LITMIR.BIZ

      For Sofia, with all my heart.

Chapter One

      I miss the train by exactly fourteen seconds. I know this because the little digital clock on the Redhill station platform is actually working today, reading 17:30:14, and the dim red tail-lights of the train are still just visible in the distance. Resignedly I slow to a walk and slump down on to one of the metal platform benches, pulling my coat more tightly around me against the chilly late-autumn wind.

      The next train isn’t for an hour.

      But at least you’re not working in London, I tell myself firmly, beginning the timeworn conversation I have inside my own head every day at around this time. That terrible commute all your friends complain about. I settle back into the seat and shut my eyes, calling to mind the next item on my familiar list of the advantages of rural rail transport. All those people, getting pushed and jostled about on overcrowded city platforms… Then I momentarily draw a blank. What comes next?

      At least on train connections here in the depths of Surrey you can always get a seat.

      Yes! That’s it. The abundance of available seating.

      And what was it Mum came out with the other day? The terrorist threat. Of course!

      In more remote areas there is less of a terrorist threat. People passing through London Bridge or Victoria every day must be really scared. I nod fervently to myself. Really scared.

      A crackling voice over a speaker jerks my mind back from determined visualisations of abandoned rucksacks and hordes of panicked travellers.

       ‘The eighteen-thirty has been cancelled, due to a fault on the line. Will all passengers travelling to Horsham, Southwater, Partridge Green, and… Fenbridge please make their way to the front of the station where an alternative bus service has been arranged.’

      I wearily haul myself to my feet, rolling my eyes at my only other fellow traveller, an elderly woman smoking a cigarette on the next bench along.

      ‘What they really mean is someone’s topped themselves again,’ she tells me with a conspiratorial wink as we make our way over to the lone bus waiting for us at the station entrance.

      I nod politely and take a seat at the back of the bus, rummaging in my handbag for my phone. The replacement bus service always takes ages, so I’d better drop Harry a message to let him know I’ll be late. Although by the time he reads it I might be home anyway.

      To my surprise, there’s already a text waiting for me. I blink at it for a few moments, savouring the quick thrill of excitement at that little digital envelope. Unopened, full of potential. Of course, it might not even be from him.

       U on way yet? Can’t wait to see you. Got wine. Love x x x

      My heart rate quickens. Harry hasn’t used the word love in a text for… well… a while. Even as I’m staring at it, my phone vibrates and another message pops up below it.

       I really want to talk to you… we may have reason to celebrate x x x

      Excitement pulses through my veins and my hand actually starts to tremble as I type my reply. Oh my goodness, this could be it. It!

      No, he won’t be proposing to me. Ever since I met Harry at university six years ago, he’s been very clear about his views on marriage. He sees it as a man-made societal structure designed to control and suppress. Or something like that. I don’t share his views, but Harry’s unique outlook on life was one of the things that drew me to him.

      Is. Is one of the things that draws me to him.

      Besides, what’s the point in feeling deprived of one thing in life, when we already have so much.

      So I’ve accepted it won’t be marriage Harry wants to talk about tonight. But it might be… something even bigger.

      The something that, if I’m honest, has been present in many conversations between Harry and me lately, without actually being said out loud.

      Ever since a chain of events began that clearly only pointed at one thing. My job became permanent. After a year of living from month to month on a ‘temporary contract’ within the legal support team at Home from Home, a local housing charity, I came in one morning to find an envelope on my desk offering me a permanent contract. It was hardly the winning lottery numbers or Willy Wonka’s lucky golden ticket, but at least it meant financial stability. The following year Harry got promoted to Head of Art at the boys’ Academy (the youngest person ever to achieve this role, their annual newsletter told us proudly). The next year our mortgage rate went down by two per cent. Then, earlier this year, Harry’s Great-Aunt Mabel died, leaving him a decent lump sum. Everything was coming together perfectly.

      We have the space. Okay, so our second bedroom may not be very large and Harry is currently using it as a study. (When I say study, I really mean part art-studio and part man-den, where oil paints and sketch pads and X-box chairs with inbuilt speakers all coexist in a cornucopia of organised chaos. I’m not allowed in there.)

      But we could easily convert it into a nursery.

      I start imagining what it would feel like to go in there and give it a really good clean out. Resting my head against the cold, damp bus window, I allow myself to be absorbed by one of my favourite daydreams. I’d start with the magazines – they’re all going in the recycling. Terrible how the world’s forests are being depleted daily, and Harry probably owns half of them in the form of gaming magazines, dating back to 1998, stashed in untidy piles. Right, the magazines are gone. Mentally I dust my hands off and survey the rest of the room. The art stuff can stay, I suppose. I’ve always quite fancied Harry after he’s been working, when he re-emerges from that room after several hours of activity, all tousled blond hair and stubble and paint splatters. Admittedly, that hasn’t happened in a while… but just in case, I imagine carefully packing away the paint cartridges, only throwing away the empty, dried-out ones, and maybe a few of the more sludgy colours I don’t like.

      Now that just leaves the X-box, and of course that chair…

      Caught up in a fantasy of hauling the X-box chair roughly by its arms into the garage, I almost miss my stop.

      ‘This is Fenbridge, love,’ the driver announces helpfully, and I realise the bus has stopped moving and I’m the only person still on board.

      ***

      By the time my key is turning in the lock ten minutes later, I’m absolutely certain Harry wants to talk about starting a family.

      We’ve discussed it before, of course. Ever since I was a teenager I’ve known it was one of the top criteria for my future life partner – like being in steady employment and having decent table manners. They must want children.

      Yes, we had talked about it, but Harry and I met when we were so young that at first any conversations about children were hypothetical: one day, it would be nice to, when we’re older, etc…

      It had come up again when we bought the house, naturally. I’d wanted to go straight in with a three-bed, but Harry convinced me it was more sensible to start off smaller, not to stretch ourselves or be ‘tied down’ to a really big mortgage, so that ‘one day’ (there it was again), when the first child came along, we wouldn’t be struggling financially. He hadn’t actually said when the first child came along, but I knew that was what he meant. That was three years ago and I had been starting to wonder when ‘one day’ might be, but I didn’t say too much because it always seemed to be me who brought the subject up and I didn’t want to come across as one of those barmy women who only thinks

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