“Right, right, it sounds very…Look, Daniel, there’s something I need to…”
“I know, I know, I know, I know,” he said, and paused for dramatic effect. Then he switched into the more typical Daniel seducer mode, leaning towards me and looking deep into my eyes, with an air of flimsy sincerity.
“I was appalling, Jones. There should have been phone calls, sobbing gratitude for our explosive night. There should have been floral tributes, trinkets, chocolates, delicately embossed with our two names, entwined on little hearts. But I’ve been in total writing lockdown hell: editing, galleys, the launch. You can’t imagine the creative weight of having an entire novel in one’s head and…”
“Excuse me.”
“Yes, Jones?”
“Could you shut up? You’re talking bollox.”
“Ah, you’re right, Jones. Right as ever. Remind me what knickers you wore at school?”
I suddenly retched.
“Everything all right?”
“I’m not sure I can manage the fish. Do you think I could order a baked potato?”
“Ah, well, the thing is, you see, Nobu, being a Japanese restaurant, does not make a forte out of baked potatoes, jam roly-poly, pork pies, that sort of thing. You’ve just ordered a lovely Pink Miso Trout, which has been marinated in seaweed and fed on sake for four hundred years. Eat it up, there’s a good girl.”
—
I had to concentrate so hard on keeping the food down that by the time the doorman was handing me back into Daniel’s new car, with it’s new-leather smell, I still hadn’t brought up the fact that the baby, who was now wrestling furiously with a Miso Trout inside me, was even there.
“Lovely evening,” murmured Daniel, clicking something on the dashboard and revving the car with a roar.
“Daniel, there’s something I have to…”
The Miso Trout was suddenly rushing upwards towards my throat.
“Dnl stp the crr,” I tried to say, putting my hand over my mouth as it filled with sick.
“Didn’t quite catch that, Jones.”
But it was too late.
“Christ alive, Jones, what’s going on? This is a nightmare. This is hell. Are you the Exorcist?” a melting-down Daniel cried, as sick spurted out from behind my hand all over his pale grey interior.
—
11 p.m. My flat. Little sweetheart, I’m so sorry about all this. I’ll make it up to you, I promise. You just stay safe in there and leave it all to me. I’m going to show you the best time…I think I’d better call your granddad.
SATURDAY 14 OCTOBER
Dad’s club, London. It was so lovely to see Dad. I told him everything and he just looked at me with those kind, wise eyes and gave me a big hug. We were sitting in the library. There were old books, maps, globes; a sooty coal fire, and leather armchairs whose tattiness went so far beyond the distressed as to be practically psychotic.
“I feel like a crack whore, or one of those women on Jerry Springer who’s slept with her own grandson,” I said. “Do you want to feel my bump?”
“We’re all just an impulse away from The Jerry Springer Show, love,” said Dad, patting his embryonic granddaughter affectionately. “I’m not even sure myself if you belong to me or that young curate who did a stint at the vicarage forty years ago.”
I gasped.
“I’m joking, pet. But you haven’t done anything that ninety per cent of people in the world wouldn’t have done in your position.”
We both looked round at the aged gentlemen club members, most of whom were dozing quietly in their armchairs.
“Eighty-five per cent?” said Dad. “Look, pet. You never go too far wrong by just telling the truth.”