My dating life since: a parade of men with exit strategies. The ghoster who said “I’m just so busy” and then posted hourly from Ibiza. The one who cried at dessert because he wasn’t over his ex (I paid; of course I paid). The man who brought his mother to the third date because “she has great instincts about people” and whose mother referred to me as “nice.”
Nice. Jesus. The worst word in dating. You may as well just write BEIGE on my forehead with a Sharpie.
I laugh bitterly to myself. If there’s a god of romance, he must have me on some kind of watchlist.
Love, it seems, is still on back order.
Chapter 2
TOM
My house looks smug in the warm glow of the Clifton streetlights. Three-storey Georgian terrace, cream stone, sash windows that would bankrupt a lesser man on draught excluders alone. The kind of house that estate agents describe as“full of period charm”and I describe as“a hostage situation every time the boiler breaks.”
I fumble the key in the lock and push open the door into silence. Except not silence — because here comes Buster, my tabby cat, tail upright like a furry exclamation mark.
Buster doesn’t so much greet as judge. His narrow eyes screamgive me tuna.
“Evening,” I say, bending down to scratch him behind the ears. “Did you find a cure for loneliness while I was out?”
He meows in the tone of a cat who has already filed for emancipation.
Inside, the house is lovely in a way that looks accidental but cost a fortune. High ceilings, cornices, wooden floors polished enough to see my reflection (unhelpful at this point of the evening). The walls are painted tasteful shades with names like “Dove Grey” and “Elephant’s Breath.” There are plants. Well, there were plants. What remains is an arrangement of terracotta pots full of dried regret.
I toss my keys into the bowl by the door, shrug off the sweat-stained shirt, and head for the kitchen. It’s sleek and expensive, allgranite counters and integrated appliances I ignore in favour of my air fryer. The wine fridge hums quietly, its contents a catalogue of impulse buys made after watching one too many reruns ofFood and Drinkon iPlayer.
I select a bottle of red, pour a glass the size of a swimming pool, and collapse onto the sofa. The cushions sigh under me like they’ve heard this story before.
Buster leaps up and kneads at my lap with claws that could perforate steel. I wince. “Yes, you’re the only consistent relationship in my life. Do you have to puncture me to prove it?”
I take a long sip of wine and stare at the bookshelves across the room. My father’s old cricket trophies sit there now, gleaming in a row. They don’t belong—shiny brass against minimalist Ikea — but I can’t put them in storage. That feels like betrayal. So they stay, mute witnesses to the son who never bowled a ball.
Twelve months since the funeral.
Twelve months since I stood by the grave in a hired black suit, wondering why I felt hollow instead of heartbroken. People had said,You must be devastated, losing your dad.And I was. But not the way they imagined.
I grieve the idea of my father more than the man himself. The idea of Sunday kickabouts, shared pints, conversations that weren’t about weather or work. Instead, our relationship had been a polite cold war. He wanted a son he could talk cricket with, a son who didn’t come out as gay at twenty-five and move to the city to work in finance. I wanted a dad who would ask me how I was without it sounding like a job interview.
We missed each other constantly. Not literally, but mentally, emotionally. Just never connected. Ships in the night, except one ship was captained by stoicism and the other by sarcasm.
And yet — I miss him. Miss the possibility of what could have been.
Guilt soaks everything: that I didn’t try harder, that the last conversation was about an overdue MOT, that I will never now fix what was broken.
I take another gulp of wine.
It was his death, in the end, that shook me awake. The high-paying finance job, the late nights at the office. Work had consumed me. And for what? To end up like him — respected, comfortable, emotionally unavailable?
No. I walked away. Or at least, drifted. The inheritance gave me freedom. The house, the money, the security. His only gift, really, was the means to stop becoming him.
So here I am. Sabbatical. Time off. Focus on mental health, they call it, as if sanity can be pencilled into a calendar. I call it not-working. Either way, it’s my chance to find love, to find meaning, to stop staring at shadows of things I’ll never have.
Buster purrs, loud and demanding. I stroke him absently, eyes on the trophies.
I open my phone. No new matches on the dating apps, but I do a few courtesy swipes for the dopamine hit, like a man shaking an empty vending machine, before opening my photos.
Scrolling through, despite being divorced for nearly two years, there are still plenty of pictures of me and Daniel in there: Barcelona, Australia, Japan, forced smiles.
Daniel. Ten years of marriage. Ten years of being told I was too much or not enough, depending on the day. Ten years spent overthinking everything I did to pacify Daniel’s volatile mood.
