks them up from next to the sofa where they’d been left, loops her arm through mine and leads me into the hallway.

  ‘What are we doing?’ I ask, as she closes the door.

  ‘Having some time on our own.’ She sits down on the stairs and I join her.

  ‘Which one do you want me to open first?’ she asks.

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  She looks at them both. ‘I’ll open the bigger one,’ she says. ‘What is it? Will I guess?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I don’t really know why I’m giving it to you. I’m pretty sure you won’t like it.’

  She looks up at me, right into my eyes, until I’m gazing in hers. ‘Whatever it is, I’ll love it.’ She opens the wrapping carefully and takes out a twelve-inch single. ‘It’s a record,’ she says.

  ‘I know.’

  She reads the cover. ‘Maybe If I Wear Your Jacket’, the Parachute Men. ‘Is it any good?’

  ‘It’s my favourite record. Ever.’

  She looks at it again. ‘Your favourite record ever? You mean out of all the thousands of CDs and records you’ve got, this is the best?’

  I smile. ‘I wouldn’t say it’s the best, but it is my favourite. It’s the one that reminds me just what music can do when it’s done well.’

  ‘Is it famous?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Is it worth loads of money?’

  ‘I strongly doubt it.’

  She thought for a moment. ‘And this is your favourite record in the world?’

  I nod.

  ‘Have you got another copy of it?’

  ‘No. That’s the only one I’ve got.’

  She starts to cry.

  ‘What’s wrong, sweetheart?’ I ask gently.

  ‘You’ve given me your favourite song,’ she says.

  I wipe away her tears with my hands, put my arms around her and give her a hug. ‘I’m giving it to you because I want you to have it.’

  ‘But it’s your favourite. I can’t take it. You haven’t got another.’

  ‘I want you to have it, sweetheart. That way two of my favourite things will be together.’

  ‘But we haven’t even got a record player.’

  She starts to laugh and I laugh, too, because it hasn’t occurred to me that in this day of mp3s, compact discs and mini-disc players there are homes without record decks. ‘I’ll buy you one. Next birthday.’

  ‘This is the best present in the world. The best. I promise you I’ll look after it. I promise.’

  ‘I know you will. Anyway, never mind that.’ I gesture to the second present on the stair below her feet. ‘You’ve still got one more to open.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Open it,’ I tell her, ‘and find out.’

  She picks it up. ‘It’s very light.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. Anyone would think it was made of paper. But open it carefully.’

  I watch as she follows my instructions.

  ‘It’s money,’ she says, her eyes wide with surprise.

  ‘One hundred and forty pounds,’ I tell her. ‘Ten pounds for each year. I didn’t really want to give you money . . . it seemed a bit . . . well, you know. But then I thought about that day we spent window-shopping and I know that, like me, you’re someone with very particular taste and I knew I’d only get it wrong.’

  ‘You wouldn’t,’ she says quietly. ‘Whatever it was I’d like it.’

  ‘Even if I’d bought you a pair of acid-wash jeans with purple sequins?’

  She laughs. ‘I’d love them because you bought them for me. I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing them outside, of course, but I’d probably put them on every time you came round to the house.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you. But you’re sure you’re not offended by the money?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘And you’re not allowed to spend it all at once,’ I warn. ‘Make sure you give it to your mum to look after. You can get into a lot of trouble with all that.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ she says. ‘But there are a lot of things I can buy with it! Like . . . something for you. You wait until it’s your birthday. You won’t know what’s hit you.’

  CD

  When I get home Izzy’s sitting in the living room. She has brought some work with her from the office: folders, papers, magazines and memos surround her. Her laptop is balancing precariously on the coffee table next to her. She doesn’t look up when I come in, just continues shuffling through the papers in her hands. It’s a gesture designed to let me know that she doesn’t care where I’ve been, even though she does. It’s a gesture designed to prick my conscience and make me feel more guilty than I already do.

  ‘You all right?’ I ask. ‘How was work today?
’

  She looks up briefly then looks away. ‘It was okay,’ she replies. ‘You?’

  ‘Fine. Nothing much to report.’

  ‘No, there never is.’

  It’s a small comment, nothing to write home about, really, but it speaks volumes about the state of our relationship. I now see that although I’ve tried my best to be patient and understanding it hasn’t worked. Izzy simply can’t come to terms with Nicola’s existence and there’s nothing I can do about it. I can see that it’s eating away at her and tearing her up inside. And I realise it isn’t fair that I’m putting her through this.

  ‘I think maybe it would be best if I moved out,’ I say quietly.

  ‘Is that your answer to what’s happening?’ she says. ‘To run away from your marriage?’

  Her choice of words, her tone, her body language, everything is designed to provoke rather than bring about peace.

  ‘It’s not an answer,’ I tell her, ‘but I think that if I stay here, the way things are going there won’t be much of a marriage left.’

  She takes a deep breath as if about to speak – but instead she bites her lip. There’s no anger left inside her, only fear – a fear that I feel too. No matter how long we spend apart, the situation that has caused the problem will remain: Nicola will still be my daughter from a relationship with another woman. And if Izzy can’t accept this, what can we do? I think about us splitting up for good. Three years of marriage, six years of relationship reduced to rubble. The promise of a lifetime together reduced to however long we can fool ourselves that what’s happening isn’t happening.

  ‘I don’t want you to go,’ she says.

  ‘I know,’ I tell her, ‘but you know I have to.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Where what?’

  ‘Where will you go? I’ll worry about you if I don’t know where you are.’

  ‘I don’t know. I could stay at my parents’, I suppose.’

  ‘Don’t,’ she says urgently. ‘Please don’t. I don’t want them to know what we’re doing to ourselves – what a mess we’re making of everything.’

  ‘Listen, don’t worry, I’m sure I can go to a friend’s house somewhere. I can go to Phil Clarke’s.’ He’s a PR I know from my days at Louder who’s the kind of friend I can go months without seeing and still be able to pull up at his front door at midnight and sleep on his sofa without him making a big deal about it.

  ‘You can’t do that,’ she says, half smiling. ‘He lives in New Cross, doesn’t he? New Cross is as dangerous as it gets.’

  I smile. She has a point.

  ‘Why don’t you go to Jenny’s?’ she says. ‘I’ll give her a call and sort it out.’

  ‘Are you sure she won’t mind? I mean, isn’t she still upset about her split with Trevor?’

  She doesn’t speak but I can see that she’s shocked at the reminder of how easily our friends’ relationships have fallen through and how we might be next.

  ‘I can always try Fran in Brixton,’ I suggest. ‘I’ll have to give her a ring and make sure it’s okay, though.’

  She nods and that’s that. She’s back to her normal self. We’ve gone from a sullen row to a normal caring couple in minutes – only I was leaving and she’s helping me to do so. I call Fran and she tells me it’s okay. I pack a large sports bag with a few days’ worth of clothes, grab some tapes and CDs, throw the lot into the back of the car and she starts to cry.

  ‘This is the right thing to do,’ I tell her.

  ‘I know,’ she says. ‘It is. It’s difficult, that’s all.’

  ‘You need time.’

  ‘We both do . . . but what if you decide you don’t want to come back?’

  ‘That won’t happen.’

  ‘But what if it does?’

  ‘It won’t,’ I tell her.

  ‘How long are you going to stay away?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I’ll miss you,’ she says.

  ‘Listen,’ I tell her, ‘we’ll speak on the phone.’

  ‘But I need to see you. We need to see each other . . . This is how people split up, Dave, this is how they lose the love between them – distance. We can’t let that happen.’

  ‘We will see each other. We can go for dinner or something. And we can talk and try to sort this mess out. But you know we can’t carry on living together like this because if we do there won’t be any chance of saving us at all.’

  ‘Are we splitting up?’ she asks.

  ‘No,’ I tell her.

  ‘So what are we doing?’ she asks.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I reply. ‘I think we’re doing what we’ve got to do.’

  dinners

  Over the weeks that follow my leaving I see Nicola every week without fail and sometimes more often. She and I expand our repertoire of places to go all the way from Burger King and McDonald’s to Pizza Hut and Bella Pasta. Sometimes we go to the cinema, sometimes we just watch TV round at her house but Nicola’s favourite thing in the world remains sitting in the passenger seat of the Mercedes with the roof down and the music turned right up. Running parallel to this, Izzy and I meet up once a week to talk about what we’re going to do.

  low

  Week one: Tuesday evening, Spiga, Wardour Street

  Starter

  It’s eight o’clock and Izzy has just arrived at the restaurant, straight from work. She’s wearing charcoal-grey wide-legged trousers, a fitted white shirt with three buttons undone and a denim jacket. Her hair is tied back. In short she looks beautiful. ‘How are you?’ she says quietly.

  ‘I’m okay,’ I reply. ‘How about you?’

  ‘I’ve had better days.’

  ‘You look great,’ I say.

  ‘I miss you,’ she replies.

  ‘I miss you too.’

  There is a long pause.

  ‘How are you getting on at Fran’s?’ she asks.

  ‘I’m on her sofa. It’s okay as sofas go.’

  ‘And how’s life at Sound Scene?’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I tell her, ‘but I don’t think I’ll be there much longer. I’ve had some good news.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You remember Nick, my old editor at Louder? He called yesterday to say that he was back at BDP working on the launch of a new magazine. He wants to talk to me.’

  ‘I’ve spotted him in the building a few times but I didn’t know anything about the project. Congratulations. Is it another music mag?’

  I shrug. ‘I don’t know.’

  Main course

  It’s now eight thirty-three and we have yet to say a word about our separation, Nicola or how we’re going to sort things out between us. Neither of us wants to bring up the topic when there’s no obvious solution, so instead we talk about everything apart from the thing that’s keeping us apart.

  ‘I’ve got my final interview for the job tomorrow,’ says Izzy.

  ‘How have they gone so far?’

  ‘Okay,’ she says quietly. ‘I mean, I’ve given it my best shot. The only thing is experience, isn’t it? By the time they make their minds up I’ll only have had five issues’ worth of experience at editing a national women’s magazine.’

  ‘But you’re brilliant at it. At least, I think you are.’

  She smiles. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You’ll get the job. I’m sure.’

  ‘I wish I had your confidence. It’s just that I hear all these rumours about who they’ve approached and what they might do. The latest one is that they’re going to bring someone over from BDP’s sister companies in the US or Australia. It would make a lot of sense, too. It’s rare that you’re ever appreciated where you are. They probably think I’m too stuck in the old management ways and that someone else from another continent could give a fresher perspective. If I’d had any sense I would’ve left Femme a while ago and kept job hopping until I reached the top.’

  ‘But you didn’t because you loved the magazine you worked on. Surely that’s got to count for som
ething?’

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘Not really.’

  Dessert

  It’s now nine fifteen and Izzy and I have long since finished our meal. We have talked about work, the flat, mortgage payments and our friends, but we still haven’t spoken about us.

  ‘Would you like to see the dessert menu?’ asks the waitress.

  Izzy shakes her head. ‘Not for me. Dave?’

  ‘Not for me either,’ I tell the waitress.

  ‘Coffee?’ asks the waitress.

  Izzy and I both decline.

  ‘Just the bill, please,’ says Izzy.

  ‘I’ll get this,’ I say, as the waitress walks away.

  ‘It’s okay,’ says Izzy. ‘You can get it next time.’

  The waitress returns with the bill and Izzy pays on her credit card. We put on our coats in silence and step out into busy late-night Wardour Street.

  ‘We didn’t do much talking, did we?’ I say, wondering what it’s going to be like to have to leave her. ‘At least, not about the things we were supposed to talk about.’

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘We didn’t.’

  ‘Maybe next time, eh?’

  ‘Maybe next time.’ She leans forward and kisses me full on the lips. I kiss her back.

  ‘I love you,’ she says.

  ‘I love you too,’ I tell her.

  And with that we turn in opposite directions and walk away.

  measure

  Week two: Thursday evening, Kettner’s, Romilly Street

  Starter

  It’s just after seven thirty when I arrive, and Izzy’s already sitting at the table. She stands up to kiss me hello and then we sit down.

  ‘How are you?’ asks Izzy. ‘How did your meeting with Nick Randall go?’

  ‘Really well. It looks like I’ll be back working in the same building as you pretty soon. He’s been working on a dummy issue of a new mag ever since Louder folded and apparently it’s been green-lighted and they’re looking to launch in the next two months.’

  ‘What kind of magazine?’

  ‘Guess.’

  ‘Music?’

  ‘No, it’s not music.’

  She laughs. ‘It’s not teenagers, surely?’