I am in. The house mine, finally: my turnkey, fully refurbished, two-bedroom Georgian terrace in London’s exclusive De Beauvoir area. Justmine,box-fresh and full of hope for the future. I watch the movers pack up and throw the last of the balled-up packing materials into the truck bed before rattling down the shutters and slamming the doors. Then a final, casual thumbs-up through the driver’s window, and they pull away.
The street is so quiet once their rumble subsides. Odd to miss them—I barely spoke to them—but you get so caught up in the energy of a group endeavor and now the party’s moved on. It’s just me, party of one.
I take in my new neighborhood—the immaculate stone frontages standing sentinel, running either side of the street, a protective tunnel of affluence.
I shiver at how beautiful it is here, my heart tripping a beat with sudden joy, and disbelief thatthisis my new home. I get to livehere,in a place like this.
It’s early morning, the street is still as I take it in from the doorway, not a soul yet up to catch my moment of bliss. A cool morning breeze ruffles my hair and lifts the scent of jasmine and honeysuckle from nearby. I cast my eyes over the well-tended frontages: all this, no doubt, kept up by armies of gardeners, cleaners, nannies, and housekeepers. In this area, the larger houses easily break the three-million-pound mark.
I need to stop staring. I am one of these people now, too. I need torelax into this,or they’ll sense my awe and turn on me with their sterling-silver pitchforks.
I shut my glossy cherry-red front door and let the still of the house settle on me, the smell of wood polish and fresh carpet evidence of a completely clean slate. I wander, eyes still surprised by the soaring ceilings, the intricate swirls of Victorian cornicing, cool-to-the-touch marble fireplaces, and the luxurious interior-designed fixtures and fittings that I requested the sellers incorporate into the sale.
My own possessions stand like islands in each room, boxed, the chaos inside them still contained. The larger pieces of furniture have been carefully unwrapped and positioned, the extra service worth it but also necessary; now that I’m single again, I have to pay people to help me carry the things I can’t manage.
But Icanmanage—new life, new rules: I can do this. Anything is possible, with the right amount of planning.
I was incredibly lucky to find the house so quickly after the divorce. The estate agent called me before it was even listed. The owners, overseas, apparently, were eager to sell. Precarious economic climate and all that.
And as soon as I saw it, it was love. It felt like coming home, like being homesick for a place I’d never seen.
I made an offer on sight and after a short, brutal bidding war, I won the keys. It’s the only remaining two-bed on the street, thus gloriously skimming under the one-million-pound bracket and making me the least financially qualified homeowner living here. If it hadn’t been for theverymixed blessing of redundancy and its consolation prize of shares and a quite frankly life-changing workpayout postdivorce, then I would still be in a soulless rental in Ben’s hometown in the Cotswolds.
But the universe conspired to simultaneously kick me when I was down and offer me a lifeline in one go, in the form of a U.S. company buying out the company I helped to build, from the ground up, for fifteen years, a prize boutique agency with a few blue-chip clients on our list, now acquired, subsumed, and relocated, almost everyone given marching orders, shares, and a golden parachute into unknown territory.
Divorce and then redundancy. I am either incredibly lucky, or not at all. I still can’t quite figure it out. I suppose it depends who’s asking.
Either way, solo, I could just about afford this house, with a very large deposit and a blessedly low monthly mortgage, given my current position.
And I am fortunate, too, I’m told, because most buyers of my age havefamilies,and families need more space than Number 18 possesses, so I will have gotten a bargain there, too. I almost had a family, almost—three timesalmost. But it’s inappropriate to tell people that in passing.
The linen blinds that block the lower half of the living room’s front windows leave only the top floors of the facing houses visible. Passersby at street level can’t see in, or be seen, but the houses opposite would have a wonderful view, if they cared to look.
I let my eyes wander greedily over their windows, trying to catch a glimpse of what lies beyond the reflecting glass: the top edge of an abstract painting, something shipped straight from a gallery, no doubt; then, in another, a showstopping, fresh floral display partly obscuring the double bed beyond, its plump and neat bed linens thick and softly inviting. High in another window: an expansive sculptural glass light fixture caught in the early-morning sun, refracting dancing beams back up onto the high ceiling. The sheer wealth manifest in this area, in its immaculate aesthetic, is oddly and profoundly reassuring. Life here, it telegraphs, is good.
I wonder whetherIam good enough to live here.
I want to be. It took only one text message to destroy my old life. A life that required eighteen years to build.
But that was the past: my laptop crashed, and when I couldn’t restart it, I went into our spare room and started using Ben’s desktop. It only took me two attempts to work out the password was hismother’s birthday. There are a million versions of my life where I didn’t see the pop-up on the desktop. It came and went so fast: a text message notification, in the corner of his screen, there and gone in a second. But I saw the name on it:Hannah.
We didn’t know a Hannah. I clicked, and I read. The invisible glue that held my marriage together dissolved.
I sat there and read their yearlong chain, from nervous beginnings to indelible connection, my stomach flipping with every increment between, hot tears and the harsh wipes of my wool sleeve scraping my cheeks raw.
The bottom fell out of my world on an ordinary Thursday morning. The divorce was messy. He was not kind.
I had always interpreted his calm, quiet demeanor as tenderness, but it turned out it was brutal calculation. I was lucky to get half of what we had. He had well-thought-through arguments for everything. I had only unpreparedness, and disbelief.
I wander upstairs, the carpets springy and luxuriant underfoot. My bedroom rolls out before me, my bed already in position and ready to be made. My heart aches. It’s only breakfast, but I’ve lived a whole day already.
I take in the dressing room that leads through to my en suite bathroom, its swirling marble, the tub and wet room. Space for all my clothes, finally, and no more toothpaste-smeared basin now that he’s gone.
Life will be good again, now I’m back in London, the city we lived in before Ben persuaded me that the countryside would help me get pregnant.
Loneliness isn’t a constant feeling, it turns out. It ebbs and flows. I’ll be on the Underground and suddenly realize that I don’t have tobeanywhere ever again, because no one is expecting me. No one is waiting for my return. And if anything happens, there will be no one at the end of the phone. No one to come get me if I am sick or hold me close if the world gets too harsh. I’ve started wondering if I slip on the stairs or choke on a chunk of steak, how long it would be before anyone came in and found me, gray and gaunt-faced. You can’t help but think of the news stories, letters piling up on doormats for weeks, months, the sound of the TV burbling on, bills paying automatically, the lights on but no one home. I try not to go there.
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