“Oh, good?”
She laughed again as they made their way beneath a sign that readIf it takes a village…why do we expect women to do so much of it alone?
It had taken Jones a while to get used to how little looking after Aspen required. He was a nurturer at heart—or had been told so—and was actually slightly thrown at how often Aspen just got on and sorted things herself, whether it was managing her leaking fridge or her family dramas. Walking in here, seeing the empty hall and that set to her jaw, he’d thought,She needs me. He’d gotten himself a cold beer and headed over in full confidence he could turn this evening around for her, already tasting what that would feel like. But she seemed to have lifted her own spirits.
“You’re something special, you know that?” he told her, pressing a kiss to the fiery crown of her head, but the happy hum in his belly was quieter now, and he couldn’t help wishing that he’d had the chance todosomething for her. He’d liked feeling purposeful for a minute. Much of the time, honestly, he wondered why Aspen bothered keeping him around.
—
Jones was not the sort of person who wanted to explore his own psyche; he wasn’t at all comfortable with spiritual thinking, or philosophical questions likeWho am I?andWhat am I feeling?He felt a little afraid of such things, actually—deep down he suspected that if he began to dig, he might uncover more than he’d bargained for. Hardly surprising, then, that what he thought he wanted from Aspen wasn’t what he needed at all.
When her father died, quite suddenly, she went from needing him very little to needing him an awful lot. They had been together for four months and were still spending most nights together—Jones’s flat was closer to the birthing center, so it often made sense for Aspen to crash there. Jones had, by this point, got to know Aspen’s argumentative, tight-knit family, but her father, Alisdair, lived in America, so they’d never met.
Her mother came to her flat to impart the news in person; Bridget was already racked with sobs when Aspen answered the door, despite the fact that she had divorced Aspen’s father almost two decades ago and had described him at the last family dinner as “too up his own arse to find his feet,” a phrase that Jones had puzzled over for much of dessert. Alisdair’s primary crime, it seemed, was earning no money while married to Bridget, and then earning a lot once he left her. He was an artist, “discovered” by a music producer in the late 2010s and propelled from pennilessness into the LA creative scene.
“What a loss!” Bridget was wailing, doubled over on the sofa, the sleeves of her fluorescent pink dress draping to the carpet. “Oh, what a great loss!”
“Mum, please, I can’t…” Aspen paced back and forth, white with shock.
“We’ve lost such a great man!” Bridget cried. “How will I cope?”
Jones watched Aspen’s shoulders stiffen. There was a look on her face he’d only ever glimpsed before—not sadness, he’d seen her saddened plenty of times, but something sharper and rawer. She caught him looking at her across the living room and her expression shifted; she began to cry. He went to her and held her. But he thought of that initial expression again, later. He had a sense, sometimes, that Aspen wore a mask with him—with everyone, perhaps. He didn’t know what to make of that except that it was disconcerting.
Alisdair had died of a heart attack, brought on by “hard living,” Bridget said, from which Jones had inferred that the LA creative scene had had something to do with it. Aspen seemed to have had no sense of her dad living “hard” at all; to her, he was the sweet, artistic father who had steered her through a childhood with the exhausting Bridget, and could do no wrong, despite walking out on them. “He waited until I was at university,” she’d said to Jones when the divorce had come up. “He always thought of us first.”
Aspen coached her mother through the early throes of grief, despite her own devastation. Jones had noticed that Aspen’s mother seemed to lean on her more than he thought normal, though he had a stilted, stereotypically British relationship with his own parents, so this whole situation was quite odd to him. His mother wouldneverhave shown up on his doorstep in tears, not even if his dad had died.
Jones found those days after Alisdair’s death hard—he didn’t know quite how to behave. Things still felt so new with Aspen;I’ll see how it goes, he’d say to himself whenever he thought about a future for them, but this all seemed so serious, and suddenly he was The Boyfriend, the person who would need to hold her up while she held up her mother. And hewantedto be—of course he wanted to help her. But he was ashamed to find himself missing those easy,sexy, early days. He thought he’d wanted Aspen to need him, to lean on him, but now that shewasrelying on him, he found himself feeling a little…panicked.
She was behaving differently, too. She was snappy, and much less predictable; sometimes she’d suddenly jump down his throat about something, then the next moment she’d be in his arms again, telling him she loved him. Jones had the sense that life was speeding ahead no matter how often he jabbed at the “stop” button. He was stressed at work—the bar was performing badly, its owners getting antsy and talking of closing—and his flat seemed to have become an entirely shared space. He’d hardly noticed it when Aspen had been cool and self-sufficient, but now he saw that they were pretty much living together. This was definitely not the moment to discuss that, though, so he held her every night and nodded as she’d sayThank God I’ve got youorI’m so glad we met, ignoring the uneasy sensation worming through him.
She was so vulnerable now; she loved him, relied on him. Jones couldn’t walk away from someone who needed him—it had been agony the first time, and he felt sure that doing it again would break him.
Friday August 15th 2025
The pig thing. If I could draw the facepalm emoji, I would.
Not ideal, was it? The committee sipping their drinks and watching me dash about. The shame of it all. How desperately I longed for them to like me, how incrediblyvitalthat felt.
Ugh. Thought writing this down would help but it’s giving me flashbacks. I’m having…the nasty feeling. The stifling sickening get-me-out-of-this-body feeling. If I could peel myself away and escape from my own brain I’d do it. I want to disappear.
I hate this. And I hate it more because I was never like this before, was I? Definitely got panicky occasionally, but it used to make me better—it pushed me to work harder, take extra precautions. Anything to avoid feeling this way.
But now when the feeling comes, it takes over. I’m not me, I’m just this. A twitching, whining, frightened animal running scared.
How am I ever going to be a mother when I’m such a child?
Monday August 18th 2025
Been a few days. I’m doing better.
It always passes, that’s the thing to remember.
Hope Jones didn’t notice me falling apart.
Just reflecting back on The Night of the Pig.
Went straight from the shop to Marly and Rosie’s farmhouse to fill them in. It’s one of those beautiful rambly houses, all nooks and extra bits, nothing quite matching. The higgledy slate roof is dotted with dormers and Velux windows. Rosie was just letting Ginger out of the ornate old wooden door as I reached the front garden.
