Patricia

I cannot live with you any more.

I wish you well.

I am starting a new life in Scotland.

Please be kind to the cats and tell Judith I am sorry.

Best wishes

George

He left Coed Celyn and didn’t look back.

The next morning a postcard from Crete arrived for him at the factory office signed by someone called Judi-moo. George’s old boss glanced at it briefly, before throwing it into the wastepaper bin.

22

Lana

She’d said the job was a great opportunity, something solid to put on her CV for when she left college. In truth, she was no more than a second-rate kids’ entertainer, selling ice-creams and sweets in the interval and silly hats and glow-in-the-dark wands, whilst dressed up as a space alien. Hardly a foot on the West End theatre ladder. But she knew Gareth would know no different, nor would anyone else back home, and if she accepted the job it would mean she could stay in Guildford longer and see him every night.

She couldn’t bear saying his name. That made it sound like a relationship. He was an addiction. A compulsion. Sex with him was exceptional. It was angry, powerful, insanely erotic and so, so shamefully good. What’s more, it was available to her nightly. Try as she might to say no, to promise herself every morning that today would be different, she would still find herself turning up at the pub every evening, to be barely acknowledged and taken back to his room to fuck, not speak – other than the commands he firmly issued during sex – and then leave again. Her dignity was shattered, destroyed by this burning, inexplicable need that ran riot inside her.

On the one occasion when she’d opened up to him, complaining that she couldn’t go on like this – that the guilt was too much – he’d just brushed it aside with his usual disinterest and unemotional nonchalance. ‘Makes no odds to me, sweetheart. You want out? There’s the door.’

It’s a stupid fling, it’ll pass, she kept telling herself, and focused on seeing Gareth again. But when she came home for her two nights off at Christmas, they spent most of the time either arguing or not speaking, which made the prospect of returning to Guildford even more attractive than it was already.

The worst row was on Christmas night, when Gareth accused her of being miserable and up herself, and she accused him of being parochial and unambitious. He told her he wasn’t ashamed of being unambitious, and had no idea what ‘parochial’ even meant – and that using words like that just proved his point about her being a poncey actress. They didn’t speak for half an hour, separated from each other in different rooms, until eventually Gareth came and sat next to her, took her hand and said softly, ‘It’s Christmas Day, for God’s sake. Let’s go to bed.’ And she relented.

They made love that night, the first time in weeks – gentle and faltering and sweet, so different from sex with Damian Magill. And Lana loathed herself for making comparisons, but the truth was that she yearned for the Belfast builder to be fucking her instead. What had happened to her? When she shut her eyes she couldn’t get him out of her head, so she kept them open and stared at Gareth the entire time.