LITMIR.BIZ

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the first time? The store cupboard? It’s your happy place.’

      ‘No, I told you. I’d never … do that, in the pub. It was at hers.’

      ‘She said, fancy a nightcap?’

      ‘Not exactly. I was locking up on my own after that … and she came back. I was outside.’

      ‘You went home with her, that easy?’

      ‘It had been building up. Then there she was.’

      ‘I need the words. I need to know what was said.’

      Paul cast his eyes heavenwards and ground his teeth. ‘Dee, I get this is the grimmest thing. Why torture yourself with the details? It doesn’t matter. None of it matters.’

      ‘It matters, because it’s the only way I can start getting my head around how you could do this. It’s such a mystery to me, I need to know how you went from “I don’t shag twenty-four-year-olds I meet in my bar” to, “yeah sounds fun, whereabouts in Jesmond?”’

      Delia hated how bitter he’d made her sound.

      ‘She came up and said she couldn’t stop thinking about me and we should do something about what was going on between us. She said you only live once.’ He rattled it out.

      Delia sensed what wasn’t being said.

      ‘She used your parents’ deaths as an argument for why you should cheat on me? I assume she knew there was a me.’

      ‘Yeah, not much, but she knew.’

      ‘That is …’ Delia shook her head, ‘Tasteless isn’t even the word, is it?’

      ‘It sounds worse than it was. Pissed people talking nonsense …’

      ‘Nonsense that was good enough to see you going back with her.’

      ‘Yes.’

      Paul looked beat. Not much hope of gilding the lily.

      ‘And that was enough, what she said?’

      ‘In that moment, yes. It was a take the red pill, follow this thing and see where it leads. It was about risk taking, I guess.’

      ‘Was it monkey sex?’

      ‘What?’

      Paul looked befuddled.

      ‘Was it wild? Give me some idea of what you did.’

      ‘It was sex. Plain, average sex.’

      ‘Who on top?’

      Paul’s jaw tightened further.

      ‘Her on top.’

      Delia’s stomach contracted.

      ‘Lights on? Off?’

      ‘Off. Well, she had some of those lights on a string, they were on.’

      Delia felt the triumphant sizzle of being proven right.

      ‘Why did Aled say he talked you out of a trip to Paris?’

      ‘I honestly have no idea,’ Paul said, visibly relieved at being allowed his own anger at last. ‘I’d already finished with Celine by the time I spoke to him about it. If he ever answered my calls, believe me, we’d have words.’

      Outside, there was the roll of a car’s engine and a beep.

      ‘Look, Delia …’

      ‘What’s Celine’s last name?’ Delia said, to cut Paul off.

      ‘Roscoe. Why?’

      ‘In case I ever need to know,’ Delia said. ‘Look after Parsnip.’

      She reclaimed her luggage trolley and flew out the front door before Paul could persuade her to stay. Before she could see her dog wake up, before she could look around and think about what she was leaving behind, possibly forever.

      Halfway to Hexham, her phone pinged.

       I got you the Valentines card on impulse, thinking about how much my mum would’ve liked you. Please come home. Px

       Eighteen

      In that moment between sleep and wakefulness where you remember who you are, where you are and what you do, Delia spent longer than usual arranging all the pieces. It made a strange picture.

      As the sun leaked through her bedroom blinds and she sensed she’d slept beyond nine, Delia felt the weightless weirdness of having no job to go to.

      She imagined her old desk with the pink Post-its framing the computer screen, the photo of Parsnip in the paddling pool no longer there. Life continuing without her. Delia felt oddly bereft – it’d be strange not to, she thought, after seven years at the same office.

      Then she thought of how Ann would still be wailing about her arm and Roger glowering at her, and told herself better late to leave than never. She had no wedding to be saving for, any more. Someone else could do battle in the middle ground between the Naan and Roger.

      She’d had a big glass of red before she told her parents the night before, and gave them some white lies. Her boss had known of her intentions for a while, everyone was fine with it. She had savings, she reminded them. The wedding fund was a pretty healthy size, in fact.

      Nevertheless, their uneasy expressions communicated: Should we be paying more attention to you? Are you unravelling before our eyes?

      For all her efforts to act casual, obviously most people who moved from one end of the country to the other didn’t usually make the decision in the space of an afternoon. Or go the next day.

      Delia got herself together for a mid-afternoon departure, thinking, at least hanging around workless in Newcastle is of short duration.

      She knocked and pushed her head round Ralph’s door.

      ‘See you later. I’m off to London to stay with Emma for a bit.’

      ‘Cool. Go to Big Ben!’

      ‘Is it a favourite spot of yours?’

      ‘It’s where they fight the Ultranationalists in Call of Duty: Black Ops II.’

      Delia laughed.

      ‘You could come visit me, while I’m there?’

      Ralph shrugged and made non-committal noises. Ralph didn’t travel. Neither did her parents. There was an annual tussle to get them all to come into Newcastle city centre for a birthday. Last time they went to a nice restaurant, her mum had complained at the plate having ‘cuckoo spit and frogspawn’ on it.

      ‘Wait. Take this,’ Ralph said, rummaging around his fold-up sofa and producing a slightly crushed box of Fondant Fancies.

      She gave him a hard hug and a kiss on his soft cheek and didn’t meet his eye.

      Her dad was in the kitchen, having a cup of tea as her mum bustled around finding the car keys. Delia got the feeling she’d been spoken of, before she entered the room.

      ‘Off then, Dad! See you soon.’

      He gave her a kiss on the cheek and then held out two twenty-pound notes.

      ‘Oh no, no no,’ Delia said, as her throat and stomach tightened. ‘I’ve got plenty of cash, Dad, honestly.’

      ‘You might want a sandwich when you get there,’ her dad said, and Delia realised he’d feel better if she took it.

      ‘Be careful. London’s full of thieves and chancers, and they’ll see you’re a nice girl.’

      It was such a kindly fatherly idea that London would see anything about Delia at all, before it spat her back out again.

      Delia

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