I stare at him. I can feel tears burning the backs of my eyes and I don’t know why. I can’t pretend I wasn’t expecting this eventually.
‘Julia, we’ve been dancing around each other for a decade now. We don’t even live together. I have no idea where you want this to go but we can’t stand still for ever. You can’t stand still for ever.’
‘You know why though,’ I say quietly, blinking to stop the tears coming. ‘You know why I don’t want to get married.’
‘And I always said we didn’t have to,’ he says. ‘But you will never talk about the future. You won’t move in with me and you won’t even consider the idea of a family.’ I can hear resentment in his voice as he forces himself to stop.
I shake my head. Look away from him. I want to tell him that things aren’t standing still any more. I want to tell him who my father is but the words won’t come.
‘Julia, you are one of the most incredible people I’ve ever met. And although you might not believe this, I do love you. Part of me probably always will, but I’m setting you free. Go, find out what it is you do want, because I don’t for a moment believe it’s me.’
I still don’t say anything.
‘What happened to us?’ he asks quietly.
I stand up suddenly, pulling my hands away from his.
‘Julia, what are you doing?’ he asks, staring at me.
‘I’m going home,’ I say. ‘Why make this harder than it already is?’
‘Julia, please sit down. Let’s have a meal together, for old time’s sake at least.’
I can’t. I can’t sit here opposite him pretending to have a nice evening and knowing that everything has changed. I open my mouth to say something. I should tell Alec about Edwin, about Bruce Baldwin, but I still seem incapable of forming a sentence.
‘I can’t…’ I hear myself saying.
‘Julia?’
In my hurry to get out of the pub I knock the table. Alec’s pint glass and my red wine tip over, spilling into his lap. For a moment I think I should stay and help.
‘I can’t,’ I say quietly to myself again. I turn around and walk out of the pub. Leave him covered in beer and wine. Alec is fairly well known in Cambridge; plenty of people will help him.
I’m up early the next morning, long before Pen stirs. I pull on my running gear and creep out without waking her. I lock the door behind me and start a few half-hearted stretches.
It’s another uncharacteristically warm June morning; I love mornings like this, before anyone else is about, when the sky is still hazy from the night before. I watch the cows munching the grass on Midsummer Common and pretend to myself that this is the reason that I stay here, in the smallest room in Pen’s tiny run-down house, because the Common is so beautiful, and because I can see the River Cam from my bedroom window.
This morning the sun glints off the roofs of the houseboats. It was on one of those houseboats, the one with the blue roof, on an equally balmy and unseasonably warm June day, that I first met Alec. I’d just moved into Pen’s house for the summer and I dragged her along to a party that I’d heard was happening down by the river.
It was typical of Pen, being Cambridge born and bred, that despite it being a university party she knew nearly everyone there and it was she who first introduced me to Alec. He was sitting on that blue roof, rolling a spliff, his glasses sliding down his nose, his hair in his eyes. After very informal introductions, Pen drifted off into the twilight. Alec Chisholm was in the final year of his PhD at Trinity and I fell in love with him pretty much at first sight.
He’d swept me off my feet that night. I thought I was one of the lucky ones, someone who’d met the love of their lives at university and would never have to worry about all that dating nonsense. That didn’t work out quite as planned.
Alec had been my biggest cheerleader in the beginning. I hadn’t fitted in at Cambridge at all. Everyone loved the fact I was Philadelphia Simmonds’s illegitimate daughter but I didn’t really bond with anyone until I met Alec. But being with him meant that I was accepted into circles I hadn’t been before, making my final year at Cambridge a lot easier than the first two.
Over the years though, the bond that held us together has ebbed away. We went from being inseparable to a vague weekend companionship and it happened so slowly that neither of us had really acknowledged it until last night. Alec asked what happened to us. I hadn’t answered because last night I didn’t know. But this morning I do. I hadn’t been able to be the person Alec needed me to be. I tried, but there’s only so long we can pretend to be somebody we’re not.
Different people own that houseboat these days but that blue roof will always remind me of Alec. Maybe seeing it every day once he’s gone away will give me the impetus to leave Cambridge once and for all. Right now I don’t feel much impetus to do anything at all.
Except run.
*
Six sweaty miles later and I’m back at the house. Pen is up, sitting in the living room, lost in a world of her own.
‘Penny for them,’ I say.
‘Hmmm?’ She hadn’t realised I was there.
‘Are you OK?’ I ask, realising she had been unusually quiet yesterday as well.
‘Yes, yes, I’m fine.’ She shakes herself, jumping up from the window seat. ‘Tea?’
I nod, slumping down onto the sofa.
She looks at me and I burst into tears.
Pen makes tea as I try to tell her about last night while sniffing and wiping my eyes.
‘Did you tell him about Monday?’ she asks.
‘What happened on Monday?’
‘The lawyer. Bruce Baldwin. The inflated bank balance.’ Pen spells it out, rather incredulous that I seem to have forgotten.
‘Oh. No, I didn’t really get a chance.’
‘Probably for the best,’ she says sensibly. ‘And he’s right, you know.’
‘What?’
‘Look, Julia, I don’t mean to be a bitch or anything…’ (this means she is about to be a bitch) ‘…but Blind Freddie could have seen this one coming.’
Blind Freddie often makes an appearance when Pen is in a certain frame of mind. Once he steps on to the stage there is no point arguing. He is almost always inevitably right.
‘How long have you and Alec been together?’
‘Ten years.’
‘And have either of you ever talked about the future, living together, getting married, having babies? The things normal couples do?’
‘Pen, you know why…’
‘I know why you think you can’t do any of those things and you know that I think that’s rubbish.’
‘Please, Pen, not this again. Not now.’
‘He’s not the guy for you, Julia, and you’ve wasted more than enough time on him already. The universe has given you two clear signs that it’s time to start again: Edwin Jones and Harvard University.’ She counts the supposed signs off on her fingers. ‘It’s time to move on.’
‘Move on where though?’
‘Well you can start by quitting that job you hate so much,’ she says mirroring my thoughts from the previous evening. ‘And you could maybe consider moving back