By “looking” I mean: opening Gumtree twice, examining the kind of studios I can afford, deciding that the devil I know at least has hot water on tap and no shower cubicle literally touching my bed, and firmly closing my laptop again. Maybe if I hide in my room long enough, they’ll forget all the drama of a few months ago and we can go back to normal.
With “normal” being us having absolutely nothing in common and some passive-aggressive comments about my sartorial choices.
It still beats whatever the hell this is.
“I’ll look harder,” I mumble, looking around the kitchen with a frown. Something feels wrong. It smells...different. They got fish and chips last night, and normally the smell of beer-battered death festers for days, but it’s already gone. The yellow scarf is hanging back on its hook, and when I turn toward the sofa, my purple jumper has disappeared.
Shit. In all the fun of today, I forgot about the texts.
“I apologize for leaving my porridge out,” I offer formally, turning toward the sink. “I’ll wash it up now.”
Except that’s gone too.
“Did we get a cleaner?” My hedgehog bowl is neatly positioned back in my minuscule cupboard (the only kitchen space they offered me and which I have to organize daily like a game of Tetris to stop it all falling out). “Because I’m not sure I can...chip in toward that just now.”
“What?” Sal turns on the television loudly.
“Never mind,” I sigh. I’d tell you what I did to destroy yet another cohabiting situation, but I’ve already lived through the humiliation once. All you need to know is it was a misunderstanding, not one of my prouder moments and I don’t really blame Sal for treating me like novelty wallpaper that seemed like a good idea at the time but is now proving inordinately difficult to get rid of.
“Oh!” she yells as I head up the stairs to my tiny bedroom. “You got another bloody letter, Cassandra! I put it outside your door again, but can you do your own admin going forward, please? I am not your personal bloody secretary.”
Blinking, I pick up the envelope leaning against my door like a drunk middle-aged man at a bar. The handwriting is so familiar—Cass—and a queasy sensation ripples through me; I close my eyes briefly until it’s gone.
I got a letter yesterday too. This is getting really out of hand.
Ripping it in half, I open the door and throw it in my wastepaper basket again: I’ve no intention of reading or answering this one either. Then I close the door quietly, flop backward on my small double bed and stare blankly at the ceiling. It is a nice little room and I don’t want to leave just yet if I can possibly avoid it. Yes, it was originally a bathroom and it’s so small I have to hang my large collection of clothes on open racks and shelves next to a remaining chipped sink, which is visually distressing even if I organize them all by color and texture (which I obviously do).
But it’s also clean, cheap and perfectly symmetrical, which is a rare combination in London. It has no apparent mold or bloodstains and does have a real window, which is an improvement on five of the eight other places I looked at. The sun comes in just before work in the morning, and—if you fall asleep at a specific angle—sometimes you wake up with a warm, happy yellow stripe of it lining your eyelids.
Very occasionally, that exact spot also happens to coincide with Will’s bare chest, which means if I position myself carefully, I get to wake up to the sound of his heartbeat too.
Got to, past tense, no longer relevant.
Fuck.
Grabbing my phone, I smash out a text before pride or self-respect can stop me:
Are we absolutely sure we’ve made the right decision?
I quite like the dignified way I’ve shifted to plural pronouns, thereby implying we had equal input into the situation when we absolutely did not.
Then I press SEND, hold my breath and try not to count.
Forty-eight seconds later:
Yeah! It’s going to be great. You’ll see!
I blink at my screen.
Uh.
“Great” is not the word I’d use, Will.
Another beep.
You and your thesaurus brain. ;)
Prodigious. Stupendous. Life-changing.
Best decision ever. Better?
Not really, no. People ask what’s “wrong” with me all the time, but now and then I wonder if I’m actually the problem. That is the most inappropriate winky face I have ever seen.
Jaw gritted, I write back:
Glad you’re happy.
Then I throw my phone to the end of my bed.
Four months.
I spent four months of my life with a man who is now apparently celebrating the end of our relationship as if it’s the World Cup final. And I should have seen it coming: that’s what’s so embarrassing. Will is a handsome thirty-four-year-old man with a serious, nearly-got-married relationship under his belt; I’m still collecting our used cinema tickets and keeping count of exactly how many dates we’ve been on. Last night was number twenty-six, which I still think deserves a little more respect when over than “best decision ever,” thank you very much.
To clarify, I’m not always the one being dumped.
You might think that’s the case, but out of twenty-three temporary partners, I’d say it’s about 55 to 60 percent me doing the dumping. Dating and relationships are super exhausting, even if the other person really wants to be in it. Which, as he has just made extremely clear, Will absolutely does not.
Suddenly drowsy, I climb under the duvet and pull it over my head so it forms a little private fort. My blond hair crackles with static, puffs out like dandelion seeds and then immediately sticks to my face. Brushing it away, I yawn and close my eyes. This always happens. Too much emotion in one go and my brain experiences a power surge and sends me to sleep to preserve battery. Inconvenient when you’re at, say, your parents’ funeral, but not so bad when you’re already in bed and you don’t have that much left to stay awake for.
I’m nearly unconscious again when the doorbell rings.
Behind my eyelids, a bright flash of neon blue.
“For the love of—CASSANDRA! IT’S FOR YOU. Where the bloody hell is this takeaway? Are they catching it themselves? I am sodding emancipated.”
Confused—I’m still too sleepy to work out if Sal means emaciated or if her father has stopped paying the mortgage—I droop out of bed and pull on my old, bright yellow dressing gown over the top of my work clothes. It’s been a long day and everything hurts. I need all the extra fluff I can get.
Pulling the hood up and hearing my hair crackle again, I step into the hallway.
“Hey, chick.” Will grins.
4
Well, this is unexpected.
“Get it?” Will adds after six long seconds of me staring silently at him. “Because you’re all fluffy like a baby chicken? And also you’re a woman, so it’s a playful nod toward an outdated and misogynist terminology I would never use in earnest?”
I open my mouth.
Admittedly, I’ve never had a real long-term relationship before—at four months, Will is my Personal Best—but is it standard practice to turn up at your ex’s house on the evening you dumped them and comment on their loungewear?
“Did work run late?” Will glances at the time on his phone. “Are you dressed underneath, Cass? Because we need to leave now if we want to make it.”
In shock, I peel open my yellow dressing gown to reveal a dark navy jumpsuit like the world’s least sexy poultry-themed stripper. Another bolt of confusion: Wednesday’s work jumpsuit is black. I must have been so upset by our breakup this morning I went ahead and donned the wrong one.
“You look perfect.” Will grins. “Grab your trainers.”
And I know at this point I should probably ask a few pertinent questions—any questions at all would be good—but Will just said I look perfect, which is nice to hear, so I nod and obediently grab my trainers.
Maybe he’s here for a debrief.
Maybe this is what happens after twenty-six dates: you don’t just end a relationship one morning with a kiss and a series of compliments and then never speak again. You come back later for a formal termination meeting so you can discuss it all in-depth, break it down into bullet points and make a list of exactly where it all went wrong. Because I have to be honest: I thought about it all morning and I have no bloody idea.
“Hi.” Will smiles as I step out of the front door, leaning forward and gently pecking my cheek.
I stare at him. “Hi.”
That feels inappropriate too: surely he gave up the right to casually put his lips on me this morning? A familiar whiff of too-strong black coffee—I miss him already and he’s literally touching me—and Will strides down the path with me following, still staring. His walk was one of the first things I noticed when we met. It’s both intrepid and jaunty, like Odysseus in charge of his ship. There’s something generally solid and dauntless about Will—he’s an oak tree of a man—and that’s a very attractive quality for someone who feels flimsy and daunted 90 percent of the time.