Dinner for Two

by Mike Gayle

  Week 1

  Day: Tuesday late afternoon

  My alibi: Meeting old college friend for a drink

  Her alibi: Going to a friend’s house after school

  Place: the Prince Charles Cinema, Leicester Square

  The Prince Charles shows a combination of arty films and films that were on release ages ago. At the moment there’s a teen comedy season on so Nicola and I see Ten Things I Hate About You. We both like the film, but for different reasons. Nicola likes it because it’s romantic and she fancies the male lead, Heath Ledger. I like it because it’s stupid and makes no sense.

  I tell Nicola that the film is based on Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew and that I studied the play at university. I can see she wants to believe me but she’s sceptical. Her face is saying, ‘How can a film as good as this have been written by boring old Shakespeare?’ I don’t argue. When we finish dissecting the film the conversation turns to our all-time favourite movies. Nicola’s are Titanic, American Pie, Men in Black, Austin Powers – The Spy Who Shagged Me and now Ten Things I Hate About You. Mine are The Terminator, Le Apartment, La Haine, Angels With Dirty Faces and Das Boot. I think we’re both a little disappointed that there isn’t more crossover so I promise Nicola I’ll get American Pie out on video and she tells me she’ll ask her mum to see if the video shop has Angels With Dirty Faces.

  Week 2

  Day: Saturday midday

  My alibi: None needed, Izzy is on a fashion freebie trip to Milan for two days

  Her alibi: Drama club

  Place: Yo Sushi! Poland Street, Soho

  I tell Nicola I’m fed up with eating in burger places and that we need to branch out. The second we get to the sushi bar I can see she’s really impressed. She likes the robot that goes around the restaurant carrying drinks and the conveyor belt on which the food goes round. Her least favourite thing is the sushi. I try to explain to her that eating raw fish is a healthy thing to do but she’s not convinced, and when I give her a bite of a simple tuna roll she can’t bring herself to swallow it.

  Fortunately they have a number of non-raw-fish dishes and Nicola tucks into several plates of chicken and cabbage dumplings and a can of Coke. She asks me if I’m disappointed in her because she doesn’t like sushi and I laugh and tell her, of course not, I’m disappointed in her because I got American Pie out on DVD and it was crap. She laughs and tells me that her mum’s video shop didn’t have Angels With Dirty Faces and she was glad because her mum told her it was in black and white and then she pulls a face as if to say, ‘Can you believe it?’

  Week 3

  Day: Friday afternoon

  My alibi: None needed – I take the afternoon off work

  Her alibi: She’s sprained her wrist falling down some stairs at school and convinces me it’s okay to wag her games lesson because she wouldn’t be doing anything anyway.

  Place: South Bank, on a couple of benches outside the NFT facing the Thames

  It’s my suggestion that we come here as this is one of my favourite places: it reminds me of what a great-looking city London can be. The wind when it blows is quite cutting but the sun’s out. Nicola tells me she’s been here before with her mum to buy books from one of the many second-hand stalls. We sit watching people walk by for ages and Nicola spots a well-known TV soap actress with her dog. We talk about what it would be like to be her and decide we wouldn’t fancy it. We have a late lunch of several chocolate bars and a shared can of Lilt. As we eat I ask Nicola how it felt to know she had a dad but not where he was or what he was like. She says she used to have dreams about me where I’d turn up out of the blue and live with them. She says she always imagined I did a regular job like her friends’ dads. I ask her what she thought I’d be like as a person and she laughs and says she can’t remember. I ask her to tell me three things I don’t know about her and she thinks then says okay. The first thing she tells me is that when she was small she had a yellow blanket she carried around with her. I ask if she’s still got it and she rolls her eyes and says no. She laughs when she tells me that sometimes she pretends she’s a singer on Top of the Pops. I tell her I used to do that too. I ask her what’s her favourite record to sing along to and she responds with a few lines of a Mariah Carey ballad that neither of us knows the name of. The last thing she tells me is that she’s never kissed a boy properly though she’s told her friends she has. She says she’s had the chance but she hasn’t really liked the boys who have wanted to kiss her. Moments later she tells me that she kissed a couple of boys last year at a party but that was without tongues and because of that, she explains, they don’t really count as proper kisses.

  Week 4

  Day: Tuesday

  My alibi: Spending the day in the library finding information on university courses

  Her alibi: School closed because of burst water-pipes and she’s told her mum she’ll spend the day at a friend’s house

  Place: My car, listening to music, driving round north London aimlessly

  We’re driving along the Holloway Road when Nicola tells me that she wants to ask my advice. I ask her what about and she tells me about boys. For one desperate moment I think she’s going to ask me about sex, but she spots the look of horror on my face and laughs a really cheeky wide-eyed laugh. ‘You thought I was going to talk about doing it, didn’t you?’ she says grinning. I nod and she tells me that she’s already had ‘the talk’ with her mum and that they’ve done sex education at school. She tells me that she’s going to wait until she gets married and I ask her if that isn’t a bit of an old fashioned thing to do. She shrugs dismissively and tells me about a girl called Petra Wilson who ‘did it’ last week with a boy she met at a party; Sophie Walker who’s two years above Nicola has apparently had to take the morning-after pill twice this term; and Katie Snell in year eleven is pregnant and not only is the dad fourteen, ‘he’s really, really ugly’, too. ‘All the boys at school talk about doing it like it’s nothing,’ says Nicola. ‘And some of the girls talk about it like that too. But it’s not nothing, is it? How can something that can make babies be nothing? It doesn’t even make sense. It’s not nothing so I don’t see why everyone’s acting like it is. That’s just stupid.’ I tell her that she’s made a good point and ask her if she’s been influenced by Britney Spears. She rolls her eyes and says no it’s something she decided herself. She tells me about a boy she likes at school, called Brendan Casey, and tells me how she semi-stalks him sometimes. She asks me how she can get him to like her. I tell her just to be herself. She asks what he might be thinking about and I tell her that when I was that age I used to think about football and dying young. She asks me if that’s what every teenage boy thinks about. ‘I think it’s just me,’ I say. ‘I was quite a morbid child, really.’

  quiet

  It’s relatively easy for me to disappear unnoticed because Izzy is spending a lot of time at work preparing for her interview. She’s coming home tired and going to work tired and I try my best to be supportive. I don’t allow myself to feel guilty about lying to her because I can’t begin to contemplate the enormity of what is happening in my life. Nicola, too, is happy to enjoy our time together although it must be hard for her to keep such a huge secret from her mum. ‘It’s too important to tell,’ she tells me, when we’re talking on the phone. ‘I just have to keep it all in.’

  Nicola is awakening new feelings in me. Everything she says interests me and I never cease to be amazed at how beautiful she is. I want to protect her and lay the world at her feet. In my head I create all manner of glamorous images of us culled from celluloid: Ryan and Tatum O’Neal in Paper Moon, Jean Reno and Natalie Portman in Leon, John Wayne and Kim Darby in True Grit – the adult male with the adolescent sidekick wise-cracking their way through a life of adventure. I don’t know what any of this will mean for Izzy. But I do know that Nicola has changed my life beyond recognition.

  house

  It’s parents’ evening at Nicola’s mum’s school and Caitlin’s to
ld Nicola she wouldn’t be home until nine. I know that all it would take is for her to come home early and I’ll probably end up hiding in a wardrobe or on a balcony. But Nicola pleads with me to come and I relent. I want to see her home. I want to know about this part of her life.

  I reach the Victorian terrace where she and her mum live at six thirty and she opens the door wearing jeans and a dark blue hooded top several sizes too big for her. I can’t help but smile.

  ‘What?’ she says defensively.

  ‘I was just looking at your top. Isn’t it a bit big?’

  ‘It’s the fashion,’ she replies.

  Laughing, I follow her into the hallway and close the door behind me. It feels odd being here, as if I’man intruder.

  ‘Do you want a drink?’ asks Nicola.

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘I’m having a cup of tea so . . .’

  ‘Nah, I’m all right.’

  She looks a bit put out. I think she’d been looking forward to playing host.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ she asks.

  ‘Yeah,’ I lie. ‘Just a little bit. What have you got?’

  ‘I can make you toast or beans and toast or egg on toast or cheese on toast.’

  ‘You’re very handy with the toaster, aren’t you?’

  She laughs. ‘I can open a packet of biscuits too.’

  ‘Biscuits sound okay. I’ll have whatever you’ve got.’

  ‘Mum went shopping on Monday and got some really nice ones. They were German or Belgian or something but we ate them all so we’ve only got the rubbish ones left. Do you like Digestives?’

  ‘Digestives are fine.’

  She looks up at me, her face is slightly pensive. ‘They’re not the chocolate ones.’

  ‘Plain Digestives are fine by me.’

  She lets out a sigh of relief. ‘Have a sit-down in the living room,’ she points to a door to the left of me, ‘and I’ll bring them through in a minute.’

  personality

  I go into the room as instructed and look around me. There’s a TV and video in a corner, a large sofa along one wall and two armchairs. There are shelves in the two alcoves lined with hundreds of books, a piano with a violin case next to it and, opposite, French windows that look out on to a minuscule garden. I smile as I realise I’m double-checking my escape route.

  Pictures of Nicola are scattered around the room, on the walls and on the mantelpiece, and I study them: Nicola as a baby lying in her cot; Nicola as a toddler in a bright blue dress; a slightly younger version of the Nicola I know with her mum and, at a guess, her grandparents in a garden; another of her on the beach holding a bucket and spade – she must have been six or seven in that one. Finally there’s an official school picture of her at nine or ten in her uniform. Seeing these photos reminds me of when she came to the flat and looked through mine. I feel what she must have felt then: they represent a world of exclusion.

  ‘Grub’s up,’ says Nicola, coming into the living room. She’s holding out a plate of Digestive biscuits. The fact that she’s bothered to present them out of the packet speaks volumes about her. But then again, I suspect the fact that I’ve noticed speaks volumes about me. Really, this girl can do no wrong.

  I take one and she puts the plate on a side table next to her mug of tea. ‘This is my house,’ she says, gesturing to the room proudly. ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s nice.’

  ‘It’s not as posh as your flat. I don’t mean that horribly I just mean that, well, we haven’t got as many nice things as you have but I like it all the same.’

  ‘It’s not what you’ve got, it’s what you do with it. This place looks great.’

  ‘Mum and I decorated in here last summer. Well, I helped her choose the colour for the walls – it’s called Country Apple Blossom – and she did most of the work along with my uncles. I did paint my bedroom, though.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah, do you want to see it?’

  She’s so excited that I can’t say no, even though I’m wondering about my emergency escape route from upstairs. ‘Go on, then,’ I tell her. ‘Show me your room.’

  She grabs her tea and a handful of biscuits and leads me up the stairs. ‘This is my room,’ she says pointing to a large, flat multi-coloured foam rubber sign on the door that says, ‘Nicola’s room’.

  ‘Really?’

  She nudges me with her elbow. ‘Yeah, really.’

  Although she tells me she’s painted her walls in ‘Cornflower Blue’ I can hardly tell because there are so many posters. She gives me a guided tour of some of the highlights of her gallery of popular recording artists, which include NSync (because she likes their music), Steps (because she likes their dance moves), Robbie Williams (because she wants to marry him), Westlife (because she fancies two of them), Usher (because she likes the music and fancies him), Mel C and Geri Halliwell (because they cover up a spot where she’s torn the wallpaper), Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst (because Keisha likes them although Nicola finds them a bit loud), S Club 7 (because she likes their songs), Kurt Cobain from Nirvana (because she’d seen Brendan one Saturday morning on Wood Green High Street wearing the Nirvana stoned smiley T-shirt), Britney Spears (because the picture had come free in a newspaper) and Eminem (because Keisha had the album on tape and he swore a lot on it, which amused her greatly).

  ‘My room’s cool, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah, it is. I didn’t realise you had this many posters. I’ll have a look what’s knocking about in the Teen Scene office because we’ve got loads, I’m sure.’

  Nicola pulled a face. ‘I don’t put just anything on my walls, you know. I’ve got some taste.’ She continued the tour, pointing out her favourite books, her favourite CDs, her favourite incense sticks and even her favourite cuddly toys – the only things in the room that remind me she’s still only a kid. Only a few years ago these toys had been her favourite things in the world and even now it’s obvious they still hold a strong attachment.

  ‘I used to have hundreds,’ she explains, pointing to the collection of soft toys that reside on the floor in the corner of her room by her portable CD player. ‘But I gave a lot of them away because they were a bit babyish.’

  ‘So what are these?’

  ‘These are my favourites.’ She points them out one by one. ‘This one,’ she waves to a teddy bear the size of a four-year-old, ‘is Patrick. I’ve had him since I was really small. My gran bought him for me.’ She points to his nose. ‘Can you see how that patch of fur is worn?’ I nod. ‘I did that. Mum said I used to rub his nose to get to sleep. I did it every night for years.

  ‘This one,’ she points to a furry white gorilla, with a red face and beady eyes ‘. . . is Harry and he does this—’ He has springs attached to his hands and a string attached to his head so that when he bounces up and down his arms wave in the air. ‘Mum bought me him for my birthday when I was ten because I was really into wildlife and said I wanted a pet monkey.’

  ‘Who’s this one?’ I ask, indicating a furry tiger. Its mane is slightly matted, its fur is worn: all in all it has seen better days.

  ‘This one,’ says Nicola. ‘He’s one of my favourites. I’ve had him since I was eight. You’re going to think that I’ve made this up but his name is Dave.’

  ‘Dave?’ I repeat.

  ‘I named him after you,’ she says and smiles. ‘I always knew you two would meet one day.’

  whole

  It’s a few days later and I’m on my way home from work when I bump into Sean, an old friend of Izzy’s who lives in Glasgow. Sean’s wife Amy had a baby daughter, Amber, last summer just before Izzy got pregnant and I’m not even sure whether he knows what happened. Sean is in London for the day on business and on his way to a meeting with a client. He asks after Izzy and I ask about Amy and Amber. He says Amy’s fine, then spends a good ten minutes telling me about Amber: her sleeping patterns, her favourite foods, how her ability to grab his fingers shows that she’s destined to be a genius
. The list is endless.

  I hate myself for it but I feel jealous – not because he’s got a baby and I haven’t but because he’s telling me how wonderful his daughter is but I can’t do the same for mine. I want to tell this man, who isn’t even a close friend, all the things that make me proud of Nicola: how pretty she is, how good she is at art, how her teachers say that some of her Key Stage 3 work is so good she might get a gold certificate. But I have to bite my tongue. He concludes, ‘You and Izzy really should have kids. It really will change your world.’ I kind of laugh and half smile because I know he doesn’t mean anything by it. But his careless comment really stings and I look at my watch quite deliberately because I don’t want to stand here with him any more. Before we go our separate ways he makes me promise that Izzy and I will come and spend the weekend with him, Amy and Amber, and the first thing I do after leaving him is get out my mobile and call Nicola.

  plan

  ‘Hello?’ says Nicola brightly.

  ‘It’s me,’ I say. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Hi, Dave,’ she says. ‘I’m in my room listening to music. How are you?’

  ‘I’m fine. Really good. What about yourself?’

  ‘I’m a bit bored. I’ve got loads of homework and I just feel too tired to do any of it. I’d go to sleep but Mum said she’d be checking to make sure I did it. She was joking but you can’t be too careful with my mum.’