Synopsis

One Day is a fictional novel by David Nicholls. Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew first meet at university on July 15, 1988. What started out as a possible hook-up goes through many iterations over the next twenty years.

Each chapter of One Day focuses on that one day, July 15, of a different year, while providing details about what happened during the rest of the year. In this way, we learn about Emma, Dexter, their lives and that of their friends, and their friendship. Their feeling of friendship is constant, even though its nature changes many times over the years.

Verdict

I enjoyed this book. It even made me cry. The style of focusing on one day a year allows us to truly see how both the characters and their relationship change over time. I don’t know what this style of writing is called but the book starts and ends in the same place. And at the end, we find out the missing details from the first day when Emma and Dexter met. I like this full-circle setup.

At times, I really disliked the characters and I didn’t understand why their relationship persisted. Then I realized I know of friends with similar relationships, where one person behaves really, really badly, but the other one holds on. Perhaps this is the optimism of humanity, and we can take that away as a theme of One Day, along with friendship, love, and family.

If you read on, note that there are spoilers of the plot and the ending of One Day.

Spoilers

The Beginning

Emma and Dexter meet at a party on the day of their graduation from university. It was the first time he’d noticed her, but she’d first seen him at a party four years earlier and thought he was cute even then. She still finds him cute, and he notices that she’s beautiful, wondering why he’d never noticed her before.

Lying in bed, Emma and Dexter talk about their dreams, their future. They imagine their lives when they’re 40. Emma wants to change her small part of the world while Dex wants to stay the same. It’s clear from the start that they have different backgrounds and values:

Nothing here was neutral, everything displayed an allegiance or a point of view. The room was a manifesto, and with a sigh Dexter recognised her as one of those girls who used ‘bourgeois’ as a term of abuse.

He could understand why ‘fascist’ might have negative connotations, but he liked the word ‘bourgeois’ and all that it implied. Security, travel, nice food, good manners, ambition; what was he meant to be apologising for?

Dexter

In truth she suspected he wasn’t all that bright, and a little too pleased with himself, but he was popular and funny and – no point fighting it – very handsome.

Emma

Dexter considers sneaking away while Emma is asleep but she wakes up before he can. Later, he’s thinking about how he will leave, but at the same time, Emma asks him him he’s doing that day, St. Swithin’s Day, and he agrees to do something with her.

Into the Real World

From university, Dexter goes off travelling the world while Emma starts looking for work. Dex is always dating, often someone new, and talking about how amazing his travels and girlfriends are. Yet, Emma is a constant in his life. He often wonders what she’d think of his choices, how he would defend them to her.

When Emma got bored and depressed of staying in Edinburgh, where she want to school, she moved back in with her parents. She lived with them until an old friend, Gary, called and invited her to join his theatre company. Desperate for a job, she said yes. After that job, she moved to London, and started working at a Tex Mex restaurant.

In the meantime, Dexter travels to China, Europe, India, Thailand. He gets let go from a teaching job in Paris for sleeping with one of his (adult) students, told that he was “morally unfit” for the job. When he eventually returned to London, he got a job in the TV industry.

At one point, while in India, Dexter wrote a very vulnerable letter to Emma, telling her what was wrong with her, asking her to leave her job and inviting her to come and stay with him for a while. He called her smart and sexy. Later, he’s embarrassed by the letter but he realizes that he means it, and puts it in the book Howard’s End (a gift from Emma) to mail. However, he ends up leaving the book in a bar, where it was found by Heidi, a chemical engineering student from Cologne. Since it had no address, it was never mailed even though Heidi considered it an important letter and really wanted to mail it. In the end, she kept the book and brought it back home to Germany with her.

In Real Life

While Dex resists growing up, chasing women and excitement, Emma adults, taking care of herself, buying furniture. Five years after they graduate, she is in teacher’s college to qualify to teach English and Drama. She’s maintaining her old friends and making new ones, although she is occasionally lonely without a boyfriend. Dexter is chasing fun and excitement, afraid of being bored or alone. He gets rid of many of his old friends, replacing them with “more successful, better-looking friends”.

His rise through this world had been meteoric. The woman he had met on a train in India with the glossy black bob and tiny spectacles had given him his first job as a runner, then a researcher, and now he was Assistant Producer, Asst Prod, on UP4IT, a weekend magazine programme that mixed live music and outrageous stand-up with reports on issues that ‘really affect young people today

Over the years, Emma and Dexter regularly met. Sometimes, Dexter felt bad for her and wanted to make her feel better. On one such occasion, he said to her, “You know, Em, if you’re still single when you’re forty I’ll marry you.”

Dexter is 28 years old when his mother is sick with cancer and dying. His drinking gets even worse and he goes to visit her while drunk one day. At the end of the visit, his father won’t let him drive home and tells him that he’ll throw him out if he ever visit her while drunk again. Within two years, his mother is dead, and he starts to rely more on Emma, even as she’s getting businer in her own life.

A Greek Holiday

In the summer of 1992, Emma and Dexter took a trip to the Dodecanese Islands in Greece. Lead by Emma, they had a number of rules for the trip, including no flirting and no nudity Although he was dating Ingrid at the time, Dexter constantly tried to skirt the rules, lying to get them to share a bed, and going skinny-dipping in the ocean. He tried to explain he wasn’t ready for a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship like what she was looking for but suggested a fling between them, which Emma declined.

You know what I mean. A fling. Just while we’re away, no strings, no obligations, not a word to Ingrid. Our little secret. Because I’d be up for it. That’s all.’

The Middle

Emma is a teacher working at Cromwell Road Comprehensive School. She has a boyfriend, Ian, an aspiring comic whom she used to work with at a Tex Mex restaurant. Even though she finds his comedy off-putting, he’s better than being lonely, so she ends up dating him. This progresses to them buying a flat together, even though she’s not in love with him:

I love him, she thought, I’m just not in love with him and also I don’t love him. I’ve tried, I’ve strained to love him but I can’t. I am building a life with a man I don’t love, and I don’t know what to do about it.

As Emma is putting on a production of Oliver at her school, Dexter is starting his own live TV show. While her show is a success, his flops from him being drunk during the episode.

She wondered where the fallacy had come from, that there was something irresistible about funny men; Cathy doesn’t long for Heathcliff because he’s a really great laugh, and what was all the more galling about this barrage was that she actually quite liked Ian, had set out with high hopes and even some excitement about seeing him again…

The Lost Years

As the years go on, Dexter and Emma become more and more distant. Dex thinks her too righteous and stuffy, while she thinks him too obnoxious, self-absorbed and vacuous. But the biggest break happens when he tells her, “Those who can, do, those who can’t, teach …”, to which she responded, “And those who teach say go fuck yourself.” At this point, Emma doesn’t like Dexter, although she lets him know that she still loves him.

Dexter, I love you so much. So, so much, and I probably always will.’ Her lips touched his cheek. ‘I just don’t like you anymore. I’m sorry.’

After Emma breaks up with Ian by declining his wedding proposal, she starts an affair with her principal, Phil Godalming.

Dexter loses his job on TV and his agent due to his arrogance and drunkenness. He’s out of work but falls in love with Sylvie Cope.

On their first date, a ruinously expensive French restaurant in Chelsea, he had wondered aloud if she was enjoying herself. She was having a wonderful time, she said, but she didn’t like to laugh in company because she didn’t like what laughter did to her face. And although a part of him felt a little chill at this, a part of him also had to admire her commitment.

Emma and Dexter didn’t talk for almost four years (1995 – 1999). They thought about each other but didn’t reach out. Then they reunited at the wedding of a mutual friend.

Reunion and A New Life

After they escape the festivities to chat with each other, Dexter reveals that he was engaged to be married in 7 weeks and expecting a baby. Emma and Dexter made up, agreed to be friends again.

‘Em?’ ‘Dex?’ He wanted to take hold of her hand and walk back into the maze. He would turn his phone off, and they would just stay in there until the party was over, get lost and talk about all that had happened. ‘Friends again?’ he said eventually. ‘Friends again.’ She let go of his hand. ‘Now, let’s go and find your fiancée. I want to congratulate her.’

When his daughter Jasmine, is born, Dexter resolves to be a better man, but that resolution lasts 95 minutes. Next thing he knows, he’s moving to the countryside, to Surrey, to live closer to Sylvie’s family. Sylvie’s and Dexter’s relationship was struggling, and Dexter’s joblessness did not help matters. Pushed by Sylvie, Dexter finally joined the company of an old friend, Callum.

In one incident where Sylvie leaves Dexter home along under the pretext of going to a hen’s night, he immediately starts to drink while taking care of Jasmine. In reality, Sylvie is having an affair with Callum, and leaves Dexter for him.

Drunk, Dexter tries calling Emma but she is visiting friends and doesn’t answer. Many of Emma’s friends have babies and she’s tired of talking about them instead of having fun. Dexter goes through his address book to find someone else to talk to, but he really doesn’t have any friends.

The Ending of One Day

In 2001, Emma is having success as an author and has moved to Paris. Dexter and Sylvie have divorced; she left him for Callum.

Dexter comes to visit Emma, and we find out that they slept with each other within the past year. Dexter has come to visit with the expectation that they will be together.

The last time he had seen her, things had been said. Something had happened. What would he tell her? What would she say? Yes or no?

However, Emma has been dating a french man for a month, and has plans to go out to dinner with him and Dexter. As soon as they enter Emma’s apartment, Dexter starts to kiss her. He’s upset when she says she has a boyfriend, and shares that he thought they would be together.

She sighed. ‘We’ve known each other a long time, Dex.’ ‘I know. I just thought it might be a good idea. Dex and Em, Em and Dex, the two of us. Just try it for a while, see how it worked. I had thought that’s what you wanted too.’

‘It is. It was. Back in the late Eighties.’ ‘So why not now?’ ‘Because. It’s too late. We’re too late. I’m too tired.’

Despite her initial objections, Emma gives in to Dexter, cancelling the dinner with her boyfriend, Jean Pierre.

A New Life Together

One year later (2002), Emma and Dexter are dating each other. She still has her flat but he’s asked her to move in. She suggests buying a place together instead. They have fallen into a routine with each other, and Jasmine loves her, but she wants a baby.

Dexter is running a cafe, his own cafe. It was Emma’s idea, and he got the funding for it from her and his father.

Privately, Stephen Mayhew still expected his son to lose every penny, but that was a small price to pay to know that he would never, ever appear on television ever again

While Emma was more successful, well-off from her writing, the cafe also started to take off, with some regular visitors.

For the first time in many years he is more or less where he wants to be. He has a partner whom he loves and desires and who is also his best friend. He has a beautiful, intelligent daughter. He does alright. Everything will be fine, just as long as nothing ever changes.

Emma and Dexter got married in November, 2023. A few months later, they have sold their flat and are looking for a place together. They are trying to have a baby but so far, it isn’t working. As they leave home one day, they decide to meet after work to view a house. They had a disagreement that morning and as they part, he tells her he loves her but she makes no response, planning to make up that evening.

During the day, Dexter leaves Emma a message, reminding her of the house viewing at 5pm. She calls him back and apologizes for the argument, tells him that she loves him.

In the eight months since their marriage they seemed to have changed places, and he now found himself incapable of doing anything while he knew she was unhappy.

It’s raining heavily that evening as Emma it riding her bike to try to get to the viewing. She doesn’t know what happens when she finds herself on the ground, bleeding. She’s hit but a lorry and dies. (At this point, I have “What, What??!!” in my notes. I’m not sure how I feel about this twist, but I think I hate it. Why is she the one to die and be a sacrifice for Dexter’s redemption story?)

Grief and Grieving

For the first anniversary of Emma’s death, Dexter goes on a “celebration”? He gets drunk and ends up getting beaten up for stealing drinks. The whole time, while making a series of poor choices, he thinks “it’s what she [Emma] would have wanted”. Without his wallet and keys, it’s not clear how he got home.

Ian wrote a touching letter to Dexter explaining his perspective on Dexter’s and Emma’s relationship and how jealous it made him. He acknowledged how much Dexter changed after marrying Emma and that Emma was very happy. He says that Emma would have wanted Dexter to “Be happy and be good and get on with life! Seize the day all that bollocks.”

In the morning, Sylvie finds Dexter while dropping off Jamsine. She calls his father, who picks him up and takes him to the family home.

‘I really don’t want to have a heart-to-heart. Do you?’ ‘I’d rather not.’ ‘Well let’s not then. Let’s just say that I think the best thing you could do is try and live your life as if Emma were still here. Don’t you think that would be best?’

‘I don’t know if I can.’

‘Well you’ll have to try.’ He reaches for the remote control. ‘What do you think I’ve been doing for the last 10 years?’

This is a very touching scene in the book. Dexter’s father has also lost his wife and so they’re two widowers. When Dexter tells his father how hard it is to go on, his father already knows. The two men are clearly not close, but his father does care for him and understand some of what he’s going through.

Grief and Grieving

For the second anniversary of Emma’s death, Dexter has a plan. He’s dating Maddy although he’s not sure about the relationship because of the age difference and how they both sort of fell into the relationship. But they seem to work well together.

Maddy respects Dexter’s grieving and gives him space for what he needs to do. First, he calls a number of people who were important to Emma, to talk about her with them (I got teary-eyed here for the first time).

He will clean out her belongings, which he packed and brought to his new home.

These days grief seems like walking on a frozen river; most of the time he feels safe enough, but there is always that danger that he will plunge through. Now he hears the ice creak beneath him, and so intense and panicking is the sensation that he has to stand for a moment, press his hands to his face and catch his breath

For the third anniversary, in 2007, Dexter will go on a pilgrimage to Edinburgh with Jasmine. Maddy stays behind while Jasmine and Dexter visit where Emma used to live, climb Arthur’s seat.

The Final Chapter

At the end of the book, we find out that on the day after graduation, after spending the night talking in bed, Dexter and Emma climbed Arthur’s Seat with a picnic and spent the whole day together. When they came down, Dexter’s parents were waiting for him so they parted. He and Emma parted, but then he ran after her to exchange contact information with her.

The book ends:

Why? What do you want to do?’ she asked, though she knew the answer. He put one hand lightly on the back of her neck, and simultaneously she placed one hand lightly on his hip, and they kissed in the street as all around them people hurried home in the summer light, and it was the sweetest kiss that either of them would ever know. This is where it all begins. Everything starts here, today. And then it was over. ‘So. I’ll see you around,’ he said, walking slowly backwards away from her. ‘I hope so,’ she smiled. ‘And I hope so too. Bye, Em.’ ‘Bye, Dex.’ ‘Goodbye.’ ‘Goodbye. Goodbye.’

Thoughts and Curiosities

• Dexter found The Unbearable Lightness of Being on the side of Emma’s bed. I’ve read that book.
• “Emma Morley eats well and drinks only in moderation.” – This paragraph is very similar in both chapter 6 (1992) and chapter 8 (1994). Why?
• Emma “at the best of times she feels like a character in a Muriel Spark novel” – I will look up Muriel Spark
• Dexter is clearly an alcoholic, but he’s able to just have just one drink and stop himself on the second anniversary of Emma’s death, even with the ice creaking under him?
• The scene between Dexter and Emma, when they’re talking about whether they can be together is a very touching one. Even though she appears to be rejecting him, their love and connection is clear. I wonder how this scene will look in the movie.
• In Emma’s belongings, how is there a photo of him and her together, before the party, when they weren’t friends? How did they end up meeting to go to the graduation tea-party, pub, party together (did they)?
• I would have had no idea what coconut ice is, except I recently bought some in Australia. A bit too sweet for my taste.