Middle of the night. Awake now and wishing they weren’t.
Odd to have felt so close together earlier, when they’d hung back from having sex; whereas now they’ve done it anyway (they did, you see), now they really should be in a tender embrace, there is only Dinky and Rupa. Rupa.
And Dinky. Distant and closed as a pair of full stops.
No major falling out. They’re not splitting up, or anything. Just two people again; two different people.
Dinky is smoking in bed, which Rupa doesn’t like; and he is stroking her shoulder, which she would like, normally, except she wants to talk. No, she wants him to talk and he’s not.
Not talking.
So far she’s prized out of him that he went to see Tony Skance and he doesn’t think anything will come of it, but he’s not saying why or what went wrong.
Of the day’s other, major setback – Rupa’s forced exit from the nation’s best-loved TV talent show –
he can only say her performance was good, really it was good; no way it should be her that has to leave the competition.
He keeps saying just this, so much and no more, that she wonders whether he really watched it all.
And which would be worse – that he didn’t bother to watch her on TV, or that he hasn’t got anything to say about her performance?
Rupa sighs. Dinky stubs out another one. In a few minutes they will both be asleep again: not quite touching; not far enough away to be decidedly apart.
But just before going to sleep, she will have said:
‘Got things to do round here tomorrow. Day after, I’ll go see Mum and Dad. Haven’t seen much of them for ages. Stay a few days and let them make a fuss of me. Is that OK with you?’
And he will say, ‘Right, sure’. Trying to sound warm but feeling cold towards her and even more so because he’s been made to feel he shouldn’t show it.
Really, though, there’s no great harm done. Considering they both suffered big disappointments today, they’ve done pretty well to keep it together this much.
So let’s have a round of applause for our Mr and Mrs, Dinky and Rupa.