Vesna McMaster - Dayve

‘I don’t care, I’m keeping my surname. It’s a ridiculous custom. Besides, the hassle. Ugh.’

He shrugs. ‘Oh, I see that. How about if we choose something different? Like, both of us.’

‘That’s just making a fuss for the sake of it. Why bother?’

‘Well… I could change my first name at the same time.’

She raises her eyebrow. ‘To…?’

‘Well I could get it spelled right, to start with.’

She’s too polite to comment, and there’s a silence.

He continues. ‘I've been lumped with this name. You know why?’

The suppressed thought, ‘because your parents are incurable Chavs' traces like ticker-tape behind her eyes but she blinks it away. ‘No,’ she says, non-committally.

‘My bloody uncle.’

‘Oh?’

‘An insane war movie fanatic.’

‘Oh?’ She’s genuinely intrigued.

‘Was like a father to my dad, payed for his school, the lot. Big age gap. Anyway he really wanted to call me VE Day. But they talked him round to Dayve. So now I have to spell it out each time. Every. Damn. Time. And they look at me as if it’s my fault that I have a name like a salmon swimming upstream.’

She regards him with rising apprehension, wondering if there is anything else she should know before they wander off into the sunset together. ‘Anyway,’ he continues, ‘I think it would be a great idea to pick a whole new surname. It’ll be romantic.’

She places her teaspoon on her saucer with a punctuating click. ‘Dayve,’ she says.

‘Yes.’

‘I’m not changing my name. But I feel perhaps you should.’