A Wedding at the Comfort Food Cafe

The damage to me was a bit more serious. I sat there in our flat, and saw it for what it was – nothing more than a squat. The cheap art posters tacked to the wall that I’d once thought were bohemian and charming now looked yellow and faded. The unmade bed we’d shared looked like a rat’s nest. The empty bottles from Seb’s last party with his pals were littering the room, making the whole place smell like tequila.

Everything I cared about fitted into my backpack – the same backpack I’d left England with all those years earlier. Over a decade of travelling and living; so many different countries, so many different friends and jobs and even a marriage – and I could still cram everything I needed into a backpack.

I left on the next flight to London, and that was the beginning of what I like to think of as my new life. I barely spoke on that flight, and I desperately wanted to buy every single one of those little bottles of booze the ladies with the trolleys wheel around. But I didn’t, which is maybe what saved me – I wasn’t an alcoholic in the physical sense, but I was addicted to using it as a crutch. If I’d turned to it then, I might never have stopped.

‘And what happened when you got back to the UK?’ Finn asks, his voice a whisper, barely heard over the clamour of all these memories.

‘I bummed around for a bit. Stayed on sofas, worked crappy jobs. Eventually got my shit together enough to decide to go back to college.’

‘And you never saw him again, after that?’

‘No,’ I say firmly. ‘Although I briefly spoke to his dad, a few months later, to make sure he was alive and all right. His dad was quite English about it all, didn’t scream or shout or anything – I suspect he knew the truth, and didn’t want to push me into telling him more than he wanted to know.

‘Once I was studying, things changed – life calmed down. I had something to do, and a reason for doing it, and I started to live again. I knew I’d got enough balance to go on a night out, to go and see a band, to have a few glasses of wine – I started to trust myself again, I suppose.’

‘What about now? Do you trust yourself now?’

‘Up to a point,’ I say, looking up to meet his eyes. ‘If we’re doing this whole honesty thing, I trust myself up to a point. I’m happy here. I’m happy with you. I’m happy I can have a drink and a laugh and for it to enhance my life rather than rule it. But … well, I’m probably never going to be entirely normal, Finn.’

He leans down to kiss me softly, and replies: ‘I think we’ve had this conversation before, Miss Moneypenny. I never signed on for normal. I signed on for you, in all your crazy glory.’

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