‘I miss the North,’ she thought as she was cleaning the espresso machine the pub had bought during its refit. She saw her face, frowning with exertion as she wiped the milk frother, distorted in the metal of the appliance which with its dials and handles reminded her of a rudimentary time machine. The pubs she had grown up in hadn’t had espresso machines. The pubs that she’d grown up in, where she’s met Tony, 16 years ago. They were jukebox-places, places you were loud in to show you were pissed off with the world, not loud because everybody else was. The pubs that she’d grown up in, where she’d got her first job, crisps-kicked-across-the-floor-places. She smiled at the cycles of life; she was back behind the bar.
She was singing to herself as she cleaned, she had emptied the fridges of their bottles and was wiping the shelves. She was listening to the Richard Hawley album Lowedges. It was a present from one her colleagues; Mark.
“He’s one of yours isn’t he?” He’d said referring to the fact Richard Hawley like her was from Sheffield. His slight surliness not hiding that he clearly had a thing for her, he’d bought her the CD after all, he didn’t own it himself; he’d just downloaded onto his IPod. He’d tried to explain the process to her, to convince her she should buy an MP3 player.
“I’m 34 and a northerner Mark, it doesn’t mean I’m thick. Don’t patronise me. I’ve got other things to spend my money on, not least; rent.’
She’d let him seduce her though. She liked him and she was lonely. She was living in ‘shared accommodation’ for the first time in her life, the Victorian properties with sloping floors and skewiff window ledges. She lived with other ‘young professionals’ a term that’d made her bark with laughter when she’d heard it. She didn’t see much of her flatmates and they didn’t seem to spend much time with each other. She was close to one girl, Lucille, a postgraduate student from South America who was close to her age.
“Why did you move to London?”
She’d whistled softly, thinking of her reply.
“That’s a big question; I guess I’ve always wanted to see it. To live somewhere different and well to get away from my life, it was bringing me down in Sheffield.”
She’d confided in Lucille up to a point, but a complete explanation would mean getting her own head around it and she found that difficult to think about. Where would she start, meeting Tony in the pub was where her life started. Or her life as it was anyway. He chatted her up, ‘coppers have to be good at talking,’ he’d said. They’d dated for a year then married. She’d got pregnant, given birth to Hayley, raised her, something had gone wrong. They’d separated and she’d moved / got kicked out: A life in a paragraph.
But she missed the North. Missed the friendliness of the café she’d go to. The music made her think of parks. Of taking Hayley to the park when she was little, the winter air heavy in the park as she pushed Hayley on the swings. Do I miss the North, or do I just miss my youth she wondered. What youth? Or what twenties? She wanted the amorphousness of the twenties of her colleagues. Twenties of nothing save gathering experiences; as Mark had it:
‘I love your stretch marks; lines of experience and life.’
‘Shut up you soft git, stop being so pretentious,’
Was how she replied. But she liked being with him, immersed in his life. He was a DJ as were half the people his age she’d met in London. There was nine years between them. All of it showing in her mind.
She’d tried to find office work in London. She’d gone to a temping agency, but had walked out. She didn’t like the women there. The pink cowboy hats in their in-trays, ready for the forced abandonment of a Friday night. She was bored of that. She seen a sign in the window of her local and applied there. And here she was.
The CD had repeated, track three was playing…“All my love’s too late…” She’d scream this as she was lying on her bed, damp after a shower, drying in the air. “All my love’s too late…” She’d bawl this thinking about Hayley her daughter who had chosen to stay with her father.
Hayley had shown no inclination to visit her. Not even to go shopping. ‘I can go to Meadowhall mum.’ But every text message lifted her, to know Hayley was thinking of her.
She didn’t know what she was going to do. She knew she had to make a decision sooner or late, point her life in some direction and head that way but which way, she was giving herself time to do nothing.
She turned to greet the man who’d entered, a newspaper under his arm, she could tell he’d knocked off early, as he was smiling gently at having the pub to himself, he’d a start on the city that evening.
“Yes luv?”
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