The two of them had been my best friends for well over half my life; Chloe even longer. She had grown up on the next farm over, and we were always so close that Mum thought we’d end up together. But I was the only one who knew that, from the time we had crushes at all, hers had been on her own girl next door, who devastated Chloe by being straight. Then there was Phil, who had come barrelling into our lives in year seven and turned our duo into a trio, a swirl of seam tape and the smell of freshly baked cookies trailing after him, even then. If he hadn’t been such a lad, he might have been bullied for his homemaker tendencies, but instead he was just the coolest guy in every room he walked into.
I’d never lost touch with the two of them, even when I left on what was supposed to be a gap year, following what I thought was my future all around the globe for almost six years. And when that didn’t work out, and I came home broken and directionless, they didn’t let me pull away. Even as I was walking around like a zombie, doing nothing but working on my house and going to work, they were there, force-feeding me takeaway and a film at least once a week.
It wasn’t until I emerged from my post-breakup fog that I met the other two. Grey was a university pal of Phil’s, sliding into the friend group like they had always been there once I came up for post-breakup air. And Fatima came with Grey, especially when she realised Grey had a group of pals who were desperate to try their hands at Dungeons & Dragons, dragging her boyfriend Jared with her.
We weren’t an inherently nerdy bunch, but we’d thrown ourselves headfirst into the game, and now we’d been playing together every week for almost three years. We were quite sceptical when Chloe suggested one of her colleagues join us; most of us had only ever played together, and none of us believed that Morgan would be as keen on bringing her work life into her personal time as Chloe insisted she would be. But Jared had suddenly had to move to Manchester for work, and we were getting ready to start a new campaign, so we decided to give it a try.
I’d be seeing all of them over the weekend – well, other than Morgan, of course, but that was a given at this point. I wasn’t sure why I felt so disappointed every time she turned us down for drinks after the game or an extra hang over the weekend; maybe it was what Chloe always said, about her not having many friends. It was why she’d wanted to invite her to play with us in the first place.
Or maybe, if I were being more honest, it was the feeling I got in my stomach whenever she smiled at me. But I didn’t examine that too closely.
* * *
“You’d better not letyour mum see you in that,” Dad said a bit later as he heaved the last of the rubbish into the skip. He dusted his hands off on his filthy jeans and pointed at my t-shirt.
“She’ll be fine,” I said, but I crossed my arms as if to cover it up from him, despite the fact that we’d been working together all day. I had to promptly uncross them as Dad handed me a bucket with a trowel in it, both still caked in plaster, of course. I knew he would lay into someone about it tomorrow, but for now it was up to me to clean it off when we got back to the workshop.
“You’ll need a shower before dinner, anyway. I suspect the both of us do.”
I managed to get a whiff of my own odour as I gripped the grab handle and lifted myself into the van; Dad was right.
“Still,” I said as he put the van in gear, “it’s been years. I feel like she should just get over it at this point.”
The black t-shirt wasn’t inherently offensive; in fact, the crumpled takeaway coffee cup illustration with “LEAVE NO TRACE” written across the side was downright polite. It had been a part of a campaign my ex had started – or, well, one I’d started, but she’d promoted – to clean up outdoor spaces. All the proceeds had gone to wildlife charities, too. But despite how long it had been since the breakup, Mum and Dad still treated it like a sensitive subject, and the t-shirt was just another reminder apparently. Maybe it had something to do with just how deeply I’d spiralled after it happened, but that was beside the point.
“Your mum just feels protective. I’m not saying she’s right to be that sensitive. Just that you ought to change before dinner.”
“Will do, I promise.”
Satisfied, Dad turned up his heavy metal music, and I unzipped the backpack at my feet to get to my massive noise-cancelling headphones. Turning them on woke my phone, which was still paused on the podcast episode I’d started that morning; a deep dive into emerging materials in sustainable architecture.
Dad and I enjoyed this sort of company – each of us doing our own thing, but together. We saw each other at work almost every day, except when the job he was on didn’t need me. To just sit together on the drive home, each of us listening to something we enjoyed, was an ideal way to transition from boss and employee to father and son.
Mum was different. Where Dad was measured, Mum was manic. She was always making mountains out of molehills. This could be a good thing depending on the context – birthday celebrations for my sister Amy and me, and even Chloe, had always been next-level – but on average days, it could be exhausting, even for me, who had inherited more of Mum’s anxiety than I cared to admit. I wasn’t sure how Dad managed it. And as we pulled up the long drive to the house, we could both see Mum out in the garden weeding – something she only ever did when she was worked up. She was very passionate about rewilding, so when she was on her hands and knees ripping native species from the earth, it was a pretty good sign she was worked up.
“You’d better go,” Dad said, turning the music down. “I’ll get that plaster bucket cleaned up.”
“Is the shirt really that big a deal?”
Dad sighed. “She’s taking Amy’s breakup hard. Don’t wanna set her off.”
I rolled my eyes – Amy was twenty-two; messy breakups were her prerogative. And we’d all known this guy wasn’t going to last; he was some fancy project manager in the city nearly ten years older than her. But Mum took it so personally when it didn’t work out, as if she could have protected Amy from it.
But still, why should I suffer now about a breakup of mine that happened years ago just because Mum took Amy’s love life way too seriously?
But I knew Dad was right; it was best for the equilibrium for me to just go home and get changed, so I got out of the van, grabbed my backpack and started the walk to mine. On the way, I fired off a text to my sister – “Mum’s really tweaked about your breakup. You ok?” – after reacting with an eye-roll emoji to the message she’d sent me earlier containing my horoscope. She only ever sent it to me when it was dramatic, and today it read, “a shake-up is on the way, and it’s up to you whether it will be welcome or not.”
Honestly, a shake-up sounded like the worst thing I could imagine. I’d been shaken up enough for a lifetime, thank you. I’d basically designed my life around preventing future shake-ups. And Amy knew this, which was why she loved taunting me with supposed pending dramatics. She didn’t immediately start texting me back, so I pocketed my phone again as I crested the hill and my house came into view.
Technically, I didn’t live with my parents. Sure, we were on the same land: over a hundred acres that had been in my dad’s family for generations. His brother – Uncle John, after whom I was named – still farmed most of it. But Dad had never been a farmer, nor had I. So whilst Mum and Dad lived in the old farmhouse, and Uncle John lived in a modern build over the hill, when I had moved home four years ago I had chosen a tiny spot down in a dip in the crop fields that was blocked from view from any of the other houses. I designed it in a fit of creativity fuelled by heartache and IPA, learning everything I needed to know about building code and utilities and all the rest. After years of bending to someone else’s vision at every turn, I’d needed it to come wholly from me and what I wanted.
After that, it had taken me almost six months of full-time work and trial-and-error, but I’d built every inch of my house with my own two hands while I’d grieved my failed relationship. Every nail I hammered in, every roof tile I lay, every swipe of plaster inside, all had the angst and hurt and despondence I’d felt, both whilst I was getting over the breakup and, if I was being honest, for months before it had finally happened. It was a long and arduous project to commemorate the end of a long and frankly arduous relationship. And by the time I was done, I’d worked through most of my hurt, built myself a paradise to live in, and finally felt light enough to enjoy it.
Inside, I stripped off my clothes and turned on the walk-in shower. The rainfall showerhead sent well water cascading over me, a bit cold, but a refreshing change from the heat outside. It took almost five minutes of rinsing myself off before the water ran clear.
In the kitchen, my bath towel wrapped around my waist, I made myself a cup of chamomile tea and headed to my back deck, which overlooked a small wildlife pond formed in the little crook of the hilly farmland. It was the reason this part of the land hand never been utilised, and the reason I chose it as the perfect spot for my home.
I moved aside a magazine I’d been looking at before work – the May edition of the monthly journal put out by the Royal Institute of British Architects – and sat in my rocking chair, sipping my tea and thinking about Chloe’s birthday. It was still a couple of months away, but since we were kids Phil and I had gone in together on a present for her. This year she’d requested an old-school slumber party, so we needed to figure out what that would look like.
