I came home from work starving, so get something ready. The bloke I’d been seeing for six months said one thing, and after that I asked him to leave.
I bought the tickets a week in advance. Two seats in the seventh row, for the evening showing, the film James and I had talked about back in September. I thought then: I’ll surprise him, not say a word beforehand, let him turn up—and I’ll have it all sorted.
We met in March. I signed up on the site out of boredom, honestly, didn’t believe in anything, just felt lonely in the evenings, especially on Fridays when I could hear from the window the neighbours heading out with their families, and I had nothing but the kettle and the telly. James messaged first. A simple message, no vulgarity, asked what music I listened to. Then it turned out we both had sons who went to the same school, just in different years, and that somehow brought us close fast, like we’d known each other ages.
He knew how to joke. Kindly, not nasty, and the jokes were the sort that made me laugh for real, not out of politeness. We took each other to exhibitions, went to a café near the station where they serve bad coffee but decent apple crumble. Once we ran for the bus in the rain, and he took off his jacket and threw it over my shoulders, walking the whole way soaked, saying he wasn’t cold even though his teeth were chattering.
All in all, he was a decent bloke. Or so I thought.
That evening he arrived at eight, as we’d agreed—though ‘agreed’ just meant ‘come round in the evening’, no details, I’d deliberately said nothing about the cinema. I wanted him to be surprised. I opened the door wearing a dress, hair I’d spent an hour styling, lipstick a shade darker than usual. I saw the way he looked at me, and in his eyes there wasn’t admiration but something like puzzlement, as if I’d put on the wrong thing.
‘You going somewhere?’ he asked, without stepping past the threshold.
‘We’re going,’ I said, and pulled the tickets from my handbag, waving them like a magician. ‘Surprise. For seven forty, but we can still make it if…’
He didn’t let me finish. He set down a carrier bag he was holding—inside, I saw later, was meat, frozen, vacuum-packed, about three pounds—and said he’d actually planned on spending the evening at home.
‘I bought meat,’ he said, as if that explained everything. ‘Thought we’d sit down, you cook us something, I’ll put the telly on, there’s football tonight.’
I stood there with the tickets in my hand and felt the smile still on my face, but it was crooked now, uncertain. I said he could watch football tomorrow, that the tickets were non-refundable, that I’d prepared so much…
‘Well, see,’ he grinned, not meanly but wearily, like an adult explaining the obvious to a child, ‘you prepared, instead of just… meeting me properly. You can dress up at home too. I came home from work starving, I wanted a home-cooked meal.’
That was the first time that evening I felt something go cold inside. Not from hurt yet, but from surprise—as if he’d suddenly started speaking a different language.
‘James,’ I said, ‘we never agreed I’d cook. I just wanted to go to the cinema, together, like we used to.’
‘Used to is used to,’ he answered, walking past me into the kitchen, like he owned the place, like he’d been here a hundred times just like this, with a bag of meat in his hands. ‘But now we’re in a serious relationship, nearly six months. You’re a mature woman, Emily, not twenty-five running around clubs. At your age you need to create a home, run a household, feed your man, iron his shirt. Not get all dolled up and drag him to the pictures.’
I felt as if I were standing under a cold shower and couldn’t figure out where the water was coming from.
‘What do you mean “at my age”?’ I asked quietly.
‘Exactly what I said.’ He was already opening the packaging, looking for a knife in my drawer like he was at home. ‘A bloke needs a home, not a constant party. Cooking, cleaning, care. Cinema’s for the young, who’ve got nothing better to worry about.’
I looked at him and suddenly remembered another kitchen, another flat, more than twenty years ago. There was a man standing there too—my first husband, Steve—and he’d said similar things, just in softer tones at first, then harsher over the years. Back then I listened. I cooked, I ironed, I gave up on myself just to keep a home, keep the peace, keep him from getting angry. My son grew up, I worked, I carried everything, and Steve would come home and say that a woman must do this or that. I spent twenty years being obliged. Then he left for another woman, younger, said I’d ‘faded too much’, and I was left alone in an empty flat with a habit of ironing shirts nobody wore anymore.
And now, watching James with that meat in his hands, I realised—here it was again. Only this time I wasn’t young, I already had the experience of how it ends. I didn’t want to be a cook for a one-way ticket to loneliness a second time.
‘Put the knife down,’ I said.
He turned, surprised by my tone.
‘I’m not cooking you dinner,’ I said. ‘Not tonight, and probably not ever. I’m not your housekeeper, James. I didn’t sign up for that.’
‘What, you’re offended?’ He seemed genuinely thrown, setting the meat on the counter. ‘I didn’t say anything wrong, I’m just telling it how it is, straight up…’
‘Please leave,’ I said.
He didn’t get at first that I meant it. Then he did. His face changed, hardened into that same expression I’d seen once before in another man.
‘You’re a fool,’ he said, pulling on his jacket with sharp movements. ‘Think you’re still young? Cinema, dressing up. You’ll end up alone in your old age, you’ll see. Who’d want you, all proud like that.’
He took his meat—even took that, I remember him shoving the bag back into his rucksack—and left, slamming the door so hard the vase on the shelf in the hall rattled.
I stood for a few more minutes in the hallway, in my blue dress, with the tickets in my hand that were now only good for throwing away. Then I took off my shoes, wiped off the lipstick with a tissue, and lay down on the sofa without undressing. I didn’t feel like crying. There was a strange calm, like after you finally pull out a splinter—a sharp sting, then relief.
The next day, around lunchtime, the doorbell rang. I already knew who it was before I opened it—I could hear someone shifting from foot to foot outside.
James stood there with flowers, not very expensive, obviously bought hastily at the tube station, and with such a guilty expression that in another life I’d probably have forgiven him straight away.
‘Emily, I got carried away,’ he began. ‘Didn’t think about how it sounded. You’re a good woman, I was just tired yesterday, work and everything… Forgive me, yeah?’
I looked at him and thought—here’s a man I’d considered decent for nearly six months. Maybe he is decent, in his own way. Maybe his mother brought him up like that, or his first wife trained him, or it was just the times he grew up in, believing that a woman over forty is about saucepans, not about cinema. Maybe he didn’t even mean harm.
But it wasn’t about whether he meant harm or not.
‘James,’ I said calmly, ‘it’s not about apologies. It’s about what you said yesterday being what you really think. And I’ve already spent twenty years living with a man who thought the same. I don’t want a second round.’
‘But I came, I’m saying sorry…’
‘I hear you.’ I didn’t step back, didn’t invite him in. ‘But I’m not going back to what happened yesterday. I don’t want to prove again that I have to cook and iron to be loved. Sorry, but no.’
He stood there a moment longer, not quite understanding what had happened—to him it was just a row over dinner, fixable with flowers. To me it was my whole past, my whole life I didn’t want to repeat.
He didn’t leave the flowers—took them with him when he went, as if they were no use to anyone now. I closed the door and went to the kitchen to brew some tea. Outside it was an ordinary day, grey, unremarkable, except that for the first time in a long while I felt I wasn’t losing something but finally finding something—even if it was just myself, the one who no longer agreed to be convenient at someone else’s expense.
