Dinner for Two by Mike Gayle Read Free Book Online

is nothing going on in my head, no secret thoughts; only thoughts of the extraordinarily vacuous variety about yucca plants.’
    ‘Were you really thinking about yucca plants last night?’
    I nod.
    ‘And you can think stupid thoughts about yucca plants just because they’re right in front of you and not spend that time more wisely, for instance, thinking about me?’
    I nod again.
    ‘You’re right,’ says Izzy, turning off the heat under the pan of pasta, ‘you should keep that kind of stuff to yourself. I’m so glad I was born a chick.’ She kisses me and drains the pasta. ‘Dave?’
    ‘Hmm?’
    ‘What are you thinking about right now?’
    ‘Right now?’
    She nods.
    ‘I’m thinking about the guy who invented pasta, how he came up with such a great idea and whether, you know, there were failures along the way – things that could’ve been pasta but didn’t make the cut.’
    ‘Do you know what?’ she says, smiling. ‘Sometimes I really hate you.’
    ‘Yeah, I know.’ But the truth is, I hadn’t been thinking about pasta. I was thinking – and still am – about Izzy: what a great woman she is, what a fantastic wife, and what a wonderful mother she would have been.

    dream
    It’s a Saturday morning several weeks later, there’s snow outside and the flat is freezing because the central heating has been playing up. Izzy and I are in bed, working our way through the morning papers: the Independent , the Guardian , The Times , the Telegraph and the Mail and all their attendant supplements. As with most magazine journalists, these are a major habit because first thing on Monday most of us have dreaded features meetings where we’re supposed to come up with ideas for the next issue. Nine times out of ten, however, no one has any, which is why we steal them from the weekend papers. Ironically, most journalists working on weekend newspapers have no ideas for their features meetings either, other than those they’ve stolen from magazines – it’s symbiosis at its most carnivorous.
    ‘Will you look at this!’ I say, waving the newspaper I’ve been reading for the last half-hour in front of Izzy’s face.
    ‘Will I look at what?’
    I point to a picture of a Grade 2 listed farmhouse in Cumbria on page five of The Times ’ property section. What’s strange is that I never usually read the property sections and neither does Izzy. We usually keep them piled up in the kitchen because they’re exactly the same size as Arthur’s litter tray.
    ‘See this farmhouse?’ I say, indicating the picture with my nose because I’m still holding the newspaper with both hands. ‘It’s only a little bit more than we paid for this flat.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘Well, we could sell up and move there, couldn’t we?’
    She peers at it. ‘It says it needs a lot of work doing to it.’
    ‘We could do that.’
    ‘Dave, we don’t do that. We get men in to do that sort of thing for us.’
    ‘We could leave London for good. Simplify our lives.’
    ‘All this just by buying a farmhouse?’
    I nod.
    ‘Let’s do it,’ says Izzy.
    ‘Really?’
    ‘No,’ she says, tersely. ‘I was joking.’
    ‘I’m serious. I think we should consider moving to the country.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘But what would we do in the country?’ she says, rolling over on to her side to return to her article.
    ‘Anything we wanted to. You could write a novel, I could freelance at something or other . . . I don’t know.’
    ‘Have you noticed that the only reason we can afford the mortgage we’ve got is because we live in London?’
    ‘Sure. We live here to earn good money but life here is too expensive. If we move out we’ll get more for our money but earn less.’
    ‘Exactly.’ She pauses, waiting for me to say something more. I don’t. ‘Is that it, then?’ she asks. ‘Are we agreed that we’re staying in London until we’re old and grey?’
    ‘I suppose,’ I reply, but my eyes have flitted across to a