Chapter sixteen: bigdayspeech.doc

Tuesday, 15th July 2003

Yorkshire, England

That’s the place where I was bitten by a dog when I was a little girl,’ Emma said. She pointed ahead. She and Dexter were walking along a beach on the Yorkshire coast. The morning was hot, but there weren’t many people on the beach. The school holidays hadn’t begun yet.

‘What kind of dog was it?’ Dexter asked. He was trying too hard to sound interested. Emma looked carefully at him. Clearly, he didn’t really want to know what kind of dog had bitten her.

‘Am I boring you, Dexter?’ she asked. She sounded a bit cross.

‘No, of course you aren’t,’ Dexter replied wearily. ‘Well, perhaps you are boring me a little bit.’

‘Ah, then you have four more days of boredom to look forward to, don’t you?’ Emma said. She laughed. She liked his sudden honesty. ‘Poor Dexter,’ she added.

Emma and Dexter were on holiday. They had rented a small cottage in the Yorkshire countryside for a week. Each day they set out to visit places that Emma remembered from when she was a child. Today, after their morning at the beach, they were going to drive inland. Emma wanted to find a waterfall she remembered from her childhood.

‘It’s a beautiful place, Dex,’ she said. ‘You’ll love it.’

But that afternoon, they didn’t succeed in their search. Emma’s memory wasn’t good enough. After an hour they hadn’t found Emma’s waterfall. So they found a pleasant spot in the sun and lay down on the grass. Soon, Dexter was feeling a bit sleepy.

‘Look at that bird up there, Dex,’ Emma said suddenly, pointing to the sky. ‘What kind of bird is it? It’s beautiful!’

Dexter did not look up. ‘I’m too young to be a birdwatcher,’ he said. ‘Birdwatching is for middle-aged people. And isn’t birdwatching a very bourgeois thing to do? Next, you’ll want us to move to the country. Then you’ll want us to cuddle in bed and call each other “darling” and go to the shops together.’ For a moment, Emma thought about Ian Whitehead. Calling him ‘darling’ hadn’t meant that she really loved him, had it? ‘After that it’s classical music – Beethoven and that kind of thing,’ Dexter went on. ‘I’ve seen it happen to people, Em. It’s awful.’

Emma laughed and kissed him. ‘It does sound awful. Tell me again – why are we going to get married?’ she said.

‘Well, we don’t need to. We could cancel the wedding,’ Dexter said.

‘Yes, but we’ve paid for it now,’ Emma said. ‘Can we get our money back if we cancel it?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Dexter replied.

‘Ah well, we’d better get married then,’ said Emma. ‘I knew there was a reason.’ And she kissed him again. Then she closed her eyes and thought about their wedding. They had chosen a day in November for the ceremony. Only a few close friends were going to be there. And finally she was going to be Emma Mayhew, after all these years. ‘I’ll marry you if you promise you’ll never play golf,’ she whispered.

That evening, they went to bed early. Emma quickly went to sleep, but Dexter couldn’t sleep so he got up quietly and went downstairs.

He was thinking about Emma and about their big day in November. He was going to make a speech at the wedding party. He needed it to be just right. Suddenly, he remembered something that Emma had once said to him. He turned on his laptop and opened a file. Then he looked into his heart and made some notes:

My wedding speech

1) I met Emma at University.

2) She called my dad a bourgeois fascist.

3) She can’t cook.

4) We argue a lot – but laugh a lot too.

5) She’s beautiful but she doesn’t believe it.

6) She gets on well with my lovely daughter, Jasmine.

7) She even gets on well with my ex-wife. Ha, ha! (Leave five seconds for laughter here.)

8) Everyone loves her.

9) Our sudden romance lasted 15 years.

10) My wonderful mum loved Emma.

ALSO…

11) Say something nice about Dad and about Emma’s parents.

12) Say that it’s my second wedding and I need to get it right this time, etc.

He was reading what he had written when he heard Emma’s footsteps on the stairs. He gave the file a name – bigdayspeech.doc – and closed it.

‘Sorry, I fell asleep,’ Emma said from the bottom of the stairs. ‘But I’m awake now. What shall we do?’

‘I think I’d like to play a board game,’ said Dexter and he smiled.