was sex. Plain, average sex.’
‘Who on top?’
Paul’s jaw tightened further.
‘Her on top.’
Delia’s stomach contracted.
‘Lights on? Off?’
‘Off. Well, she had some of those lights on a string, they were on.’
Delia felt the triumphant sizzle of being proven right.
‘Why did Aled say he talked you out of a trip to Paris?’
‘I honestly have no idea,’ Paul said, visibly relieved at being allowed his own anger at last. ‘I’d already finished with Celine by the time I spoke to him about it. If he ever answered my calls, believe me, we’d have words.’
Outside, there was the roll of a car’s engine and a beep.
‘Look, Delia …’
‘What’s Celine’s last name?’ Delia said, to cut Paul off.
‘Roscoe. Why?’
‘In case I ever need to know,’ Delia said. ‘Look after Parsnip.’
She reclaimed her luggage trolley and flew out the front door before Paul could persuade her to stay. Before she could see her dog wake up, before she could look around and think about what she was leaving behind, possibly forever.
Halfway to Hexham, her phone pinged.
I got you the Valentines card on impulse, thinking about how much my mum would’ve liked you. Please come home. Px
In that moment between sleep and wakefulness where you remember who you are, where you are and what you do, Delia spent longer than usual arranging all the pieces. It made a strange picture.
As the sun leaked through her bedroom blinds and she sensed she’d slept beyond nine, Delia felt the weightless weirdness of having no job to go to.
She imagined her old desk with the pink Post-its framing the computer screen, the photo of Parsnip in the paddling pool no longer there. Life continuing without her. Delia felt oddly bereft – it’d be strange not to, she thought, after seven years at the same office.
Then she thought of how Ann would still be wailing about her arm and Roger glowering at her, and told herself better late to leave than never. She had no wedding to be saving for, any more. Someone else could do battle in the middle ground between the Naan and Roger.
She’d had a big glass of red before she told her parents the night before, and gave them some white lies. Her boss had known of her intentions for a while, everyone was fine with it. She had savings, she reminded them. The wedding fund was a pretty healthy size, in fact.
Nevertheless, their uneasy expressions communicated: Should we be paying more attention to you? Are you unravelling before our eyes?
For all her efforts to act casual, obviously most people who moved from one end of the country to the other didn’t usually make the decision in the space of an afternoon. Or go the next day.
Delia got herself together for a mid-afternoon departure, thinking, at least hanging around workless in Newcastle is of short duration.
She knocked and pushed her head round Ralph’s door.
‘See you later. I’m off to London to stay with Emma for a bit.’
‘Cool. Go to Big Ben!’
‘Is it a favourite spot of yours?’
‘It’s where they fight the Ultranationalists in Call of Duty: Black Ops II.’
Delia laughed.
‘You could come visit me, while I’m there?’
Ralph shrugged and made non-committal noises. Ralph didn’t travel. Neither did her parents. There was an annual tussle to get them all to come into Newcastle city centre for a birthday. Last time they went to a nice restaurant, her mum had complained at the plate having ‘cuckoo spit and frogspawn’ on it.
‘Wait. Take this,’ Ralph said, rummaging around his fold-up sofa and producing a slightly crushed box of Fondant Fancies.
She gave him a hard hug and a kiss on his soft cheek and didn’t meet his eye.
Her dad was in the kitchen, having a cup of tea as her mum bustled around finding the car keys. Delia got the feeling she’d been spoken of, before she entered the room.
‘Off then, Dad! See you soon.’
He gave her a kiss on the cheek and then held out two twenty-pound notes.
‘Oh no, no no,’ Delia said, as her throat and stomach tightened. ‘I’ve got plenty of cash, Dad, honestly.’
‘You might want a sandwich when you get there,’ her dad said, and Delia realised he’d feel better if she took it.
‘Be careful. London’s full of thieves and chancers, and they’ll see you’re a nice girl.’
It was such a kindly fatherly idea that London would see anything about Delia at all, before it spat her back out again.
Delia smiled and nodded.
‘So you’re staying with Emma?’
‘Yes.’
‘She lives on her own?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re not …’ he hesitated. ‘There’s not a young man involved, is there?’
It was so unexpected a question that Delia had to stop herself snorting.
‘Of course not!’
She looked at her mum, who was fussing with her handbag and avoiding Delia’s eyes. This was what they’d come up with, in their concern. She was chasing a boy.
‘I promise you, there’s nothing to this but needing to get away for a while. I’ve barely seen Emma in the last few years, let alone had time to get to know anyone else.’
Her father nodded. As they hustled out of the hallway, her dad huffing and puffing, holding her case at waist height – fathers didn’t acknowledge the wheels on trolley cases, they had to be picked up – Delia felt sodden with guilt for worrying them like this.
Her mum drove her to the station in the old Volvo, with Delia anxiously trying to play down the whole unemployed peril with nonsensical chatter. If she talked fast enough, surely her mum wouldn’t notice.
‘This whole break Paul and I are having, it was the right moment,’
