Hobnobs
The front door closes, and I know it’s Josh by the sound of his breathing.
He comes into the bedroom to find me on the edge of our bed.
I stormed out of the escape room and ran to the Tube.
I needed to be alone to gather my thoughts.
Josh obviously had to do the same, because he’s taken his time to come home. I’ve been waiting for an hour.
I launch in.
‘You don’t think I’m attractive, do you?’
He throws his hands in the air with frustration.
‘When have I ever said that?’
‘You said to Rebecca that you think you’re hotter than me.’ Tears pool in my eyes. Josh leans against the wall, next to the map we never hung, and stares down at his feet. ‘I’m sorry that I’m not obsessed with how my body looks,’ I say, intending to hurt him. It works. His head shoots up.
‘I’m sorry that I think health is important,’ he snaps back. I snort, and he hits the wall with frustration. ‘You know, Amy, it wouldn’t harm you to plank once in a while.’
My mouth drops open.
‘When did you become such a knobhead?’
‘Me?’ He points to himself and laughs. ‘What about you? On my birthday. Don’t think I didn’t hear what Lace said to you.
’ I frown, confused. ‘She said, “No wonder you’re not having sex”, and you fucking laughed at me.
That’s why I went home. Did you know I ate dinner by myself that night?
Happy fucking thirtieth birthday to me.’
‘Lace was just trying to help me with the sex stuff,’ I say defensively and then begin to cry, mostly because I feel ashamed of myself.
I thought he hadn’t heard that conversation, and now I feel like the bitchiest fiancée on earth.
Josh hasn’t been the most attentive partner, that’s for sure, but I hate the thought of hurting him, because he’s Josh.
‘So, you were laughing about me, to her?’
‘Not laughing. Talking.’
He’s looking up at the ceiling, and I can see the tears in his eyes, and I have a sudden urge to hold him. It feels like we’re on the edge of a cliff. I get up from the bed and walk to him. I put my hands on his arms and stare into his eyes, but he looks away.
‘I shouldn’t have laughed. I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s happened to us.
I don’t even recognise who we are anymore .
. .’ I choke on my words as tears fall down his face.
I wipe them away with my finger. ‘But maybe it’s nothing, just a bump in the road that we could work through.
Perhaps once we’re married and have moved to the countryside, we’ll go back to how we were.
’ I can’t help feeling as I say it, that I’m trying to convince myself.
Josh sniffs and looks at the ground for a long time.
It’s making me nervous. ‘Josh? What is it, Josh? Be honest.’
He exhales. ‘The countryside thing. It’s not . . . really . . . what I want.’
‘What?’ I step back as if his words have physically pushed me away.
‘But that’s the plan. It’s what we’ve always wanted.
Isn’t that why we have a savings account?
Why I’ve set alerts on property listings?
Why we agreed to push our wedding to be in seven weeks, so we can speed it all up?
’ Josh does an infuriating shrug. ‘So, what? You want to live in Southwest London forever?’
‘Not forever, but maybe another 10 years.’
‘Ten years?’ I can’t believe what I’m hearing. ‘But what about having a family? You wanted two kids. That’s what you told me. We were going to move to the country and have a garden with a BBQ and—’
‘There’s time for that,’ he interjects.
‘Time? I’m 30 this year, Josh. I don’t have time to play with.’ Josh doesn’t know how to answer this, so I ask, ‘Okay, what do you want to do for the next 10 years?’
‘I dunno. I want to keep building up my body. Maybe compete in Ironman challenges. Pete was thinking of doing a lads’ trip in a van around France next year.
And, I dunno, we carry on with work, go to pub quizzes, go skiing, that kind of stuff,’ he mutters.
‘I don’t see the need to overcomplicate it by moving away and settling down. ’
We make eye contact for a split second before I look away. Why is he telling me all this now? I want to explode, but instead, I walk to the door.
‘W-where are you going?’ he stutters.
‘To get a snack.’
I go to the kitchen in a daze and get the Hobnobs from my cupboard.
On the bench is our wedding menu design, which was sent from The Chipping Barn yesterday.
They want us to sign it off by tomorrow.
Next to it, is the seating plan I did that Josh was supposed to look at two weeks ago.
And then there’s my wedding dress, in its red cover, hanging on the only hook in the flat.
I think about how beautiful I looked yesterday standing in front of the mirror, and it brings fresh tears to my eyes. That woman deserves more than this.
No matter how perfect The Chipping Barn or the wedding dress is, I know in my bones that marrying Josh would be wrong.
The only thing we have in common is history.
We have given each other 10 years of our lives, but that doesn’t mean we should give the next 60.
We both deserve better, and that means not being together.
I take a deep breath and walk back to the bedroom.
Josh is where I left him, leaning against the wall. I sit on the bed and open the packet of biscuits. ‘Want one?’
Josh waves his hand. ‘No, thanks.’ He watches me as I put one in my mouth. He comes over and takes one, then sits on the edge of the mattress.
We eat Hobnob after Hobnob in silence. I am trying to think of how to say what needs to be said.
Josh looks like he’s thinking too, but I can’t be sure.
It’s becoming clear that he hasn’t thought too deeply about us for a long time.
If ever at all. He’s nodded along and gone with the flow.
And I’ve let this happen, because I was so desperate to have my own home, my own family.
Tears fill my eyes. I sniff and look down at my shaking hands.
I have a strange feeling in my chest, like a hole is expanding. I open my mouth.
‘This isn’t going to work, is it?’
*
It’s 11 p.m. I’m lying near Josh’s feet, staring at the ceiling; we are surrounded by Kleenex balls and biscuit crumbs.
We’ve been going round in circles for hours.
Maybe if we get a sex therapist? If we get a sex therapist now, what hope would we have when we’re 50?
Maybe if we pack up everything and go travelling for a year?
If we go travelling for a year, we will still have the same problems when we get home.
Even after we discuss every possible way to make this work, we always end up at the same outcome – to break up.
‘I will move out tomorrow,’ I say. ‘We can tell our families over the next few days.’
I feel Josh’s hand on my foot. I look up and see his red, raw face. ‘You can’t move out tomorrow. It’s not right. It’s stupid. We hardly argue. We don’t cheat. We’re happy, Lab Rat, we’re so fucking happy. Everyone says so . . .’ His voice breaks off.
I exhale, exhausted at the thought of going through it all again. I care, but not enough to fight for it, and that breaks me.
‘We’re not happy. Not really,’ I say through tears.
‘No,’ he yells. He crawls over and lies next to me.
There is a dot of blood on his cracked lips from where he has chewed on them.
‘We are happy. We are. Let’s get married and we can move to the countryside, like you want.
Let’s forget this whole thing ever happened.
We’re just scared because of the wedding.
It’s normal. Come on, let’s forget it, yeah?
’ He rests his hand on the dip of my waist. It sits there, heavy and awkward.
‘We love each other. Yeah?’ he says, rocking me.
I can’t remember the last time we said we loved each other. I blink and let the words fall out.
‘Not in the way we should.’
*
I pretend to sleep as Josh gets changed for work. After I said what I said, he took Skogsfr?ken under his arm and slept on the sofa. I don’t remember falling asleep, but Josh’s shower woke me up, so I must have drifted off at some point. I don’t think he made it to the gym this morning.
He leaves the house. The sound of the door shutting behind him makes me tear up.
I want to run after him and hold him again, but I don’t move.
Instead, I keep my face pressed into the pillow and cry hard.
It feels like bats are swooping around my stomach, down and up, down and up . . . I fall back to sleep.
At 11:13, I wake and run to the bathroom. Ten Hobnobs come out in a big mush. It makes me feel a bit better, but I still feel the bats swooping around.
As much as I want to, I don’t get back into bed. If I do, I know I won’t get up again, and I must leave this flat before Josh comes back from work.
I text Nina, asking if I can stay at her house tonight. She texts a second later. She must have seen Josh this morning and worked it out.
I’ll make dinner X
I open the top drawer and stare at the creased clothes inside.
It takes me a minute to mentally prepare myself to start packing.
I pick up my purple hoodie first, and then my jeans, and then my black woolly dress.
Soon, the drawer is empty. It is surprisingly therapeutic doing something practical.
Next, I start on my books, stacking them into a cardboard box.
I remember Mum furiously packing her things up when she left.
It felt so cold back then, but now I understand; if you stop moving, you won’t start again.
The bed sheets are covered in mascara splodges and crumbs, so I put fresh sheets on for Josh.
Herbert, the dead plant, finally meets his fate and goes into the bin.
I pick up my notebook from the bedside table.
The wedding to-do list has everything ticked off.
All that’s left is to say I do. I flick to the back, where the tally marks are: 221 frustrated lines fill the pages.
It’s both terrifying and sad that we thought we were ready for marriage.
I am about to throw it in the bin but decide to pack it instead.
If I ever feel vulnerable about making this decision, it will be there to remind me why I did it.
The bedroom is done. I stare at the bare space and feel the bats swooping inside of me again.
I move on to the kitchen before I crumble again.
The four ceramic mugs Mum bought me for Christmas and my gin-making kit go into a box labelled ‘AMY’S KITCHEN’.
Fifi wanders in, making me jump. She eyeballs the cardboard box and nods, then turns and leaves the room. I’m going to miss her, strangely.
I carry the box to the bedroom and add it to my cardboard tower. My life is in boxes, and I have no idea where they will end up. The girl who plans everything suddenly has no plan at all.
‘It’s for the best,’ Fifi calls out from the hallway, as if she could sense my fear through the walls.
‘Thank you,’ I call back to be polite.
I leave a note on a torn-up piece of paper, telling Josh I’ll come and collect the boxes on the weekend. Next to the note, I leave his grandma’s ring. I stick a Post-it note on the Debbie Harry guitar and write ‘For “Wonderwall”’. At least that solves that problem.
I will let my family and friends know the news as soon as I can stomach their questions. But right now, all I need is the reassurance that I’m doing the right thing. Lace can give me that; she is, after all, the only person who knew the truth about Josh and me. I send her a text.
Hi Lace. Are you free to talk?
Something has happened.
Everything is packed, but there is still time to kill before Nina finishes work. I don’t want to sit around and think. Thinking means tears. So, with my backpack of clothes, I leave the house and cycle to Clapham Junction. I need to cancel the wedding cake.
Exhaustion hits me as soon as I walk into Clapcake, and it takes me a second to remember why I’m there.
‘I need to cancel a wedding cake. Butters and Elman. February the 22nd. The carrot one.’
I recognise the lady – Gramps was mansplaining cake to her last time we were here. She tilts her head sympathetically. I suppose I should get used to that look. Sad Amy, the bride who cancelled her wedding.
‘You did seem a bit tense that day, if you don’t mind me saying,’ she says. It surprises me. I assumed my frustration was well disguised, but obviously not. I wonder how many other times people could see through the charade. She smiles. ‘I’ll get it all cancelled for you, sweetheart.’
I feel strangely relieved. Not just because I don’t have to have a carrot wedding cake, but a weight has been lifted off me, knowing that I no longer have to accommodate Josh’s family for the rest of my life.
They are not bad people, quite the opposite.
They are genuine family people with big hearts.
There will be another woman one day who will love the way The Butters Family are, or at least know how to manage them better than I did.
Or, like most people, she’ll learn to endure her in-laws because she is in love with Josh.
That’s the way it should be. As much as it feels impossible and gut-wrenching to think of Josh with someone else, I hope it happens for him one day. He deserves it, like I deserve it.
I leave Clapcake with a buttery flapjack. A hug from the inside. I cycle to Nina’s house in Lavender Hill. Before I even open the gate, she opens her front door and runs towards me.
‘Amy, you’ve got to see this,’ she says.