One Day [Anglais] [Relié]

CHAPTER ONE
'THE FUTURE'

Friday 15TH July 1988
Rankeillor Street, Edinburgh

'I suppose the important thing is to make some sort of difference,' she said. 'You know, actually change something.'
     'What, like "change the world", you mean?'
     'Not the whole entire world. Just the little bit around you.'
     They lay in silence for a moment, bodies curled around each other in the single bed, then both began to laugh in low, pre-dawn voices. 'Can't believe I just said that,' she groaned. 'Sounds a bit corny, doesn't it?'
     'A bit corny.'
     'I'm trying to be inspiring! I'm trying to lift your grubby soul for the great adventure that lies ahead of you.' She turned to face him. 'Not that you need it. I expect you've got your future nicely mapped out, ta very much. Probably got a little flow-chart somewhere or something.'
     'Hardly.'
     'So what're you going to do then? What's the great plan?'
     'Well, my parents are going to pick up my stuff, dump it at theirs, then I'll spend a couple of days in their flat in London, see some friends. Then France-'
     'Very nice-'
     'Then China maybe, see what that's all about, then maybe onto India, travel around there for a bit-'
     'Traveling,' she sighed. 'So predictable.'
     'What's wrong with travelling?'
     'Avoiding reality more like.'
     'I think reality is over-rated,' he said in the hope that this might come across as dark and charismatic.
     She sniffed. 'S'alright, I suppose, for those who can afford it. Why not just say "I'm going on holiday for two years"? It's the same thing.'
     'Because travel broadens the mind,' he said, rising onto one elbow and kissing her.
     'Oh I think you're probably a bit too broad-minded as it is,' she said, turning her face away, for the moment at least. They settled again on the pillow. 'Anyway, I didn't mean what are you doing next month, I meant the future-future, when you're, I don't know...' She paused, as if conjuring up some fantastical idea, like a fifth dimension. '...Forty or something. What do you want to be when you're forty?'
     'Forty?' He too seemed to be struggling with the concept. 'Don't know. Am I allowed to say "rich"?'
     'Just so, so shallow.'
     'Alright then, "famous".' He began to nuzzle at her neck. 'Bit morbid, this, isn't it?'
     'It's not morbid, it's...exciting.'
     ' 'Exciting!' ' He was imitating her voice now, her soft Yorkshire accent, trying to make her sound daft. She got this a lot, posh boys doing funny voices, as if there was something unusual and quaint about an accent, and not for the first time she felt a reassuring shiver of dislike for him. She shrugged herself away until her back was pressed against the cool of the wall.
     'Yes, exciting. We're meant to be excited, aren't we? All those possibilities. It's like the Vice-Chancellor said, "the doors of opportunity flung wide..."'
     '"Yours are the names in tomorrow's newspapers..."'
     'Not very likely.'
     'So, what, are you excited then?'
     'Me? God no, I'm crapping myself.'
     'Me too. Christ...' He turned suddenly and reached for the cigarettes on the floor by the side of the bed, as if to steady his nerves. 'Forty years old. Forty. Fucking hell.'
     Smiling at his anxiety, she decided to make it worse. 'So what'll you be doing when you're forty?'
     He lit his cigarette thoughtfully. 'Well the thing is, Em-'
     '"Em"? Who's "Em"?'
     'People call you Em. I've heard them.'
     'Yeah, friends call me Em.'
     'So can I call you Em?'
     'Go on then, Dex.'
     'So I've given this whole "growing old" thing some thought and I've come to the decision that I'd like to stay exactly as I am right now.'
     Dexter Mayhew. She peered up at him through her fringe as he leant against the cheap buttoned vinyl headboard and even without her spectacles on it was clear why he might want to stay exactly this way. Eyes closed, the cigarette glued languidly to his lower lip, the dawn light warming the side of his face through the red filter of the curtains, he had the knack of looking perpetually posed for a photograph. Emma Morley thought 'handsome' a silly, nineteenth-century word, but there really was no other word for it, except perhaps 'beautiful'. He had one of those faces where you were aware of the bones beneath the skin, as if even his bare skull would be attractive. A fine nose, slightly shiny with grease, and dark skin beneath the eyes that looked almost bruised, a badge of honour from all the smoking and late nights spent deliberately losing at strip poker with girls from Bedales. There was something feline about him: eyebrows fine, mouth pouty in a self-conscious way, lips a shade too dark and full, but dry and chapped now, and rouged with Bulgarian red wine. Gratifyingly his hair was terrible, short at the back and sides, but with an awful little quiff at the front. Whatever gel he used had worn off, and now the quiff looked pert and fluffy, like a silly little hat.
     Still with his eyes closed, he exhaled smoke through his nose. Clearly he knew he was being looked at because he tucked one hand beneath his armpit, bunching up his pectorals and biceps. Where did the muscles come from? Certainly not sporting activity, unless you counted skinny- dipping and playing pool. Probably it was just the kind of good health that was passed down in the family, along with the stocks and shares and the good furniture. Handsome then, or beautiful even, with his paisley boxer shorts pulled down to his hip bones and somehow here in her single bed in her tiny rented room at the end of four years of college. 'Handsome'! Who do you think you are, Jane Eyre? Grow up. Be sensible. Don't get carried away.
     She plucked the cigarette from his mouth. 'I can imagine you at forty,' she said, a hint of malice in her voice. 'I can picture it right now.'
     He smiled without opening his eyes. 'Go on then.'
     'Alright-' She shuffled up the bed, the duvet tucked beneath her armpits. 'You're in this sports car with the roof down in Kensington or Chelsea or one of those places and the amazing thing about this car is it's silent, 'cause all the cars'll be silent in, I don't know, what - 2006?'
     He scrunched his eyes to do the sum. '2004-'
     'And this car is hovering six inches off the ground down the King's Road and you've got this little paunch tucked under the leather steering wheel like a little pillow and those backless gloves on, thinning hair and no chin. You're a big man in a small car with a tan like a basted turkey-'
     'So shall we change the subject then?'
     'And there's this woman next to you in sunglasses, your third, no, fourth wife, very beautiful, a model, no, an ex-model, twenty-three, you met her while she was draped on the bonnet of a car at a motor- show in Nice or something, and she's stunning and thick as shit-'
      'Well that's nice. Any kids?'
      'No kids, just three divorces, and it's a Friday in July and you're heading off to some house in the country and in the tiny boot of your hover car are tennis racquets and croquet mallets and a hamper full of fine wines and South African grapes and poor little quails and asparagus and the wind's in your widow's peak and you're feeling very, very pleased with yourself and wife number three, four, whatever, smiles at you with about two hundred shiny white teeth and you smile back and try not to think about the fact that you have nothing, absolutely nothing, to say to each other.'
      She came to an abrupt halt. You sound insane, she told herself. Do try not to sound insane. 'Course if it's any consolation we'll all be dead in a nuclear war long before then!' she said brightly, but still he was frowning at her.
      'Maybe I should go then. If I'm so shallow and corrupt-'
      'No, don't go,' she said, a little too quickly. 'It's four in the morning.'
      He shuffled up the bed until his face was a few inches from hers. 'I don't know where you get this idea of me, you barely know me.'
      'I know the type.'
      'The type?'
      'I've seen you, hanging round Modern Languages, braying at each other, throwing black-tie dinner parties-'
      'I don't even own black-tie. And I certainly don't bray-'
      'Yachting your way round the Med in the long hols, ra ra ra-'
      'So if I'm so awful-' His hand was on her hip now.
      '-which you are.'
      '-then why are you sleeping with me?' His hand was on the warm soft flesh of her thigh.
      'Actually I don't think I have slept with you, have I?'
'Well that depends.' He leant in and kissed her. 'Define your terms.' His hand was on the base of her spine, his leg slipping between hers.
    ... --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition CD .

'It's rare to find a novel which ranges over the recent past with such authority, and even rarer to find one in which the two leading characters are drawn with such solidity, such painful fidelity, to real life that you really do put the book down with the hallucinatory feeling that they've become as well known to you as your closest friends. Hard to imagine anyone encountering characters as well drawn as this and not recognizing the extraordinary talent of the writer who has created them.' (Jonathan Coe, Guardian Books of the Year 2009)

'Incredibly moving' (Marian Keyes, writing in the Irish Independent)

'A totally brilliant book about the heartbreaking gap between the way we were and the way we are...the best weird love story since THE TIME TRAVELLER'S WIFE. Every reader will fall in love with it. And every writer will wish they had written it.' (Tony Parsons 20090129)

'Big, absorbing, smart, fantastically readable . . . brilliant on the details of the last couple of decades of British cultural and political life . . . the perfect beach read for people who are normally repelled by the very idea of beach reads' (Nick Hornby 20090403)

'The funniest, loveliest book I've read in ages. Most of all it is horribly, cringingly, absolutely 100% honest and true to life: I lived every page.' (Jenny Colgan 20081202)

'The ultimate zeitgeist love story for anyone who ever wanted someone they couldn't have' (Adele Parks 20090219)

'I really loved it . . . it's absolutely wonderful . . . just so moving and engaging' (Kate Mosse 20090621)

'A wonderful, wonderful book: wise, funny, perceptive, compassionate and often unbearably sad . . . the best British social novel since Jonathan Coe's WHAT A CARVE UP! . . . Nicholls's witty prose has a transparency that brings Nick Hornby to mind: it melts as you read it so that you don't notice all the hard work that it's doing' (The Times 20090621)

'You'd be hard pressed to find a sharper, sweeter romantic comedy this year than the story of Dex and Em' (Independent 20090621)

'We may have found the novel of the year - a brilliantly funny and moving will-they, won't-they romance tracing a relationship on the same day each day for two decades' (Heat 20090621)

'With its beautifully rounded, real characters and deeply poignant storytelling, this is one of the year's best novels.' (Heat 20090621)

'With a nod to WHEN HARRY MET SALLY, this funny, emotionally engaging third novel from David Nicholls traces the unlikely relationship between Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew . . . Told with toe-curlingly accurate insight and touching observation . . . If you left college sometime in the Eighties with no clear idea of what was going to happen next, or who your lifelong friends might turn out to be, this one's a definite for your holiday suitcase. If you didn't, it still is . . . The feelgood film must surely be just around the corner. I can't wait.' (Daily Mail 20090621)

'Nicholls has a gimlet eye for period detail . . . A beguiling read' (Observer 20090621)

'[Nicholls] has both a very deft prose style and a great understanding of human emotion. His characterisation is utterly convincing . . . ONE DAY is destined to be a modern classic.' (Daily Mirror 20090621)

'A moving and feel-good read. Nicholls is an expert at capturing that essence of young adulthood, first love, heartbreak, and the tangled, complicated course of romance . . . Deserves to be the must-read hit of the summer.' (News of the World 20090621)

'I couldn't think of anyone who wouldn't love this book' (Simon Mayo Books Panel, BBC Radio Five Live 20090621)

'Nicholls captures superbly the ennui of post graduation . . . The writing is almost faultless, there's a great feeling for the period and it's eminently readable.' (Herald 20090621)

'Nicholls has written a warm, witty, smart and sad novel, and maybe one of the best books of the year' (Sunday Tribune 20090621)

'David Nicholls' third novel captivates love in a way that's real and unassuming . . . Relaying the essence of friendship and unrequited love with fall-off-your-seat humour, this is an unputdownable romance for the 21st century' (SHE 20090621)

'You're gripped from the opening pages . . . Nicholls, author of STARTER FOR TEN, writes faultless, engaging dialogue and keeps up a cracking pace. You will find this hard to put down' (Psychologies 20090621)

'As a study of what we once were and what we can become, it's masterfully realised' (Esquire 20090621)

'Perfect for the beach or summer in the city' (In Style 20090621)

'An off-kilter romantic comedy with charm to spare' (Harpers Bazaar 20090621)

'A delicious love story' (Sunday Herald 20090621)

'funny and moving' (Scotsman 20090621)

'David STARTER FOR TEN Nicholls is back with this smart comedy, packed with the mistakes, mismatches and meandering conversations that make up real life' (Marie Claire, Book of the Month 20090621)

'A modern fairy tale, slickly put together. A gifted story-teller with lots of technical savvy.' (Scottish Review of Books 20090621)

'An edgy romantic tale' (Woman & Home 20090603)

'I loved this book . . . moved me profoundly' (Amanda Ross 20090527)

'Snort-out-loud stuff . . . it deserves to be a huge hit' (thelondonpaper 20090609)

'A wonderful evocation of a modern love affair' (Glamour 20090609)

'Lightly done, but saved from schmaltz by rueful wit and lashings of cringe-inducing nostalgia' (Guardian Review 20090609)

'Clever, funny and poignant' (Daily Express 20090609)

'A total treat . . . by turns bittersweet, funny, touching and sad, but always Nicholls's wonderfully observant and wry touch shines through. A way-we-live-now parable about relationships, disappointments, friendship and expectations; a novel utterly comfortable in its own skin' (Kate Mosse, writing in The Times 20090609)

'Fabulous . . . I couldn't put it down . . . It's brilliant' (Fay Ripley 20090609)