— 2006 —
Our fights always began as I was leaving for the station. Always after it had been a lovely day, a lovely weekend. A wonderland of photographs and sex. Meeting your beautiful friends in beautiful houses. Pretending that’s all we were. Meet my assistant, you said to them. They looked at me with a raised eyebrow. We went to someone’s fiftieth birthday party. I made my way around the groups, losing sight of you in the paths around the middle, but always hearing your voice over the others, seeing you out of the corner of my eye. We would stop, late and hungry, at a restaurant, and collapse into bed. You promised we would talk about what we were, where we were. You always said that we would talk about our destination. Tomorrow.
We often went nowhere. Or just out on the Tube and back. If anyone had looked down on us, I think we would have looked like shop mannequins of sorts, plasticised and stiff, adopting the posture of a couple that we had never learned to be.
The next morning we would wake up late and screw and fall asleep, and the time had gone. Lust or love flickered around us, somewhere in the movement of oestrogen or testosterone, dopamine or norepinephrine. A drop in serotonin, a surge of oxytocin.
I had to go to work, for my half job. No time for conversation now as I began to pack my bag. Leaning on the door jamb, you told me that you loved me. What more did I want. This was your life. I was part of it. Could we just not worry about the future. Already as you spoke I could see you in your mind, getting behind your lens, disappearing as if down a circle of glass. You were beginning to see the light. To make a picture. I attempted to master the trick of closing the zip of my bag over the lumps created by my trainers. It nearly closed, leaving a small opening at one end. The fabric was pulled painfully tightly over my possessions. I made my way down in the lift, on my own. Somewhere near Highbury, it started to come undone.