Dinner for Two (11 page)

‘What’s up with him?’ I ask Fran, as she helps me untie the bags.

‘It’s nothing personal,’ says Fran, grimacing in the direction of the door. ‘All the post guys are a bit surly when you ask them to do their jobs. When they’re eyeing up my arse as I go into the lift or having a fag outside the office, they’re the nicest people in the world.’ She struggles to open her bag while I search around for a pair of scissors. ‘We’re in,’ she says eventually, having severed the cords with her teeth. She leaves me to wade through hundreds of pages of love, self-hatred, self-loathing and self-doubt. It’s amazing. I can’t believe how complicated a teenage girl’s life can be.

It’s raining heavily and I feel as if steam must be rising from my soaking clothes as I wait in the lobby for the lift. The first issue of
Teen Scene
with me as agony uncle has been out in the shops now for two weeks and I’m quite proud of it – apart from the photo at the top of the column. Just as Fran had said he would, the photographer has made me look like a (slightly haggard older version of a) boy-band member and Izzy has been having a field day teasing me about it. I press the lift button repeatedly and, as one of the building’s two lifts finally begins its descent, Fran appears next to me. ‘Morning,’ she says brightly.

‘Hey, you,’ I reply. ‘What did you get up to at the weekend?’

‘I stayed in for most of it and had a massive row with Linden.’

‘About?’

‘Everything.’

‘Where did it begin?’

She half smiles. ‘I think it might have been when I opened my mouth to say hello when I dropped round at his flat on Friday night.’

‘I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,’ I tell her, ‘he’s a waste of space.’

‘I know,’ says Fran, as the lift arrives. ‘But I
like
him. He’s a very sexy waste of space. What’s a girl to do?’

I’m about to reply when I realise we’re no longer alone. A couple of women – all perfect lipstick, perfect hair, perfect dress sense, who obviously work on
Stylissimo
– have arrived and are standing to the left of us and a young casually dressed guy is next to me. I do a double-take and realise I recognise him just as he realises he recognises me.

‘Dave Harding?’ says the man, as we get into the lift.

I smile politely. It’s all coming back to me. He’d done quite a bit of work experience at
Louder
about a year ago but we hadn’t been able to give him a job. I feel myself shrink.

‘I thought it was you,’ he continues. ‘How are you, mate?’

‘Okay,’ I reply. ‘How about yourself?’

‘Excellent, actually. You know how it is, a bit of this and a bit of that. I DJ at a couple of bars in Soho, and then I do a bit of stuff for a couple of underground labels and on top of all that I’m working at
Metrosoundz
on the top floor. Features editor, actually. Just got promoted.’

‘Congratulations,’ I say, in a tone that I hope doesn’t sound churlish or needlessly genuine. ‘You must be really pleased.’

‘Sorry to hear about
Louder
,’ he says. ‘It was a great mag
in its time
.’

‘Cheers,’ I reply, aware of the thinly veiled insult. Out of the corner of my eye I notice that Fran is wearing the look of someone who is desperate to be introduced. ‘This is my mate Fran,’ I say grudgingly. ‘Fran, this is—’

‘Steve Jackson,’ he interrupts, then corrects himself. ‘Stevie J.’

It said it all.

‘Hi,’ says Fran to Stevie J. ‘I’ve seen you about in the building.’

He smiles widely. ‘I’ve seen you too.’

I sigh. I don’t really care that Fran is flirting with him but I don’t understand why she’s doing it in front of complete strangers.

‘Which mag do you work on?’ he asks Fran.

‘
Teen Scene
,’ she replies. ‘I’m a writer there.’

‘I’ve always thought it would be a good laugh to work on a mag like that.’

‘It is,’ she says, grinning like an idiot.

‘And what are you up to at the minute, Dave?’

‘This and that.’

‘Dave’s
Teen Scene
’s agony uncle,’ says Fran. ‘Aren’t you, Dave?’

There’s a long uncomfortable silence.

Stevie J looks at me in disbelief. ‘You’ve stopped writing about music?’ he asks.

‘Not stopped,’ I tell him. ‘Just taking a break.’

‘Dave’s really good at it,’ says Fran. ‘If you’ve got any relationship problems you should go and see him.’

Stevie J and Fran laugh and I have to join in. Fortunately I don’t have to endure this torture for long as the lift arrives at the third floor.

‘Nice talking to you,’ says Stevie J, as Fran and I step out.

‘See you around,’ says Fran.

‘Yeah,’ he replies. ‘Definitely.’

As the lift door begins to close behind us Stevie J calls out, ‘If you’re looking for some writing work, Dave, you should give me a call and pitch some ideas to me.’

Before I can muster a reply the door closes.

‘That was nice of him,’ says Fran. ‘I can’t tell you how long I’ve been dying to talk to him. He’s very,
very
sexy.’

‘That
wasn’t
nice of him,’ I snap. ‘He was having a laugh at my expense. He did work experience for me once. He used to make
my
coffee. Open
my
bloody post for me. And there he is asking
me
to pitch
him
features ideas. I should’ve . . . I should’ve—’

Fran, highly amused by my anger, grabs me by the arm and pulls me into the
Teen Scene
office.

It’s midday and I’m at my desk. Jenny has been in meetings all morning and Fran’s now out of the office overseeing a reader photo-shoot with the fashion editor at a studio in Fulham. Together they’re making over a bunch of girls to look like their favourite female pop stars. Even though I have loads of work to do by the end of the day – some singles reviews and a telephone interview with a new Irish boy band to write up – I decide to take a break with a little light reading from my Love Doctor postbag.

According to Fran, I’m officially getting more post than ‘Ask Adam’ ever had. I grab a handful of letters from the pile I’ve been sorting through and begin to read:

A desperate
Dawson’s Creek
fan (16), Cheltenham

I flick through another pile of letters. Some are written in felt-tip pen, others thick black marker pen, glitter pen on black paper and in some the ink has been smudged by the tears of the author. Their topics cover everything from unrequited love and dumping techniques to love bites and hand holding. I decide to read one final letter before getting down to work again. It’s in a bright yellow envelope and inside are three pages of light blue paper accompanied by two photographs. The handwriting is neat but unmistakably that of a teenage girl.

It’s been a couple of weeks since your first column in
Teen Scene
and I’ve been meaning to write to you for ever (in more ways than one). I know you may think this is a bit strange but I’ve got a really strong feeling that you might know my mum. Her name is Caitlin O’Connell. You met her in Corfu in a nightclub, in a place called Benitses on 11 August 1986 and spent the night with her. Mum said that if things had been different (that she didn’t live in Dublin and you didn’t live in London) the two of you might have tried to make a go of it and seen each other after the holiday. All this should be old news to you.

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw your photo in
Teen Scene
I thought I was going mad but then I compared it to the only photo I’ve got of you and I just know it is you. Even though the picture was taken before I was born I can tell you’re my dad because when you’ve spent the majority of your life looking in the mirror trying to imagine one of the two most important people in your life you know exactly what you’re looking for.

I read the letter several times but nothing’s going in. I look round the office to check I’m not dreaming: Lisa, the production manager, is putting a new CD into the office hi-fi; Daisy, the senior writer, is talking loudly to a friend on the phone; Jessica, the junior designer, is standing by the colour printer in the far corner of the art department. Everyone’s going about their business. No one’s looking at me waiting to go ‘Ha! ha! Had you fooled there!’ I’m alone on this one.

I check the postmark on the envelope several times – it has been posted in London. I study the enclosed photos and one definitely features an eighteen-year-old me. If it wasn’t for that I wouldn’t believe the content of the letter for a second. But the thing is, I’ve never seen this photo in my life.

I look at the letter again, the letter that is trying to tell me that, for the past thirteen years, I’ve been a dad and haven’t known it. Is this the answer to my unspoken prayers? How can it be that while I’m still feeling the pain of loss for a child that never was, I should discover that there’s a child in the world who is mine all along?

I just can’t take it in.

I can’t think straight.

None of this is happening to me. It’s happening to the person who is responsible for it – the eighteen-year-old Dave Harding – a person I haven’t been for over fourteen years.

Corfu. August 1986. It was the summer before I went to university to study English. I’d been working part-time in the warehouse of a frozen-food supermarket to earn enough money to pay for the holiday. Four of us went: me, Jamie Earls, Nick Smith and Ed Ellis. All friends from school. We’d been looking forward to the holiday all year. Everything was planned down to the last detail and we had even bought a tourist guide to the island that listed where all the bars and clubs were so that we could work out where we wanted to go on our first night out. None of us had girlfriends; Jamie had been seeing someone for a few weeks but he dumped her because he didn’t want to be the only one of us who was attached.

The bravado of four eighteen-year-old boys together on a foreign holiday was intoxicating. We soon established a regular daily pattern – get up at midday, slope to one of the many roadside cafés for an ‘English breakfast’, then go to the beach, lie down and stare at girls. About four o’clock in the afternoon we’d wander back to the apartment to sleep and at about eight o’clock we’d go out to get something to eat, usually burgers, then head for the various bars and clubs Benitses had to offer. We never arrived back at our apartment before five a.m. if we could help it.

Our success rate with the opposite sex wasn’t high. Despite this, though, we’d stand each night in a group in the corner of whichever bar or club we were in, watching girls. Eventually one of us would declare that someone was ‘giving us the eye’ and walk over to try to chat her up, only to return shame-faced minutes – or seconds – later. Rejection, however, is part and parcel of what being an eighteen-year-old male is all about.

On the final night of our holiday, however, something strange happened. We pulled.

It happened exactly as the letter said. I’d been in a beach bar with my friends when a group of girls about our age walked in and ordered drinks. We thought they were English from the way they were dressed but when we sent Jamie on a reconnaissance mission to the bar we discovered they were from Ireland and they’d just arrived in Corfu. So there we were, four lads from south London on the last night of our holiday in one corner and four girls from Ireland, determined to kick off their holiday with a real party, in the other. It was the perfect match. We started talking to them immediately. Jamie and Ed were chatting up a girl called Caitlin. Nick was chatting up Brenda, and I was trying to entertain Colleen, whom I fancied, and her bored friend Sarah-Jane, whom I didn’t.