We met at the GP surgery, waiting in the queue for the doctor. I had come because of my blood pressure spikes, and he was waiting for test results. We got talking. David turned out to be a calm, unhurried man.
It had been eight years since my divorce. My son had been living on his own for ages. My friends all had their own lives: some with grandchildren, some with their allotments, some with endless check-ups and hospital visits. And then, suddenly, there was a real man beside me. Not a drinker, not argumentative, didn’t raise his hand.
Back then I thought: here he is, a gift from fate.
It’s amazing how low we sometimes set the bar. He doesn’t hit me — that’s already good enough.
David worked in a warehouse. The pay wasn’t great, but, as he liked to say, it was “stable”. That word was his favourite.
He was stably tired.
He stably complained about his back.
He stably couldn’t help around the house.
And he stably expected dinner at exactly seven in the evening.
When he moved in with me, he brought two travel bags, an old laptop, and his mother on the phone.
Mum called every day.
At first I even found it sweet.
She’s just worried about her son.
Then I realised her constant:
“Have you eaten?”
“Have you caught a cold?”
“Emma, I bet you open the windows, that’s why he’s coughing…”
sounded as if I was starving her son and keeping him in a draught.
The first year seemed tolerable enough.
I cooked — he ate.
I washed — he wore.
I bought groceries — he lamented:
“Everything’s gone up so much.”
And he said it as if I personally had negotiated the new prices with the shops.
Once a month he would hand me some money.
Fifty pounds.
Sometimes seventy.
And he did it with an expression as if he’d just paid off the entire mortgage on the house.
“Here, for the household. Just don’t spend it on extras.”
And I paid the utility bills, bought the food, cleaning supplies, his back medication, socks, the discounted meat.
The worst part is that I actually felt grateful for that money.
That’s what frightens me most now.
After dinner David liked to sigh heavily.
“The rice is a bit dry. My mum’s comes out fluffy and soft at the same time.”
To this day I don’t understand how that’s possible.
There must be some special magic available only to mothers of grown sons.
Or:
“Not enough salt.”
“Then add some.”
“I’m already sitting down.”
He’d settled himself at the table.
So the whole world had to adapt.
I got up.
Brought the salt.
Then the bread.
Then the tea.
Then the remote control that was literally half a metre away from him.
“Emma, you’re closer.”
Everything was closer to me.
The kitchen.
The bathroom.
Work.
Probably even the afterlife would have been closer to me.
Gradually I started to get tired.
Not just physically, though that too.
I’d come home from work, take off my shoes and dream of just five minutes of silence.
Just five.
But from the living room would come:
“Why are you so late? I’m hungry.”
Not:
“Are you tired?”
Not:
“Let me put the kettle on.”
Just:
“I’m hungry.”
I always washed the dishes.
David had a special kind of allergy — to the sink.
As soon as he saw dirty plates, he’d suddenly remember his bad back.
“I’d help, but you know…”
Yes, I knew everything.
Which pills he took in the morning.
Which sausage he preferred.
That his mother couldn’t eat onions.
That David couldn’t lift heavy things, get up early, stay up late, clean the bathroom, or take out the bin without being reminded.
But what I liked — nobody ever asked.
One day I suggested splitting the bills fifty-fifty.
He was surprised:
“What do you mean, fifty-fifty? I earn less.”
“I understand that.”
“Then why are you putting pressure on me?”
And there it was.
I wasn’t asking for diamonds or expensive gifts.
I just suggested we split the cost of food and utilities.
And I instantly became a woman who “pressures”.
That same evening he called his mother.
He deliberately put her on speakerphone.
After hearing him out, Margaret said coldly:
“Emma, are you trying to turn my son into a lodger?”
I was standing at the stove, stirring the pasta.
I wanted so badly to say:
“Lodgers at least pay for their keep.”
But I stayed silent.
For now.
Later David got a new job.
The pay was better.
But then came the daily shirts.
White.
Blue.
Striped.
And they all needed ironing.
For the first few weeks I did it after work.
After dinner.
After cleaning.
I stood at the ironing board while the telly was on in the living room and David lay on the sofa.
“You’ve ironed the sleeve badly.”
“David, I’ve been at this for an hour.”
“Well, I’m not asking for myself. I need it for work.”
The next day Margaret turned up without warning.
She’d brought her son some homemade scones and placed them ostentatiously on the table, as if to say:
“This is what proper food looks like.”
And I was in the middle of chopping a salad.
Then came that Thursday.
The hardest one yet.
I got home nearly nine in the evening.
In my bag were some apples and yoghurt — for me.
I opened the door and saw Margaret in my kitchen.
Wearing my dressing gown.
The same soft blue one with the pocket where I always kept my reading glasses.
Next to it lay five crumpled shirts and the iron.
David came out of the living room.
“We need to discuss something.”
I was slowly taking off my boots.
Because if I did it too fast, one of them might well have ended up hitting someone in the head.
But I’m a well-brought-up woman.
Sometimes that seriously gets in the way of living.
“I need to be in the office by eight tomorrow,” David announced. “I don’t have time to iron.”
“Then iron now.”
“I’m tired.”
I looked at the sofa.
At the plate with crumbs.
At his mother in my dressing gown.
At the iron.
And then he said, perfectly calmly:
“If you can’t manage in the evening, get up at five in the morning and iron my shirts. That’s a woman’s duty.”
And suddenly I saw the whole picture from the outside.
A fifty-four-year-old woman standing in her own flat after a long day at work.
In front of her, a man who lives here almost for free and eats at her expense.
And next to him, his mother, wearing her dressing gown, explaining what a real woman should be.
I walked silently into the bedroom.
I took out those same two bags he’d arrived with four years ago.
I put them in the hallway.
And I said calmly:
“Pack your things.”
He was sure I’d cry.
That I’d be scared.
To be honest, I thought so too.
Four years — a person grows into your life.
Even if he’s like a weed, it still hurts to pull him out.
But I stood silent.
Afterwards it wasn’t easy.
My hand automatically reached for a second plate.
In the shop I’d automatically pick up his favourite cheese, then put it back on the shelf.
The hardest part wasn’t missing him — it was stopping myself from blaming me.
Who would want me with my jars of preserves on the balcony, my habit of watching boxsets under a blanket, and my age over fifty?
But one day I came home, switched on the light, and suddenly realised:
I need myself.
Cliché?
Probably.
But that’s when it hit me.
Not as a housekeeper.
Not as a servant.
Not as an accessory to a man.
But just as Emma.
A month later David came back.
With three slightly wilted roses.
They probably looked as tired as we both were.
I opened the door but didn’t take off the chain.
“Emma, I’m not good without you.”
“I don’t want to go back,” I said quietly.
“At all?”
“At all.”
He stood on the landing a little longer.
Then he walked away in silence.
