Fish and chips were not going to cut it tonight. I’d practically forced down every bite, opening my mouth with my fingers and prizing it in. I was running out of options for how to delay going home. I thought I would remember Nottingham well, but during my absence, an apocalypse must have happened and I was returning just as they were rebuilding it, brick by brick, replacing homely pubs with major restaurant chains and cut price clothing stores.

• Delaying tactic number 1: Stop off for food
• Delaying tactic number 2: Join a gym so that it can be delaying tactic number 3
• Delaying tactic number 4: Read a case conference report that isn’t due until the end of the week
• Delaying tactic number 5: Think of Abi whilst reading the case conference report
• Delaying tactic number 6: See above but add remember the good times
• Delaying tactic number 7: Pine for Abi.
• Delaying tactic number 8: Write this list of delaying tactics

Returning home at 7 p.m. was a piss-take when I had been out all day. I had told her that I would only be gone for a couple of hours. Fish and chips didn’t take four hours to eat.

I’d avoided my phone all night and now a bite from text messages threatened to rest on my last nerve.

Clara: Where are you?

Clara: I’ve cooked. Come home.

Clara: What the fuck, Jamie? I come all this way for you and you work all weekend.

The key in the lock turned in slow motion. I could smell the bad atmosphere, or was it the lasagne? Fuck! She had cooked and I was contemplating never eating again as fish and chips weighed me down like my stomach was attempting to digest a mix of concrete and wallpaper paste.

I walked with tension running through the balls of my feet but stopped to survey the scene. Two places set at the table. A bottle of wine with two glasses. A salad bowl and a dozen red roses judging me over the lip of a vase.

‘Where have you been?’ she asked, her arms crossed as she appeared in the doorway.

‘I had a few things to finish before I could leave, sorry.’

‘Have you heard of mobile phones? I thought you had one,’ she said, irritation marking her tone and joining her tapping foot. She was fidgeting with the hem of her dress. A dress. Jesus. I had barely seen her out of a dressing gown since she arrived.

‘I was on my way when I saw your messages, so I just kept going, sorry.’

She moved across to the table and started clearing it, clanging the dishes back in the cupboard and throwing cutlery in the sink, attacking the task with everything she had to give. ‘Well, it doesn’t matter anyway because the meal is ruined. I threw it in the bin twenty minutes ago.’

‘I’ve already eaten.’

Idiot.

‘Oh, that’s just great,’ she said, her posture stiffening as she banged the plate down, smashing it into pieces before walking away dismissively.

‘Clara, please, can we just talk?’ I pleaded as she stalked into the bedroom. I followed and found her unzipping her dress, letting it pool around her feet on the floor. I was immediately met with the sight of her wearing a black lace bra and matching hold ups. Nothing else. Shit.

She watched my face fall.

‘Had to do something to get your attention,’ she said, her voice thickening as she consciously folded her arms across her chest.

‘What is this?’ I asked.

‘I was trying to make an effort. I can’t remember the last time you touched me.’

‘I can. It was before—’

‘Don’t.’ She put up her hand to stop me.

‘We have to talk about it, Clara.’

‘I can’t. Please, just stop.’

‘We can’t even talk to each other,’ I said, holding out my hands in frustration before eventually settling them on my hips.

‘I’m going to have a bath.’

I watched her walk away. I closed my eyes as she slammed the bathroom door.

She was in there for an hour and twenty minutes. I counted every second alongside the ticking clock in the kitchen. When I heard the door unlock and her footsteps across the floor, I made her a cup of tea and took it through to the bedroom.

‘Thanks,’ she said as she took it from me, looking embarrassed and regretful. ‘I’m sorry I acted like a bitch. I had tonight planned out, so when you didn’t come home, I was… disappointed.’

‘What did you have planned?’ I asked with a knotted ache in my stomach.

‘I thought we could talk. There was something I wanted to ask, suggest maybe.’ She was looking at me through the mirror.

‘Go on.’

‘I thought maybe we could try again.’

‘No,’ I replied, far too fiercely and fast.

‘No? Why?’

Didn’t she know? How could she even be thinking about this?

‘For fuck’s sake, Clara. We need to sort ourselves out.’

‘I’m ready. I need this. I need to feel something again,’ she said as she started to hide her tears behind the edge of her dressing gown.

‘We can’t just start again. That’s not how it works.’ I crouched beside her and rubbed my thumb across her cheek. She flinched and backed away in one sudden movement. ‘Look, you can’t even stand for me to touch you.’ I stood and shook my head as she offered me a pained stare.

This time, it was my turn to walk away.

I slumped onto the new sofa that had been in place for a few weeks. It still didn’t feel like mine, and I’m sure she felt exactly the same. It was a cold light blue and the almost hard tweed feel did nothing to make you relax into it. I ordered it off the internet, not giving a shit that it wouldn’t add anything homely to our home.

Our home. Fuck.

I thought of my conversation with Abi and where we’d left it today. ‘Someone Like You.’ I knew that song. I had the album downloaded but still opened my laptop and searched for the lyrics. It felt like my veins were being strummed like guitar strings as I read them. The vibration of nerves through my body made me feel weak. My breathing slowed, my heart pounded like it had moved to the front of my head. The lyrics described our situation perfectly. It described everything she didn’t know, couldn’t possibly have known.

I opened the cupboard where I’d thrown in some of my belongings in a crap attempt to empty boxes and get them out of the way when I moved in. Inside were my headphones, which I placed over my head as I tapped the music app on the screen of my phone. I lifted my legs and lay across the sofa feeling like a stranger in my own home. The music pounded into my chest like a punch, the words, the sweeping melody, the emotional delivery and heartache in the voice all slowly tearing me apart. I set it to repeat and wrapped my arms around myself, turning my face into the back of the sofa, and there I stayed, drifting in and out of sleep as I listened to Adele on a loop until the morning.