2. Stoke-on-Trent, April
STOKE-ON-TRENT, APRIL
SIX MONTHS AGO
Whatever they will accuse me of later, I never sought to be Anna’s aide , and I’m not the kind of person who makes a habit of messaging celebrities out of the blue, either.
But the thing about Anna Finbow is that you felt as if you knew her.
It was—and still is—her greatest skill. Her fortune was carved out of that knowing familiarity she fostered.
I resisted it at first, but I turned out to be no different from everyone else. Before long, I fell for it, too.
I could argue in court that, as a ceramicist myself, I had no choice but to apply for work with Anna’s business, that the forces acting on me were purely economic.
We certainly weren’t a creative match—Anna was famous for her bone-thin, floral uniformity, whereas my style is more like me: earthy-toned and slightly misshapen.
I never make dainty teacups, but mugs the size of tankards, with their surfaces roughly hewn.
The texture of cauldrons , as a teacher once put it.
In my defense, I could claim that I needed a part-time job to support my own fledgling pottery business, that there wasn’t much other work around. So, when I happened to see her out walking her dog one evening near her factory in Stoke, of course I seized the moment and got in touch.
But that would only be one version of the story. Told differently, another version would say that I was obsessed with Anna, seeking her out and exploiting my privileged access to her, once I had gained it.
The truth sits somewhere between the two.
It was her coat that had caught my attention first. Chocolate-colored, suede, and long, there was no mistaking the expensive drape of it.
Then it was the way Anna stood. Her shoulders were hunched up close to her ears, and her hands were buried in her pockets.
As my bus stalled, I noticed she was staring into the window of a toy shop.
That was probably the first moment that disrupted my original image of Anna Finbow as a steely, untouchable edifice.
Standing there in front of those brightly lit toys, she looked cowed, like a woman—or even a little girl—who had lost something.
Human posture tells us so much more about a person than we ever realize. It has its own alphabet.
Was it grief that brought her here? I had wondered, as I studied her.
Or embarrassment? I’d read everything I could find about the public spat with her daughter, Mary, and the massive legal case—now a defamation claim—that was mounting between her and Mary’s therapist. The news was so full of gossipy updates, it made sense that Anna might want to escape her home in London for Stoke-on-Trent.
To get her head down and work, just for a while. Until things quieted down.
My bus pulled away, and I gained another sight of that famous profile. My heart pattered with the thrill of coincidence.
Here it comes , I thought. A chance.
A year ago, I’d done the same thing as her, and escaped London, too.
The Potteries, once the fiery heartland of British ceramics, hold a certain appeal to broken people.
For one, there’s no town center: We’re instead made up of six small towns, which compete for primacy and wrestle for council funds like a nest of underfed chicks.
To live somewhere so geographically fragmented makes you feel a bit more whole, and I wondered if Anna knew that, too.
On her website, she called Bellinter, her factory, the “cradle” of her brand, but the city itself could also be curative.
I had moved here after a series of break-ups.
Gradually, as the months passed, the Potteries fused me back together.
Later that night, on the mezzanine of my studio, where I slept, I’d opened an application on my phone.
Anna’s profile was never far from the top of my recent searches.
I clicked on the envelope sign and introduced myself, telling her that I’d literally just gone past her in the street and that her brown coat was amazing.
Then I gave a little background. I made a great deal of the art foundation course that I’d actually never finished, as well as the caliber of my references, which, I assured, could be provided on request. I pasted across the sales pitch from a previous application I had submitted.
26 years old. Ceramicist. Born and bred in Stoke. Worships your brand—songbook of English interiors.
Trained in Rome. Team player, self-starter. Loves to be challenged. Ambitious. Determined.
Needing experience so happy to muck in and do (just about) anything.
If your team is already full, no problem at all!! I wrote. I’d still love to take you for a coffee and hear about your career? I pressed send. A minute later, I opened the app and typed another message.
Not sure if you remember, but we actually met once before! At a party .
Then I hesitated, remembering that brutal occasion when she had ignored me. In the end, I thought the better of it. It was a night I wanted to forget, anyway. I highlighted that bit of text and pressed delete.
Those messages were the first of many untruths I told Anna.
I’m not a native Stokie, by any stretch.
I moved up here the February before last. Before that, it had been the cheapest fringes of London; before that, school in the southwest. Kingsfold had been one of the last remaining Evangelical Christian schools in the country.
By the time I arrived, it had changed to a secular status, but many of the fanatical teachers remained.
My parents worked there, too, and though they weren’t organized enough to be truly religious, our house was still imbued with their employers’ stiff morality. I got out as soon as I could.
After a few wrong turns along the way, I ended up in London.
But, really, in its suburbs. In Wanstead, I rented a room within a large house owned by an older American lady who lived on cruise ships for six months of the year, and who raised the rent slightly before each passage.
Her saving gesture was the job in the café she found for me.
Any money I had left over, I spent booking time in the pottery studio nearby.
Back then, I suppose I was only playing about, shaping things, copying the skills and techniques of the more talented ceramicists I observed around me.
But, as I sat at that wheel on those alternate Saturday afternoons, I felt grounded for the first time in my life.
There is a primeval, essential quality to working with clay.
Humans have always done it. And in my studio, as I cut and weighed those cool blocks of material, I reconnected to an imagined lineage of past potters, a kinship I’d never found in romantic or even platonic relationships.
Looking back, you could say I rediscovered a spirituality that had been stamped on in school.
It never once occurred to me that I could make money from it.
The fact that the whole practice felt so essential to my being meant I was frightened to pursue any formal training.
How many art foundation courses did I get onto, only to drop out on day one?
Art school was too expensive, I told myself; it only dampened raw talent or was otherwise simply too indulgent.
So I opted, instead, to contain my deepest-felt desire in a hobby, rather than gamble my life on it.
For a few years, the café work rolled on and I didn’t improve.
Then I moved away to a different part of London and got a job in the local cinema.
My trips to the studio became less frequent.
I tricked myself into pretending this didn’t make me dreadfully sad.
Occasionally, I read online about residencies.
Back then, it seemed the most outrageous privilege to me, to receive a stipend and accommodation for weeks at a time, just to improve your craft.
That was why, I reasoned, my applications were never successful.
I didn’t believe, deep down, that I really deserved it.
Then, one morning, a couple of years ago, during a painful creative dry spell, a surreal email arrived.
My eyes scanned for the usual letting-down phrases: unfortunately, we’re sorry , or not this time.
But nothing appeared. I had won a place on a residency in Rome.
My world was about to change. Which, of course, it did, but so differently from how I would have wanted.
After Italy, I couldn’t face London again.
It felt too much like going backward. What I needed, desperately, was a place to live, and a studio with north light—the flat, gray kind of light that would reflect my heartbroken mood.
I decided on Stoke. Beautiful studios were being created from its iconic old pottery factories, the rare kind of workspaces where you could also live.
But when I first moved up here, nothing inside shifted.
For months, I wandered the streets and supermarkets, bewildered with heartbreak.
I realized how that dragging longing for someone didn’t miraculously lift from your chest just because you’d changed cities.
When I saw Anna Finbow from the bus that day, I wondered if she was reaching the same conclusions.
How the loneliness remains. Their absence carries day and night.
It takes up residence inside you, wherever you live.
A week after I saw Anna, my phone flashed with a message.
Hi Gus. Good to hear from you. Just confirming you are based in SOT?
My heart dropped. I had been cleaning tools in my studio, but now things were different; I had received a direct message from Anna Finbow.
Quickly, I wiped my hands, then hoisted myself onto my workbench, letting my legs dangle free, as I read it over and over.
The green glow around her name suggested she was still online.
My hands shook as I typed my reply.
Yes! Not far from your HQ.
Anna was typing. The dots shimmered and rippled. I gripped the handset, muttering an inward prayer of thanks to the miracle of the internet. Then waited.
Would you be available to discuss a role at Anna’s this evening?
I lowered the phone, feeling stupid for thinking Anna would handle her own communications.
What time?
7 ok?
Of course.
At home, not Bellinter.
My correspondent gave me the address of Anna’s home in Hanley. I thanked her, amazed to learn how close it was.
Will Anna be there in person? I texted, fear swimming in my stomach.
Just so I’m prepared!
No response came, but throughout the rest of the afternoon, I started to feel the old heaviness in my chest begin to lift.
I sketched a plan in my mind of how I might position myself, if I actually came to meet Anna, the ways I might win her over.
For the first time in months, a feeling of clearheaded purpose came over me. I switched apps and texted a friend.
So I might have good news.