One Day: Chapter 3 Summary & Analysis

Sunday 15, July 1990. Emma now works at Loco Caliente, a Tex-Mex restaurant in the Camden Town area of London. Her manager, Scott McKenzie, is a 39-year-old man with a business management degree who had once hoped to be a big shot in business. Scott introduces Ian, a new employee who sounds like he’s imitating an American accent. Paddy, who works behind the bar, makes fun of Ian to Emma. The same 45 minutes of mariachi music loops 12 times in an 8-hour shift. Emma wonders what she’s doing with her life.

Dexter writes to Emma from Bombay, saying that he’s trying to listen to the music and read the books she sent him but is finding it difficult. He writes that India is incredible and that he’s writing his current letter drunk at lunch. He’s been taking photos and says he met a woman on a train who might have a job for him involving a TV show about travel for young people. He says he enjoyed seeing her in a  play last time he was in London, and he promises that he has something important to tell her.

Emma trains Ian, showing him around the restaurant. She asks what he’d rather be doing than working a restaurant and he admits that he’s a stand-up comedian. He asks her the same, and she feels ridiculous saying playwright, so she just says she has no other ambitions.

Continuing his letter, Dexter says that the important thing he has to tell Emma is that he thinks she’s afraid of her own happiness. He thinks she has low self-esteem and should be more ambitious and that she should stop pretending to not be pretty. He says he knows she feels lost but trusts her to find the way again, then pauses the letter, saying he has even more life-changing news to share.

Back at the restaurant, Emma continues to show Ian around. He asks what Emma what she’s doing after work and invites her to his comedy gig. He says it’s not a date, but Emma suspects it would be. A part of her thinks she should accept, but she turns him down, saying maybe another time.

Continuing his letter again, Dexter says he wishes Emma were with him in India at the moment. He sends her a list of instructions. First, she should quit her job. Second, she should leave her flatmate Tilly Killick and live with Dexter when he returns, but just as a flatmate. Third, she should book an open return flight to arrive in Delhi before August 1st, Dexter’s birthday. There, they’ll meet at the Taj Mahal at noon. He promises to wire her money for the trip, reassuring her that he knows the idea is crazy but hopes she’ll go through with it anyway.

In Bombay, Dexter looks at the letter he’s finished writing and sees that it’s 11 pages, the longest thing he’s written since his finals. He showers and then comes back to the letter a little more sober, and he begins to wonder if he should actually send it. He’s worried that he was too honest about his feelings and also that he lied in places, like pretending to listen to the music she sent him. Still, he decides to go through with it, putting it into an airmail envelope in his copy of Howard’s End that Emma sent him.

That night, Dexter goes to a bar and accidentally leaves behind his copy of Howard’s End. A German engineering student named Heidi finds the letter. She finds it interesting and wants to make sure that it gets to Emma, but there’s no address or other way to find either Emma or Dexter. She holds on to the letter and the book for many years, even after she gets married and has four children.