Dinner for Two (7 page)

The only person who hasn’t voiced an opinion is me. I haven’t decided yet because I’ve been wandering around the shop looking at the shelves housing all the videos that came out years ago, making a mental shortlist of how many I can find about babies. So far I’ve counted:
Three Men and a Baby
,
Raising Arizona
,
Look Who’s Talking
,
Nine Months
,
Rosemary’s Baby
,
She’s Having a Baby
,
The Rug Rat Movie
.

My list would actually be funny if it wasn’t quite so sad.

Later that night, after an evening of
Gladiator
and Domino’s pizza I can’t sleep. I’m trying to get to grips with why I’m so desperate to be a father. I conclude that perhaps it’s less to do with the ticking of an imaginary biological clock – although that would make
some
sense – than my relationship with Izzy. After all, it’s classic TV-movie-of-the-week fodder: woman gets pregnant in the hope that it will bind her closer to her husband – but in this scenario I’m the woman. As far as I’m aware there’s nothing wrong with my relationship with Izzy. I love her. She loves me. We row occasionally about stupid things but always make up. Where’s the problem?

I wonder if I’m bored because I’ve been with one woman for so long. But, again, the answer is no. I’m happy with her. I’m happy with just the two of us. We have what many people tell us is an enviable lifestyle. We both have (or had) cool careers, and, thanks largely to the money Izzy inherited when her father died we’ve got a foot in the property market without mortgaging our souls. In a lot of ways we have it all – but it doesn’t seem to mean anything any more.

It isn’t that I think our life together is pointless without a baby. It’s rather that I feel having a baby would give us an extra reason to get out of bed, an extra reason to make things work. Some people don’t need that extra reason for their lives to be okay. I know this because I used to be one of them. But somewhere along the way I’ve switched sides: I’m now one of those who
needs
to have children, like I
need
to breathe. I’ve never been a big fan of the word ‘need’. I’ve never liked to need anything or anyone too much. One of the things that had first attracted me to Izzy was that she was so strong, so independent. Maybe this is my problem: after all this time as individuals I want us finally to be one.

It’s Tuesday morning and I’m sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop, writing up a gig review from the previous evening, when my mobile rings. The display says:
number withheld
.

‘Hello?’

‘Hi, Dave, it’s me.’

It’s Jenny.

‘Hi, Jen. What can I do for you?’

‘What are you up to?’

‘Writing a gig review.’

‘Were they any good?’

‘The band?’

She laughs. ‘Yeah, of course I’m talking about the band.’

‘They were okay,’ I reply. ‘A bit derivative.’

‘Is that what you’re going to put in your review?’

I laugh. Jenny never asks me anything to do with music unless she wants something. ‘What are you after?’ I enquire.

‘I need to ask you a massive favour.’

‘Go on.’

‘I’ve just seen that article you wrote for Izzy and, well, I was wondering if there was any chance you could do something for me?’

‘On what?’

‘It’s only a short piece. Four hundred words or so. I think you’d be really good at it. It’s easy money.’

I can hear desperation in her voice.

‘It’s a teeny-weeny article about the lies teenage boys tell,’ she continues. ‘It won’t take you long and I know you’ve always made fun of what I do and everything but . . .’

‘I’ll do it,’ I say.

‘What?’

‘I said I’ll do it. I’ve just got this gig review to finish. It’ll take me half an hour and then I’ll start on your thing.’

‘Dave,’ says Jenny, ‘you are an absolute life-saver.’

Dear Jen,

Here’s the piece you wanted. I am pleased with my words of wisdom. Teenage boys won’t know what hit them when girls armed with my inside info lay into them! You’ll be pleased to know that I’m now taking myself off for a well-earned lunch at Café Crocodile on the Broadway. Mail me back when you’ve had a read.

Yours with an invoice

Dave H X

When I return to the flat after lunch there’s a message on the answerphone from Jenny. I call her back and her assistant puts me through. ‘Hi, Dave,’ she says. ‘I absolutely love your piece. It’s really good stuff.’

‘Cheers,’ I reply. ‘Is that all you called to say? I thought for a minute there might be something wrong with it.’

‘No. It was perfect.’

I can hear an element of uncertainty in her voice. ‘So what’s the problem then?’

She sighs lightly. ‘The thing is I’ve got
another
favour to ask you and I feel bad asking because we’re friends and I don’t want you to think that I’m emotionally blackmailing you into doing it, even though I will really be in the crap if you don’t.’

‘But, Jen, you
are
emotionally blackmailing me.’

‘I know,’ she says, laughing. ‘By any means necessary, eh? Okay, I’ll just lay it on the line, shall I? I’m massively short-staffed here, and this morning I had an increase in the marketing budget of the magazine, which means that the next three issues will have cover-mounted free gifts, which means—’

‘That all your issue deadlines are being brought forward. We used to have the same thing happen whenever we slapped a free CD on the cover of
Louder
.’

‘Exactly. So the thing is I need help in the office on the editorial side of things for a few weeks. It would be perfect for you, Dave. It’d be freelance so you could come and go as you please, as long as the work gets done. And it’s just basic stuff really: sorting out a few album and singles reviews, doing a couple of celebrity interviews with various teen pop stars and at a push, maybe, the odd think piece like the one you’ve just done. It’s the kind of thing you’d do standing on your head.’ She pauses then adds, ‘So, will you do it?’

I think for a moment. Jenny’s right. This kind of thing is easy enough. The only thing I’m not too sure about – and I know I’m being a snob – is the distinct lack of cool in writing for teenagers. It’s a long time since I’ve been the kind of jobbing journalist who’d write about anything as long as he got paid.

My fear is that when word gets out that my first job after the closure of
Louder
is working on a teen mag, and that I’ve done the think piece for
Femme
, people will think I’ve gone a bit soft. That I’m no longer serious. Because if there’s one single requirement you need to be a music journalist, it’s
seriousness
. On the other hand, I’m reminded that I want to write about music for an audience who appreciate it. And there’s no audience in the world who feels about music as intensely as teenage girls. Maybe their enthusiasm will rub off on me. Maybe I’ll get my passion back for music. Or maybe it will be a nightmare from start to finish.

‘I don’t get it, Dave,’ says Izzy, when I call her at work and tell her what I’ve agreed to do. ‘Why teen mags? You know enough people to get yourself some freelance work with proper music mags. You’ll hate it. You couldn’t have picked a weirder mag for a thirty-two-year-old man to work on. You don’t know anything about teen pop music. You hear a catchy chorus on the radio and you act like it’s going to permanently damage your hearing. I’d never heard of a good sixty per cent of the bands you used to write about in
Louder
and I consider myself quite up to date. In short, you know
nothing
about teenagers.’

Izzy’s right. Apart from catching ten minutes or so of kids’ TV on Saturday mornings, I’ve paid little attention to the teen world. Occasionally record companies sent various pop offerings by mistake to the
Louder
office and I’d never even take them out of the Jiffy-bag in which they arrived. Instead I just piled them up next to my desk and when the tower of bubblegum grew tall enough to topple over I’d take them to a second-hand CD shop in Soho and exchange them for cash.

‘I’ll be all right,’ I tell her.

‘Fair enough,’ she says, resignedly. ‘But if you’re going to compromise on this, you should compromise on all your other no-go zones. Ever since you wrote that piece for
Femme
my boss has been on about me getting you to write a regular “men’s point of view” column for us. I said you wouldn’t do it in a million years but you bloody well can do it now.’

‘How regular is regular?’

‘Every month.’

‘That’s a bit steep, isn’t it?’

‘And the column’s going to be called Male Man – you know, as in postman only not quite – and will feature a picture of you looking sufficiently fanciable.’

I laugh and cringe at the same time. ‘You’ve got to be joking – me? Male Man?’

She adds: ‘This is my revenge for all the time you’ve spent thinking about that yucca plant.’

It’s nine fifty-five on the following morning and I’m standing in front of the revolving glass doors of the Palace Building, 112 Tottenham Court Road, which is home to Peterborough Publishing. A couple of people are outside having a cigarette. They look like journalists. I enter the building and walk up to reception to sign in. There’s quite a big queue of people ahead of me, most of whom I overhear are freelancers waiting to sign in because they haven’t got full security passes. I take a moment to study all of the magazine covers on the wall by the lifts. Peterborough isn’t as big a publisher as BDP but they have quite a few well-known titles. Apart from
Teen Scene
there’s
Stylissimo
(women’s fashion),
New You
(women’s health),
Top Wheels
(motoring),
Burn
(Heavy Metal),
Metrosoundz
(dance music and lifestyle),
Gloss
(unisex fashion and lifestyle), and finally
Grow
(urban gardening).

I receive my pass and take the lift to the third floor then walk along a short corridor. I know when I’ve reached the
Teen Scene
office because the door is plastered with stickers that say things like: ‘Kiss Me Quick, Snog Me Hard!’ and ‘Wow!’ and my least favourite, ‘Hello, Big Boy.’ In the middle is a large poster of Leonardo di Caprio taken from
The Beach
. Someone has scribbled, ‘Love god,’ across his chest. I feel threatened.

I take a deep breath, open the door and step inside the office. No one looks up. Ignoring strangers in magazine offices is pretty much standard industry so I don’t take offence. Anyway, being ignored allows me to get my bearings. The
Teen Scene
office is busy: telephones ring, printers spew out pages of copy, and the music of some boy band is playing in the background.