‘I don’t think we have decided that yet,’ I said. ‘And anyway, that wouldn’t be until next September – you can’t just start a teacher training course when you feel like it.’
‘Yeah, but our Mandy’s said she’d get you in at her school to help out for a bit,’ he replied. ‘Get some experience under your belt.’
All of a sudden, all those cartoons where steam comes out of the character’s ears started to make sense.
‘And why would Mandy do that?’ I asked. My voice was dangerously calm but Stew was too drunk or too disinterested to pick up on the signs. ‘I haven’t talked to Mandy about teaching. I haven’t talked to anyone about teaching, because I don’t want to be a teacher.’
‘Fran, I’m knackered, I can’t talk about this now.’ He kicked his shoes close to their spot under the stairs and turned back into the hallway. ‘We’ll talk about it in the morning.’
‘But I have to leave in the morning,’ I said, following him into the hall as he trudged up the stairs. ‘First thing, we won’t have time to talk.’
‘I’m going to have a shower, I feel like shite,’ he called back down. ‘Talk to me after.’
I returned to the living room, folded my blanket, and put the remote back beside the TV before my eyes wandered over to the framed photos that hung above the settee. They had been here longer than we had. Each and every picture was a Stew Bingham original, specially chosen for his biggest fan, Nana Beryl. It broke my heart that he barely touched his camera these days, but I’d long since learned there was no point trying to convince Stew to do anything he didn’t really want to do, and he’d been quite clear about hanging up his camera.
I landed on one photo in particular, a candid shot of me, laughing so hard you could see tears rolling down my cheeks. I remembered the day so clearly, just the two of us hanging out on Primrose Hill years before, and for the life of me, I couldn’t remember what he’d said to make me laugh, but whatever it was, I was in hysterics. We used to laugh a lot more back then. Just like we used to hold hands and kiss in the street, just like he would give me piggyback rides to the bus stop when my heels were hurting. If I tried to jump on his back now, at least one of us was likely to break a hip.
But it was normal for long-term relationships to struggle sometimes, I reasoned. You had ups and you had downs; sometimes the downs lasted a little bit longer than the ups, but it wasn’t as though things were actually bad between us, not the way they were for other people. You couldn’t even call it a rough patch really, more of a quiet patch. A nothing-much-to-say-to-each-other patch.
I was never any good when I wasn’t working; I was someone who needed to keep busy and all this extra time to myself was dangerous. It was starting to feel as though the walls were closing in on me and I needed to give them a short, sharp shove. Five days in London would be just the trick and I knew that even if he wasn’t happy about it, Stew would understand. Eventually. After popping two ibuprofen, I finished all the little tasks I took care of every night. Nana Beryl would be proud, I thought, as I wiped down the kitchen tops and hung the dishcloth over the mixer tap to dry out overnight.
When I finally made my way upstairs, I saw the bathroom light was still on. Leaving lights on, forgetting to turn the TV off, not quite turning a tap all the way, these were all Stew’s specialties, and evidence, according to his father, that he simply wouldn’t be able to cope without me. Wearily, I tugged the cord and stepped softly down the hallway, avoiding the two creaking floorboards, to find him tucked up in our bed, duvet clutched under his chin, eyes closed.
‘Stew?’
‘Mmm?’
‘I need to talk to you about this job.’
The room was pitch black, his white noise machine hissing away beneath his bedside table.
‘In the morning, Fran,’ Stew yawned, rolling over onto his side, presenting me with his back. ‘I’m shattered.’
I stared at the lump under the covers. He knew I wanted to talk. He knew this was important to me.
‘OK, but I have to leave in the morning,’ I said. ‘So there won’t be a lot of time.’
‘We’ll be quick then,’ he said into his pillow, pulling the duvet over his head. ‘G’night.’
The way I saw it, I had two choices.
The first was to scream at the top of my lungs, break something expensive, and possibly beat Stew to death with a shoe. The second was to close my eyes, count to ten, and bury my rage so deep down inside that I forgot all about it until it resurfaced in ten years and I went on a mad spree at the supermarket, pushing over the pastry cases and hurling packets of ham at poor unsuspecting shoppers. It wasn’t much of a choice.
Besides, I didn’t want to argue, not really. I just wanted him to listen to me.
Outside, I heard a car pass in front of the house, its tyres slick from the rain, and watched its headlights slip through the gap between the curtains and dance across our popcorn ceiling. I pulled my pyjamas out from underneath my pillow as Stew began to snore.
‘Goodnight, Stew,’ I whispered as I closed the door behind me and tiptoed across the creaky landing to the spare room.
CHAPTER THREE
‘Stew?’ I called, as I stumbled into the kitchen next morning. He wasn’t in our bedroom, he wasn’t in the bathroom, and there was no trace of him in the living room. Instead of my fiancé, I found a note on the kitchen table.
Gone to Bryony’s to fix her sink, CU tonight
I stared at it, turning the scrap of paper over in my hands and holding it up to the light, looking for a secret message, some acrostic code or something written in invisible ink as I sank into one of the chairs that slotted underneath the Formica table. But just like Stew, it was what it was.
‘Right,’ I said to absolutely no one. ‘That’s that then.’
Picking up the pen he had left on the table, I crossed out his straightforward printing and wrote my own message underneath, my early morning letters looping gracelessly against each other.
Gone to Bryony’s to fix her sink, CU tonight
Gone to London to fix my life, see you next Tuesday
Even though I loved Sheffield, I did miss London.
My train was late, the tube was packed, and I’d almost been run over three times but I didn’t care. She was gritty and grimy and perfect to me. While there was a lot to be said for the comfort of a routine, I had a London-shaped hole in my heart that could only be filled by her particular brand of predictable unpredictability. She might not be my soulmate, but there was nowhere quite like London town for a quick and dirty fling.
‘Watch where you’re going, you wanker,’ screeched a motorcycle courier as I stepped into the street at the exact same moment his bike tore around the corner.
‘Sorry!’ I called cheerfully, skipping back onto the pavement, giving him a wave as he replied with a very different hand gesture.
Reassured my beloved hadn’t changed in the slightest, I trotted on happily to my destination. It was good to be back.
Dead on the dot of twelve, I was standing in front of the address Rose had sent me the day before, the Tower of London glaring at me from across the street, old and imposing and swarming with tourists wearing sweatshirts with ‘Oxford’ emblazoned on the front, just in case you were wondering whether or not they’d been to Oxford. The office was snugged in between a huge glass-fronted co-working space and an ancient bookshop with a crumbling brick facade. Just a narrow sliver of a building with a glossy red door, no buzzer, no knocker, and only a small brass plaque that confirmed I was in the right place.