2000 - Thirtynothing

by Lisa Jewell

  It was getting dark by the time they’d finished cleaning the kitchen and discussing the events of the past week and they still hadn’t even brushed on the subject of the answerphone messages.

  Both of them were aware that it was next on the agenda but both of them industriously spun out the other subjects until finally, at five o’clock, they ran out of things to say. The atmosphere in the kitchen was plump with the prospect of their next conversation.

  ‘Well,’ said Dig, getting off his knees and looking around the kitchen, ‘I think we’ve done in here. Pretty much spotless, I’d say.’

  ‘Mmm,’ murmured Nadine, looking around her and feeling awkward with Dig for the first time in years. ‘Do you want to get started on the other rooms now? Or we could have a cup of tea? Or you can go if you like? You don’t have to stay. I’ll be all right. I’ll make you dinner, though, obviously, if you do stay. So…’ She trailed off and turned abruptly towards the sink, stowing a jumbo-sized bottle of Domestos into a cupboard and feeling her cheeks flush to a warm pink.

  Dig smiled at her back. Of course he was going to stay. This was the only place in the world he could think of that he wanted to be right now. It was where he’d wanted to be since Saturday night. Here, in Nadine’s kitchen, with Nadine looking fantastically cute in threadbare old grey jogging bottoms, a crappy old Paul Weller T–shirt that he’d given her years ago and a lime-green pinny with Miffy the Rabbit patch pockets. Her thick copper hair was all over the place, her toenails were bubblegum pink and she had a smudge of something grey across her upper lip that made her look like she had a tache. She looked like a madwoman. She was a madwoman. A gorgeous, lovable, sexy, red-haired, successful, together, strong-minded and about-to-be fabulously wealthy madwoman. He smiled again. What a combination.

  Dig opened his mouth to say something. He wasn’t sure what. A compliment, maybe, or a joke. Nothing came out. He closed his mouth again.

  Nadine spun around. ‘I just thought of something,’ she said, ‘we should do it now—in case we don’t get round to it later—all that furniture on my bed—I’m going to need a hand getting it off. Do you mind?’

  Digby had made a little nest for himself on the corner of Nadine’s duvet that was still showing, and Dig gently scooped the sleepy creature off the bed with the palm of one hand and laid him on his jacket in the hallway.

  ‘Aw,’ smiled Nadine, watching him tenderly, ‘cute. You’re quite fond of him, aren’t you?’

  Dig started. ‘No,’ he said. Then more softly, ‘Well, he’s all right, I suppose. He’s sort of grown on me the last few days. But he’s just not my kind of dog. Well, he’s not any kind of dog, really, is he? I mean, look at him.’

  They both cast their eyes downwards at the slumbering little ball of greasy whiskers and bulging eyes. He sighed deeply in his sleep and emitted a little whistle.

  ‘He’s knackered,’ said Nadine.

  ‘Well,’ said Dig, ‘it’s not surprising, really. He’s had a tough few days.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Nadine, moving back towards the bedroom, ‘haven’t we all.’

  ‘It’s been a very strange week,’ agreed Dig.

  ‘Mmm,’ murmured Nadine, turning pink again, ‘to put it mildly.’

  ‘But good, I think—a good week.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Think it’s been a good week?’

  ‘Yes. In a funny way.’

  ‘In spite of everything?’

  They were on either side of Nadine’s bed now, each holding an arm of her leather sofa.

  Dig nodded.

  ‘Why?’

  Not just yet, thought Dig. In a minute.

  ‘Here,’ he said, ‘let’s get this sofa into the living room.’

  Nadine nodded stiffly, and on the count of three they heaved the ancient sofa off the bed and lumbered around with it for a while until they’d manoeuvred it through the bedroom door and into the living room. Exhausted, they both collapsed on to the sofa and gasped in unison.

  ‘D’you remember getting this thing in here, when you moved in?’ asked Dig, turning to smile at Nadine.

  ‘Yeah. Of course I do. This was the first thing I bought for the flat. From that old house-clearance place that used to be up on Agar Grove. £38.50. I always wondered what the 50p was for.’

  ‘I thought you were mad. Why would anyone want to buy some rancid, stinky sofa with horsehair falling out of the bottom and cracks all over the place? I kept trying to get you to go to Habitat but you just weren’t interested in anything new—or clean—or’—he cast Nadine a cheeky look—‘nice. “Oh no, I don’t want something that hasn’t been used by at least twelve people before me—oh no, that’s far too clean—you mean, it came in a box? How common.”’

  Dig flinched and laughed as Nadine picked up a cushion and hit him over the head with it. ‘You bastard! You’re just jealous because you’ve got no imagination. “Ooh, I just don’t know—shall I go for the mid-beige or the light beige? Or maybe I’ll be really daring and go for the deep beige. Or do you think that’ll clash with the navy blue…?” ’

  Dig picked up a cushion now and boffed Nadine with it, harder than he’d intended, accidentally clipping her on the temple with his knuckle.

  ‘Ow!’ she yelled, rubbing the side of her face. ‘That really hurt!’

  ‘Oh God,’ said Dig, immediately dropping the cushion and sliding along the cracked leather towards Nadine, ‘oh God. I’m sorry.’ He cupped the side of Nadine’s face with his hand and stroked his thumb across her temple. ‘I’m really sorry, Deen.’ Her skin was smooth and flushed under his and her eyes were still slightly red around the rims. She looked so young and vulnerable. He brought his thumb down to her upper lip and wiped away the grey smudge.

  As he touched her and looked into her green eyes Dig could feel something stirring deep down inside him, something almost magnetic forcing his body and his face closer and closer to hers. She eyed him with a mixture of fear and excitement.

  Dig could tell she’d stopped breathing.

  So had he.

  ‘Oh, Deen,’ he said finally, pushing a messy copper curl away from her face, tucking it behind her ear, ‘we’re such a pair of idiots, aren’t we?’

  Nadine nodded, and Dig knew then that they were on the same wavelength, knew that he wouldn’t have to do too much explaining.

  And for once Dig wasn’t stuck for words. For once he was going to open his mouth and all the right words were going to come out of it. Because, for once, Dig had it all planned.

  He took a deep breath and started talking.

  ‘We’ve been a couple for the last ten years, do you realize that? We go shopping together. We go on holiday together. We spend our weekends together. We even spend alternate Christmases with our parents. We bicker. We hug. We help move each other’s furniture around. You know all my colleagues, I know all yours. The only thing we don’t do is sleep together and wake up together. And I used to think that that was because you’d rather die than even contemplate the idea of being—intimate with me.’

  Nadine opened her mouth to say something and Dig put a finger up to hush her. ‘Shhh,’ he said, ‘listen to me.

  ‘Remember that weekend—in Manchester, when I came to stay?’

  Nadine nodded again.

  ‘I didn’t show it at the time because I didn’t want to make you feel bad, but I didn’t know that you were living with Phil until I got there—I still thought I was in with a chance. And that weekend—it was the worst weekend of my life, Deen. Pretending I didn’t care was the hardest bit of acting I’ve ever done. I had to listen to you and him—having sex—and I thought my heart was going to break, I really did.

  ‘It wasn’t Delilah who broke my heart, Nadine, it was you. And I never got over it. I really didn’t. And now I know what I’ve been doing for the last ten years. With all these young girls. Now I know why I haven’t had a decent, proper girlfriend in all this time. It’s because I didn’t need o
ne. You’ve been my girlfriend, Nadine, and I’ve subconsciously chosen women who were no threat whatsoever to what I have with you. And all this time I’ve thought that I could be happy living this compromise for the rest of my life, happy loving you and having sex with other women because I thought that friendship was all I’d ever get from you. But then you left that message on my answerphone and now everything’s changed. Did you mean it? Did you mean what you said? About lying—about wanting me?’ He stared into her unblinking eyes.

  Nadine stared back into his in wonder. She felt almost faint with excitement. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I meant it.’

  ‘So why?’ said Dig. ‘Why did you tell me you didn’t want me? Why did you reject me? Why did you go off to Manchester and fall in love with someone else?’

  Nadine sighed. ‘Because of Delilah,’ she said.

  ‘Delilah? What did Delilah have to do with it?’

  ‘You were my best friend—my world. Delilah broke my heart when she took you away from me. It wasn’t just you that she wanted at the Holy T, it was what you and I had—that intimacy, that exclusivity, that complicity. She wanted to take my place. Dig ’n’ Deen. Dig and Delilah. I knew it, and I hated her. I didn’t know who I was without you. My last two years at school were miserable and lonely.

  ‘And then I went to St Julian’s and I felt strong again. I became someone in my own right, and when we met up and spent that weekend together and you started making all these plans for the future, I just got scared. I couldn’t bear to lose you all over again, not when I’d only just found myself. So I rejected you. It made me feel strong. I wasn’t expecting to meet Phil, to fall in love so quickly, and I really thought, that weekend when you came up, that you’d got to grips with the idea that we were never going to be together. And, you know, I’ve done it too, what you’ve done. The reason I’ve been out with so many unsuitable people is because I had the most suitable person right here, all along. I haven’t been looking for love because I haven’t needed to. Because I love you and I don’t want to love anyone else and I really don’t think I can love anyone else…’

  ‘No! That’s exactly it. Neither can I. I thought I could love Delilah, because I’d loved her before. I thought it would be different. But it wasn’t. I tried to love her, but I couldn’t…’

  ‘And I thought I could love Phil again! But…bleughhh.’ She grimaced and she laughed, and Dig laughed, and for the first time in ten years Nadine could feel herself getting a grip on one of those happiness seeds. She could feel her hand tightening over the little seed, she could feel it nestling against the palm of her hand, and this time she was not going to let go of it.

  ‘It’s always been you, Nadine. You and me. Dig ’n’ Deen. Nobody else stood a chance, did they?’

  Nadine shook her head and smiled widely. ‘I used to think that you and I would get married when we left school. I used to think…here—wait.’ She ran from the room, into her bedroom, ferreted around inside her wardrobe for a minute and then came back clutching something in her hands. ‘Look,’ she said, handing it to Dig, ‘look at this.’

  It was a diary. It was old and musty. On the front was a sticker of Steve Strange wearing a silver hat and black Cupid’s-bow lipstick. Funny the way that schoolgirls couldn’t resist a blatantly gay man, thought Dig. He turned it over. And there it was, written over and over again in selfconscious adolescent handwriting.

  Nadine Ryan. Nadine Ryan. Nadine Ryan.

  ‘And look,’ said Nadine, turning the pages, ‘look at this.’ She pointed at a section at the back entitled ‘Mrs Nadine Ryan’. ‘Read that bit,’ she said.

  Dig threw her an amused look and started reading. He chuckled as he read. ‘Oh yes, I like this bit—powder-blue E-type,’ he smirked.

  ‘Four children!’ he cried at one point.

  ‘Gloucester Crescent. Yes. I could live in Gloucester Crescent. So,’ he said, closing the book and turning to face Nadine, ‘when shall we start?’

  ‘Start what?’

  ‘House-hunting, of course.’

  Nadine searched for the hint of sarcasm in his voice, but it wasn’t there.

  ‘Jesus, Nadine. We’ve wasted so much time, haven’t we? Ten years. Let’s not waste any more. Eh?’

  And then he put the book down, took Nadine’s hands in his, and he kissed her. On the lips. And even though he’d thought it might feel strange, kissing Nadine, it didn’t. It felt the opposite of strange. It felt so unbelievably right.

  And Nadine gripped Dig’s hands in hers and felt his lips moving against hers, and she couldn’t believe they’d waited so long to do this because this was what her lips were designed for. For kissing Dig Ryan.

  They fell backwards together into the leather of Nadine’s deco sofa and smiled at each other, and then they kissed again.

  It grew dark while they kissed and soon the only light in the room came from the cactus fairy lights over the fireplace, and in that cool, green glow, in the debris of her flat, on a rainy November evening, Dig and Nadine finally got it together.

  EPILOGUE

  Dig looked out through the tangles of ice-blue clematis and snowflake jasmine that framed his study window. The sky outside was turquoise and smudged with white. The air was warm and full of pollen. It had taken its time but, finally, in the second week of July, summer had come to London.

  Dig’s study was a minimal refuge in the chaos of their new home. He’d acceded to Nadine’s taste in interior décor and let her run amok with her strange wallpapers and bits of bohemian junk in the rest of the flat. It was funny how easy he found it to live with Nadine’s mess—it was so much a part of her that he almost loved it. He could breathe amongst her clutter. But in here was all white walls and modern furniture, angle-poise lamps and linen filing boxes from Muji. His old corduroy sofa sat against the wall.

  This tiny, neat, well-organized room was now home to Dig-It Records, the smallest independent label in the world. Only two weeks old and only one band to its name but—they were the greatest guitar band since Oasis. Absolutely. Dig could feel it in his gut, his heart and his soul. He just had to persuade the rest of the world now.

  This new life still felt a little like playing at grown-ups. He and Nadine kept expecting someone to come to the front door in a uniform and ask them what the hell they thought they were doing living in this adult’s house in this adult’s road, to march them out, throw them into the back of a van and deposit them in a bedsit in Tufnell Park.

  Dig gulped back the dregs of his tea and looked at the clock. Six thirty. Nadine should be back any minute. He smiled at the thought. It was her turn to cook tonight. His stomach growled appreciatively in anticipation.

  The doorbell rang and Dig made his way wearily down the hallway but he snapped out of his long-day-in-the-office reverie when he opened the door and saw a stunningly beautiful woman with golden hair and skin standing on the doorstep.

  ‘Delilah!’

  Delilah’s face burst open into an enormous smile and she threw her arms around Dig and squeezed him hard.

  ‘Oh Dig,’ she said, ‘it’s so great to see you!’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘God. I’m so sorry. I was determined not to turn up unannounced again, not after last time. I kept trying to call you and there was no answer so I wrote to you. Two weeks ago. We’ve been shopping all day and then we turned up at your flat this afternoon and there was no one there, so we drove round to your mum’s and she told me you’d moved…’

  Stunning, thought Dig, eyeing Delilah with amazement, you are absolutely stunning.

  ‘She told me you’d moved up in the world and she wasn’t wrong—I mean, look at this place!’

  She poked her head into the hallway and began looking around. She was wearing a pure white crêpe viscose dress, short and flirty with shoestring straps. On her feet were pale-blue strappy sandals. Her hair was twisted up and clipped back with some kind of plastic claw affair. Dig could see her knickers through the semi-opaque
viscose. She was wearing a G-string. He gulped. Jesus bloody Christ.

  The sound of a car door slamming drew Dig’s attention away from Delilah’s underwear and towards the road. There was a large four-wheel-drive jeep parked opposite, and a tall man was unloading stuff from it—funny bags made from quilted fabric, and plastic boxes. He was about six foot four with coal-black hair and an imposing physique. He was wearing jeans in the same effortless way that Delilah wore hers, with a grey V-neck T–shirt. He was very brown and, when he turned around, quite guttingly handsome. He threw Dig a smile and Dig worked it out.

  Alex.

  Alex reached further into the jeep and brought out something very carefully with both arms—a Ming vase, maybe, thought Dig, or a particularly large Fabergé egg. No—it was another plastic contraption with a large handle, and nestled within it was a small pink thing wearing a stripy all-in-one.

  Alex picked up all his quilted things and plastic things and headed towards them. Delilah beamed. ‘Dig,’ she said, ‘let me introduce you to the two most gorgeous men in the world. Dig—this is Alex—Alex, this is Dig.’ Dig was touched to notice a trace of pride in Delilah’s voice when she said his name. He went to shake Alex’s hand and laughed because his hands were all being used up for other things. Alex laughed, too, and Dig was nearly blinded by the fabulous whiteness of his teeth and shaken again by the uncanny resemblance to Pierce Brosnan.

  ‘And,’ continued Delilah, taking the contraption with the pink thing in it from Alex and thrusting it towards Dig, ‘this is the fantastic Oliver—isn’t he beautiful?’

  Dig looked down into the contraption, at the funny little sausage of pinky-white flesh and into the cloudy blue of the sausage’s eyes and tried to think of something to say. ‘Lovely,’ he managed, eventually, ‘he’s lovely.’

  They went indoors then, and Dig felt inordinately proud as he showed this perfect family his elegant and classy new home, with its high ceilings and original features, this airy two-bedroom flat that spoke of hitherto alien concepts such as being settled and having made it.