instead of real things, in the bluish haze of Ralph’s eternal twilight mole hole.
‘Is Paul not coming here again, then?’ Ralph said, eyes fixed on the screen, as Delia’s avatar crouched behind a car in the middle of a firefight with some Mexican drug lord’s gang. Her parents had been licensed to pass this news on.
‘I’m not sure,’ Delia said. She had a sudden desire to share. ‘He’s been seeing someone else.’
‘Why?’ asked Ralph. ‘They’re dead now, you can move. Fast.’
‘I don’t know,’ Delia pushed a button and head-butted a wall.
‘Does he like her more than you?’ Ralph said. From anyone else, this would have been wounding. From Ralph, it was artless, childlike curiosity.
‘I don’t know that either. She’s younger than me. She might be cleverer and better and funnier and more attractive and … fresher.’
‘She’s still not The Fox, though,’ Ralph said, as he took the controls from Delia and expertly navigated her out of a dead end.
‘What?’ Delia had not heard that name in so long, it took her a moment to absorb its meaning.
‘The Fox. Like, Super Delia.’
‘You remember her?’ Delia said, taken aback and very touched.
‘Course,’ Ralph said.
‘She was retired a long time ago,’ Delia said, sighing and resting her head on Ralph’s arm, then realising it inhibited his gaming, and awkwardly moved it.
‘It was you who put her into retirement, so you can get her out of retirement. You’re in charge, like, here,’ Ralph said. ‘Oh YES! Let’s go rob a plane.’
Ralph had a high-pitched, cawing bird-like laugh that ripped from his larynx with no warning rumble and took people unawares.
Delia smiled. She could enjoy Ralph’s games for a bit, then she’d get bored. Ralph’s ability to have a complete immersion wallow for days at a time struck her as a male brain thing. Or maybe a Ralph brain thing.
‘Do you want a Swiss roll?’ Ralph said, and for a second, Delia thought this was gamer talk, but he reached over and picked up a cake box.
‘I’m alright, thanks,’ said Delia, frowning a little as Ralph unwrapped the cellophane and started eating a whole cylinder of buttercream-filled sponge like a baguette.
Her mum put her head round the door. Her upper half was clad in her grass-cuttings-flecked gardening gilet. ‘Oh you’re here, love.’
‘Yes,’ Delia smiled.
‘Macaroni cheese for tea?’
‘Sounds good.’
Her mum hesitated. ‘Are you alright?’
‘I will be.’
‘Cup of tea?’
‘Yes please.’
In terms of maternal advice, that – bar the odd stiff word as Delia helped clear up from the evening meal – would be that. The door closed and Delia turned back to the screen, where Ralph was racing across the fictional city of Los Santos to Aphex Twin’s ‘Windowlicker’, the wind in his virtual hair.
‘You really liked The Fox?’ Delia said to Ralph. ‘I worried it was silly.’
‘No way. Best thing you ever did,’ Ralph said, wiping some jam from his chin.
There was something to be said for having someone who would, with no spite whatsoever, give you the unvarnished truth.
‘I see you’ve got something less smelly,’ Ann said, by way of Monday-morning greeting.
A wan Delia was unpacking her lunch on to her desk: cling-filmed ham and gherkin sandwich squares, salt and vinegar Hula Hoops, waxy Granny Smith.
‘Oh. Yeah,’ Delia said absently, registering Ann’s triumphant smile and belatedly remembering the spicy prawn bollocking.
Delia wouldn’t be explaining that all her pots and pans and exotic odorous ingredients were back at her house in Heaton which she’d fled on Saturday morning. This was a Hexham cupboards’ effort.
She still couldn’t eat but she didn’t want to worry her mum. She felt her concern when Delia’s gluey bowl of macaroni cheese was returned having been vaguely tampered with, as opposed to eaten.
Delia usually turned up with a Ziploc bag of spices to customise her parents’ cuisine to her tastes. Her parents obviously wondered who this floppy, quiet, appetite-less imposter was.
She placed her phone on her desk and saw she had a text: the umpteenth from Paul.
Please answer my calls. We need to talk. Px
The standard issue one small kiss, Delia thought, remembering how Celine merited the frankly promiscuous hand-in-the-bra quantity of one big, one small. She felt revolted.
Would it always be like this? Could she ever see their relationship free of this stain? She only knew there was a huge hole in her middle that you could see the sky through, like a surrealist painting.
Delia gave thanks that she was nowhere near close enough to anyone in her office to have confided Friday’s plan.
No one was asking to see the Art Deco square emerald and diamond cluster she wasn’t wearing, no one was demanding to hear how she had worded her proposal, or Paul’s reaction, or the hoped-for date of the wedding that wasn’t happening.
There was only one person who knew about Delia’s plans last Friday, and the inevitable email arrived within an hour. They’d have talked during the weekend, but Emma was in Copenhagen for a whistle-stop three day holiday. She did that a lot. They mostly conducted their friendship via email nowadays.
From: Emma Berry
Subject: Well …?!
How did it go, future Mrs Rafferty? (I’d like to think you’d keep Moss but I bet you won’t, you surrendered, cupcake apologist Stepford.) Can I see my bridesmaid dress yet? (No bias satin with spaghetti straps that’s designed for fatless flamingos, I look like Alfred Hitchcock at the moment.) X
In another universe, one where Paul had concentrated harder on who he was sending his texts to, or better still, was turning round to twenty-four-year-olds and saying ‘Woah, I’m taken,’ Delia was giggling in purest delight at these words, rather than wincing.
Delia didn’t want to tell Emma. Emma adored Paul, Paul adored Emma. ‘Can’t you clone him, or do some lifelike android thing,’ was Emma’s refrain.
He’d sweep her into a bear hug when she visited and make her his special recipe scrambled
