Page 3 of Cover Story

‘Yes, I know,’ Connor said, his tone not concealing his offence in return.

He opened a smart messenger bag and started organizingthe spare desk. The casual mood of only moments earlier had completely evaporated, creaking tension in its place. Aaron widened his eyes at Bel and made a covert gun barrel to temple gesture.

Bloody hell, these three months would last forever.

2

If it was statistically proven to be a myth that it always rained in Manchester, why was it always fucking raining?Connor thought, as he checked the coordinates on Google Maps again and that his blue dot was moving the right way.

It had absolutely hammered down when he and his dad had arrived. The low, forbidding grey sky threw down water in quantities that felt personal.

He’d not wanted his dad to do the long round trip from Barking up to his Salford Airbnb and back again, but he insisted. Connor didn’t have the heart to say no.

His father was seventy-six now and Connor had been emotionally unprepared for how precarious and mortal things suddenly turned in that decade. Every interaction with his parents came freighted with the fear of how long he might have left with them. The loving sturdiness of their support became almost unbearable, with the growing awareness it was finite. When they sat in a companionable near silence eating woolly Ploughman’s sandwiches in the front seats of his dad’s Ford Focus at Knutsford Services, Connor felt like an elephant was sitting on his heart.

‘You want to get a crack on with any wedding or Mumand Dad won’t be there,’ said his older brother Shaun, who could never be accused of peddling toxic positivity. Shaun’s own nuptials, five years ago, had been at The Ludlow in New York. One of his and Jen’s first dates, in fact. When it felt like Connor was showing her around his life, encouraging her to buy shares in it.

‘Jen not coming?’ his dad said, as they loaded the boot at the outset, bulging sports holdalls and a duvet, like Connor was a thirty-four-year-old fresher. Which was exactly as daft as he felt.

‘Ah, no … she’s got a friend’s birthday this weekend. A thirtieth,’ he said, the prepared white lie.

In fact, she was ‘at her parents’’, a ‘get myself out of the way’ she’d arranged on purpose. Jennifer said she’d visit him in Manchester: ‘... in a couple of weeks, when you’re settled in.’

‘It’ll be more fun for a guest when you’ve got more than milk in the fridge and you’ve found a nice neighbourhood place to eat. I’ll send you a cute little succulent and you can call it Jenny.’

Make it a spiky one then.

She’d also done him a Bag For Life with ‘useful bits’ in it, including an ironic champagne, and Connor deeply resented it in the way you did when you knew the offering was to soothe the feelings of the giver rather than gratify the recipient.

The whole point of coming up now, Connor thought, was that things would be bare bones, chilly and lonely. It was for him, not her. He knew she had no love for anywhere north of Leicester, or, indeed, Leicester itself. (‘The only way to leave London is on a plane.’)

But he didn’t say so, as he wasn’t sure he wanted her to come. He and Jennifer had quietly arrived at the hospice phase.Youdidn’t try to actively treat the sickness anymore, only make the end comfortable. They loved their flat in Stoke Newington and it was near paid off, with Connor’s money. She’d hate leaving the area she couldn’t afford to rebuy in and he’d hate having to do it to her. So here they were. Withdrawing affection bit by bit and waiting for the other person to be the bad guy.

A tiny voice niggled at him:She’ll line someone else up first. Probably why she’s not called time yet.

Connor wasn’t sure how much trouble they’d been in before he announced he was leaving his six-figure salary job in the City for the significantly lower one in journalism, but it certainly put the big light on in their room, lifeplans’ wise.

‘I’m thirty-three. If we start a family, how are we going to afford it? We can’t upgrade to more space unless we have the salaries for the next mortgage.’ Jen had said, hands on superhero blue Lycra hips, sleek as an eel in her running gear. She’d obviously hoped he simply needed tosayhe was going to give his notice, not actually do it. Also, interesting use of ‘we’.

‘What use would I be as a parent if I was that miserable?’ Connor asked.

‘You aren’t “miserable”! You just aren’t having fun! Which is most jobs. It’ll be this job too, sooner or later. You like to feel ground down. If you didn’t feel oppressed, what would you make sarcastic wisecracks about?’

Connor ignored this pretty horrific summary of his character, nature and behaviour. Jen alone knew he’d been on beta blockers with stress and bursting into sobbing fits in the shower, by the end. He read a thing on relationship guidance about how the unsurvivable feature was ‘contempt’.

He stuck to the hard facts: ‘Your job pays as much as mine at the newspaper will.’

‘I knew you’d hurl that at me. I was doing this when we met, sold as seen. And I’ll be promoted next year.’

Translation: Jen was allowed to work in publishing, which she loved, for whatever it paid. She’d assigned him different obligations.

‘I don’t remember whispered pledges to love, cherish and stick to the higher tax bracket.’

Connor thought she might feel more shame than this at saying:you’ve got no utility if you’re not on 100k+.

But he couldn’t say he was surprised. When love had flown, the comfortable lifestyle flying away too was going to concentrate your mind somewhat.

Last year, after he’d first told Jen he wanted to reinvent himself, she’d got drunk in the garden with her friend Libby. Connor heard her wine-laden voice carrying through the open window at 2.00 a.m.:Connor’s now going to be like a trophy wife. Great to have on your arm, lovely to show off, cos I know everyone wants to shag him. But fuck all USE, you know?

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