How one day can change the course of your life forever

2:18pm Thursday 11th March 2010

By Philippa May

EMMA Morley and Dexter Mayhew meet on July 15, 1988, the night of their graduation from Edinburgh University.

In spite of himself and resisting the urge to flee, Dexter spends the following day with Emma and a friendship is born, a friendship that’s not always easy, the balance of need swinging from one to the other as the years pass.

But it’s a friendship that endures the ups and downs, the successes and failures, the romances and the break-ups they encounter as the years pass, and which occasionally, tantalisingly, threatens to become something more.

One Day follows Em and Dex, Dex and Em, down the years, catching up with them every year on the anniversary of their first meeting.

Dexter, something of a golden boy, falls quickly into TV presenting and a life of success and excess before falling, just as rapidly, from grace.

Emma’s journey into adult life is more difficult as she struggles out of the inertia of waiting tables in a Tex-Mex restaurant into life as a teacher and an almost inevitable affair with her headteacher.

As Nicholls describes the arc of their friendship, he also perfectly captures the arc of expectation as dreams and ambitions become something more prosaic and life turns out in unexpected ways.

LET us know what you think about One Day and you could win a £10 Waterstone’s gift card.

Email your review to leisure@herefordtimes. com or post it to HT Book Group, Hereford Times, Holmer Road, Hereford HR4 9UJ, with your name, address and contact details. Usual competition rules apply. Deadline is midnight on Monday, April 5.

One Day (publisher’s price £7.99) offer price, £6.99, post and packing free. To order, call the Hereford Times Bookshop on 08430 6000399 or send your cheque or postal order made payable to Hereford Times Bookshop to: Hereford Times Bookshop, PO Box 60, Helston, TR13 0TP.

Allow seven to 10 working days for delivery. Titles supplied subject to availability. Alternatively, order online at sparkledirect.com.

DAVID Nicholls trained as an actor, switching to writing when he realised, after eight years, “something that should have been blazingly obvious: the things we love most are not necessarily the things we are best at”.

His first novel, published in 2003, was Starter for Ten, which he adapted for the screen, where it starred James McAvoy and Catherine Tate. This was followed in 2005 by The Understudy, based on his life in acting, and One Day in 2009.

Nicholls’ screenwriting credits include four episodes of Cold Feet, And When Did You Last See Your Father? and an adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing for the BBC’s Shakespeare Re-told season.