Chapter Eleven

KAT

The second thing I do when I get home is hurl myself onto the sofa. The first thing, obviously, was to put my pyjamas on. I don’t care if it’s only 6.30 p.m. and still a heady twenty-six degrees outside – I am so very over today. I’ve now lived on my own for the full six weeks (two days, et cetera) since Daniel left. And whilst I am trying to adjust to this whole living-on-my-own thing, because there is a certain luxury in being able to wee with the toilet door angled perfectly to continue watching Scott & Bailey through the mirror, there are also times I wish I wasn’t alone. Not necessarily that Daniel was still here, not if he doesn’t want to be, I suppose, but just that I wasn’t alone. Maybe that I had a flatmate. Or someone who understands how I like my steak – medium-rare with jacket potato and my bodyweight in Roquefort – or who appreciates that opening the Pinot is a priority. Perhaps someone who enjoys washing the pots. I can almost hear them taunting me – the pots, that is, not my imaginary flatmate. They’re all dried-in stir-fry and crusted milk. What did I do before he moved in? When this place was mine and mine alone. When I was solely responsible for its upkeep. For the pots. What happened to make me so rubbish as a singleton?

I reach for my bag, which rests against the last box of Daniel’s shit that he still hasn’t collected. Stuff he didn’t bother packing when he cleared the rest of the flat out. When he walked out with the iPad and the Bose speakers and too many phone chargers. When he took the cushions he hated and the bedding I bought. I don’t know why I bothered packing up the photos and pictures and the clay pot he made when he was six. We only ever used it for the car keys, which are something else he took: the keys to our brand new Ford Focus, Freddie. Still, I guess he also picks up the bill and massive loss in value since driving it off the forecourt. Karma.

He clearly doesn’t care about the sentimental value of any of this stuff, but why does he think I want his school ‘treasures’? They’re a reminder of the kind of slightly crap pottery our children would have brought back… Well, had I ever had a chance to persuade him to have them. He’d always been adamant he didn’t want them. Had too much he wanted to do, no time for kids. They’re a bleed on your bank balance, he always said. I thought he’d come around to them one day, maybe I was wrong. Besides, why should I have to take this box of mementoes to him? He forgot it, he should come fetch it. Then maybe we could talk. Work out what happened. Start again?

Unless he really does have a new girlfriend.