by Joy Richards
Her new boss, Lewis, had been a nightmare from day one. Part of her accepting the idea of moving across the Atlantic was the prospect of getting away from him.
Someone knocked on the door. It must be the food. Airport hotel room service is its own particular class of disappointment. Lord knows why they even offer it. It’s probably part of their effort to make you think they are basically the Four Seasons, when they are really not.
“I need to go, babe,” he said, using their ironic pet name in an unironic way.
“Go on, babe,” she said, very ironically. “I miss you. Have a good night!”
And like that she was off. In the first days of their relationship, Alex had thought her a little cold. He had subsequently come to realise that she was just perennially in a hurry. That’s what made her so spectacular at her job, and such a good travel partner. She got you from A to B in as expeditious a manner as humanly possible.
The burger he’d ordered was, as predicted, very depressing. Plastic bread stained with the watery juices of a rubber patty. A single slice of under-ripe tomato. He ate half of the meal, and turned on Netflix on his laptop. As he was scouring his account for something to watch, a bridal show popped up on his screen. He’d seen trailers for this one: women try on wedding dresses and their families give them very mean advice. Why was that amongst his suggestions? It could be random, or it could be that Sarah had been watching “related content”. More wedding stuff. This was a problem.
He’d first found the wedding magazine while looking for his black-tie shoes in their closet. It wasn’t hidden per se, but it was neatly tucked away in the corner. There were two pages folded down. Both had pictures of models that looked as much like Sarah as any model could: very thin, with swan-like necks, both brunettes. Both wearing wedding gowns, obviously. He brushed it off as an oddity. A month later, while using her Facebook account to track down the address of a party they were late for, he noticed her targeted ads. They were all baby related. Toys, baby classes, baby books. An egg-freezing service for women wanting to delay their child-rearing years. That had him thinking.
And now this. Did she want to get married, have a baby? They’d always agreed that was not for them. It was one of the things they had been relieved to agree on when they first started going out. They had met in London only three weeks after he’d moved down to start his first job in finance after university. She had also been a brand-new Londoner, in the process of getting noticed in her graduate scheme. They were both ambitious and giddy with excitement about their new adventure in the Big City. Their first dates were also many of his London firsts: first walk on Southbank, first movie at the RFI, first brunch in Shoreditch. First night-bus back to hers.
Sarah shared an ex-council flat in London Bridge with only one other girl, a mousey PhD student who rarely came out of her room. Within a few months of dating he’d all but moved in with Sarah, reluctant to return every night to his own awkward and uncomfortable house-share in Tooting Bec. When Sarah’s flatmate moved on to greener pastures, it made sense for him to move in. It was only a year into their relationship, and eyebrows were raised by friends on both sides of the aisle. Alex and Sarah didn’t care.
They were happy, and confident their happiness was enough. They both worked so hard over the following fourteen years that living together was the only way to see each other during the week. They shared all-nighters, stressful meetings and bullying bosses. They shared many promotions, plenty of job changes and many dreams for the future. Finally, they bought their first home together, a very tiny and very modern flat in Canary Wharf virtually across the street from Alex’s job. It was a place meant for two, because they always intended to remain a family of two.
While Sarah loved her nieces, she could never see herself as a mother and said so with a level of confidence that Alex found very attractive. They had built their lives around the idea that their hearts were full with just the two of them. People had recently started to notice. After they both turned thirty-five, comments dripped in from family and friends. When’s the wedding? Do you two not want children? Alex would make such a fantastic dad. Sarah would be such a lovely mum. And those comments made him think. Did she want children? Did he?
Everything would be better in New York. If he could only get them to New York. As he lay in bed, in the complete darkness of his hotel room only punctuated by the red glare of the digital alarm clock, Alex could not help but smile at the thought of the move. It had taken him years, but he had finally secured a transfer to the New York office. The Mecca of personal wealth management, where careers are made. Senior partners in the office, people he looked up to and admired, often talked about their New York days with a sense of fondness. He would even retain his biggest client, an American who split his time between Boston and London and who had been thrilled to hear he was moving to the East Coast. It would be good for Sarah too. For a marketing executive, New York was the place to be. She had been stuck under a boss who did not appreciate her, and had seriously itchy feet. What had started off as a great opportunity was now slowly strangling her career; moving to New York was the perfect way to get out. And Alex was willing to bet that once she was again in a job she loved, with a whole new continent to explore, Sarah would forget all about wedding dresses and babies. Hopefully.
The following morning he got up at an eye-watering time (his mother used to say there should only be one four o’clock in the day). He got onto his horrible cheap flight and landed at one of London’s more horrible and cheaper airports. Quite a contrast from his original plan of landing at City Airport in business class, but he had to get home. He sat on a very long and nausea inducing journey, working on his laptop to catch up on the day that was already getting away from him.
Once the black cab pulled up in front of his building in Canary Wharf, it was past eleven. He’d not had breakfast, and was feeling decidedly queasy and faint. He weakly waved to the doorman as he made his way to the elevator. He finally wobbled into his tiny apartment. The overwhelming relief of home washed over his shoulders like a hot shower. While many people would have thought of Alex and Sarah’s flat as cold or impersonal, to them it stood as a sweet oasis of quiet in their very complicated and busy lives. Simple lines, minimalist decor and exceptional views over the canal. A white kitchen with shiny white countertops, leading to an open-space living area entirely surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows. Paradise.
On the kitchen island, Sarah had left him a brown paper bag. Two cheese and ham croissants. They were fresh, she must have picked them up for him on her morning run. She had also, movingly, cleaned out his Italian espresso cup and placed it in the Nespresso machine, a fresh Ristretto capsule already loaded. Her mornings were hectic, she must have moved up her alarm clock just for him.
As the Nespresso rumbled and spluttered, he collapsed in his favourite spot: a leather reading chair in the corner, surrounded by windows on all sides. He watched the usual procession of well-dressed men and women scurrying around on the pavement. His chair was angled so you could catch a perspective all the way up the canal, a thin corridor of water between tall walls of glass that opened up in the bright space of the River Thames. In the evenings, he would sit there and take a minute to enjoy looking at the lights, slowly going off one by one as workers packed up and went home. Most of the people who worked in the surrounding buildings took a train every night. He loved being able to just stroll across the tiny pedestrian bridge and run upstairs, in his pyjamas before most of his colleagues had even made it onto the train. He loved living there.
“We don’t actually have to sell this flat, do we?” he asked Sarah that evening.
She’d come home earlier than usual, brandishing a bottle of white wine as promised. She’d missed him, and did not mind playing hooky from her late meeting to have dinner together. They were perched on the stools at their kitchen island, which doubled as a dining table, swilling the white wine after hoovering up their posh pasta dinner.
“What do yo
u mean?” Her eyes were glassy with tiredness and alcohol.
“We could just rent it out, I suppose. Have it for when we come back after New York.”
She angled her head slightly, as she did when she really considered a problem. “Well,” she said slowly. “Is this the type of place we’ll want, in eight or ten years’ time?”
That sentence caught him off-guard. That was exactly the sort of place he thought he would want in eight or ten years. But he loved Sarah so much, and could not bear to see her unhappy. And he’d had too much wine. He waved his hand around in a grandiose gesture. “Maybe not. Maybe we’ll need something with more space, and a big garden.” Why had he said that? The thought of a big garden, and for that matter anything that would require a big garden, filled him with dread. But he loved her so much.
“And selling will free up some cash to get us a really nice place in New York. It would be so great if we could live downtown. Avoid taking the subway.”
“I guess that depends on where your job will be,” he continued, grateful for the opportunity to change the subject.
Her face dropped. Her voice filled with genuine sadness. For one of London’s finest young marketing executives, she had a devastating lack of self-confidence. “I hope I’ll get something.”
“Of course you will!”
“What if I don’t?”
“You will. You know it.”
“But what if I didn’t? Finding someone to sponsor a visa is so difficult, especially nowadays.”
“It will be all right.”
“Alex,” she said, and he could tell she was serious. She looked straight into his eyes, without blinking. She suddenly looked sober. “If I do not get a job, how are we going to stay together?”
He had genuinely not thought about that possibility. For a fleeting second, he felt like a fool. “You will.” He was aware he sounded hollow. “And if you don’t, we will be long distance for a while until you do. We’ve been together for fifteen years, I think we can be apart for a few months.”
She looked sad. “Fair enough,” she said quietly. Had she wanted him to propose? While he acted aloof, Alex was very aware of the fact that if they did get married, Sarah could come with him to America and figure out jobs from there. Which would be easier. Plenty of their friends had gone through with “visa marriages”: couples who would otherwise be quite happy remaining unmarried who signed the paperwork to make international moves easier. A lot of those after Brexit of course. Their friends Tobias and Marie had recently held a small dinner to celebrate their own, entirely aimed at securing Marie’s future in this country. Is that what Sarah was driving at?
“I’ll call the estate agent then,” she continued, pouring herself the remainder of the wine bottle. “We don’t have much time before you leave.”
Paul
Misunderstandings
Getting back on the property market, for real this time, had been more complicated than originally anticipated. First of all, his budget had been slashed. While most of the deposit he and Alice were planning on using came from his side of the family, he was eligible for a far smaller mortgage as a single man than he was when he was in a couple. The smaller budget meant all the houses he’d earmarked years ago were now out of his reach. He had to regroup, pivot. Find something else that excited him. Instead of semi-detached houses and flats in trendy areas of town, Paul could now afford small flats in the less exciting parts of London. Nothing grotty, just not what he’d envisaged.
This led to his second problem. While all the houses he was eyeing when he was with Alice easily lent themselves to be converted as family homes, all the places he was currently looking at were decidedly dwellings for one, maybe two, people. This had further crystallised in his mind the unpalatable fact he had tried to sugar-coat for himself for the last two years. The life he thought he would have had had been cancelled. He was not going to get married young, have children in his late twenties and live a life of bliss with his blonde, athletic, intelligent wife. His twenties were almost over for a start. He probably still would get married and have a family, his counsellor had helped him recognise, just not the way he’d imagined. And his wife would probably be intelligent, but she might not be athletic, or blonde.
The third problem for Paul, and for the rest of the country, was that the real estate market was nonsensical. He had to deal with estate agents who seemed to perversely enjoy provoking him with a series of increasingly twattish ties; he had to deal with ridiculous prices and the knowledge that he only had a handful of days to make an offer on a property before it was gone. Not ideal for someone recovering from a nervous breakdown.
The fourth problem, unique to Paul this time, was that he had started dating again. Properly. He’d been sitting in his parents’ house in Kent on a Saturday morning, looking forward to a roast lunch, when he’d realised he was ready. A girl had come over to take measurements for his mother’s new curtains, and he’d felt an unmistakeable twinge of excitement. She was hot. She was funny. She had a master’s degree in English Literature from Warwick and was currently saving up for a PhD. He’d held the ladder steady for her as she climbed up, and her flowing skirt had brushed up against his arm. He’d wanted to go on a date with her. She’d had a boyfriend. The boyfriend, however, was immaterial. It wasn’t so much about the curtains girl, it was the fact he was capable of wanting to ask someone out.
Back in London, he’d decided to take the plunge. He’d re-joined the dating apps he had used for meaningless hook-ups in the wake of Alice leaving, and started looking for someone to go out on a date with. So far so good. The problem was, London seemed devoid of any women aged twenty-eight to thirty-two who both found him attractive enough to swipe on his face and were not completely unhinged. Not unhinged in the sense of having mental health struggles: Paul would not have minded and may even have preferred having someone who could relate to his own issues. These women ranged from the hopelessly weird to the very odd indeed, with a whole spectrum of racist, shallow and plain boring in the middle. The Undateables, Croydon edition.
Of course, he was not limiting himself to dating apps. He was going to night classes that might entice women: salsa dancing, pottery, French. Things he had no interest in: he hated dancing, disliked having clay on his hands, and was already so fluent in French he had to make mistakes on purpose to fit in at the course. No dice. Every female there was married, gay or fifty. Maybe all the women looking for men were taking woodwork, football and beer brewing in the hope to run into eligible bachelors. He was also going to parties, but the issue with his friends both old and new is that after a while he got to know all of their friends too. Essentially, as he explained to his mother during their Sunday afternoon calls, there were no dateable women in London.
He was fortunate, however, in that he had plenty of women in his life to help him out with the house-hunt. Most of his publishing friends were female, and they all enjoyed taking turns to come with him to viewings and scouting potential neighbourhoods. While not particularly into old-school gender roles, Paul had to admit the women in his life saw the world differently from how he did. They spotted things he would not otherwise notice. One flat looked perfectly fine to him until he went back for a second viewing with a friend, who pointed out that all the bedrooms were south-facing and would be roasting in the summer, as well as being inundated with light before 5am. Another one had enticed him with authentic period 1920s features to the point he had neglected to notice that it was on the other side of the road from a very famous and constantly full pub. Not what you want when you head home after a long day at the office, or if you want to work from home.
Holly, the tall girl with the dyed hair who had once kissed him at a bus stop, was especially useful. More than useful, she was fun. They’d taken to roaming the streets near a potential viewing, on the lookout for crack-houses or promising bistros. Her presence helped him not look like a dangerous stalker as he checked out the front door of the house in question before phoning th
e agent to ask for a viewing. Holly struck up conversations with neighbours and extracted useful information about the dampness of the basements and the laziness of the freeholders. Useful. And fun.
Unfortunately, on that specific evening she had not been able to come. She had a big project due in a couple of days, and could not take the afternoon off work. So Paul was on his own, roaming the streets of South London on his way to a viewing. He’d taken the whole morning off and walked from Crystal Palace for no other reason than he liked the architecture of the station. He’d found a newsagent with mint Cornettos, and was methodically eating the chocolate bottom of his cone while keeping an eye on the map on his phone. All in all, he was in a good mood.
He found the street, and immediately spotted the house. It was difficult to do otherwise: it was a faded shade of pink, like the delicate inside of a seashell. In the late-May sunshine, the wisteria out front was covered in delicate purple blooms, almost like a swarm of microscopic butterflies. What was this tiny slice of romance doing in this drab, depressing row of clean but otherwise unremarkable 1950 terraces?
The door was white, and open. A woman was standing in the doorway, wearing a nautical-style striped shirt stretched over her pregnant belly. She had on bright red trousers and no shoes. She had a whole mess of long blonde hair, slightly wavy and streaked by the sun. As he approached, she waved.
“Are you Paul?” she asked in a soft posh voice.
“That’s right.”
“Nice to meet you,” she said, stepping on the front steps with her bare feet to shake his hand. “I’m Florence. I’m really sorry, but the estate agent just called me to cancel. I thought I could show you around though, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, that’s fine.” Oh no, he thought. Are we going to have to make conversation?
His concern was immediately alleviated by a loud barking. A large dog, with long, shiny and inexplicably shaggy hair, came bounding from the inside. His tail was waving frantically as he sniffed Paul’s crotch.
