Home

“I think I’ve found a house,” he messaged me from Bath. “I took some pictures on my phone. See what you think.”

In a translation office in Paris, frazzled, I bit off a chunk of baguette (not my favourite- the local bakery only did those three days a week), put twelve or so assignments for various scarily-high-up companies and clients to one side so that the screens flickered like a deck of cards, and took a summary glance, trying to clear my mind. It was a flat; there were windows and mirrors and a dark-looking bathroom. And a washing-machine, my mum would no doubt be pleased to know. “Go for it,” I said.  

I wished I could have been there to help him house-hunt for our next year at university, but duty called, namely my compulsory year abroad to hone my language skills. As the months went on, I unconsciously began to load the Bath flat with all the things I missed and associated with home- space, light, warmth, cleanliness, familiarity. As we finally loaded up the car and set off, I wondered if it would be as I’d imagined.

When our parents were finally satisfied that we knew how to work all the appliances and had said their goodbyes, and we were left standing in the high-ceilinged living room surrounded by boxes and bags, golden autumn light streaming in through the long windows, we looked at each other, our arms full of crockery and biscuit crumbs on our lips, and grinned sheepishly with a kind of mutual “Wow. This is pretty grand for us.”

Some people said we were brave to move in together. Everyone thought it was pretty cool, though. It was a risk, it was a gamble. Not that it was too much of a change, in some ways. We’d been practically living together in second year anyway. But I suppose there’s always something you won’t find out until you truly spend the majority of your time with one person. I didn’t know, for instance, that when he is deep in thought, he stands on his desk chair and simply rotates. Similarly, he was probably unaware that someone as small as me could unconsciously take up an entire double bed by sprawling diagonally. It strikes me that the me he knows is a different version of me; one that has changed and adapted to fit this new strange situation. Am I the girl he saw, smiled at, courted, kissed, lifted over puddles? Am I the girl he couldn’t fall asleep next to that first night, so long ago now, thrilling with the sweet strangeness of it all? Yes, but not entirely. I am different now. I’m not ‘Date Me’ or ‘Meeting-his-mum Me’ or ‘Just-bumped-into-him-on-campus-late-for-grammar-so-can’t-chat Me’. I don’t know if I’m better, but I like to think I am. I can’t enter the flat without tweaking the throw over the sofa and placing the cushion just so, and do two loads of laundry on the trot between translation tasks. The sight of a certain item of clothing, a book, an ornament, anything that has accompanied me on this journey, sparks memories which contrast amusingly with the here and now- that same T-shirt smeared with fake blood and tossed over the back of a chair while two giggling masses cavort under a university duvet; the geeky socks which used to be his, his colourful wriggling toes sticking out, now grown out of and folded together neatly in my chest-of-drawers. Logistically it’s perfect- no more ferrying books and clothes to and fro between grubby student digs, invariably forgetting deodorant, a scarf, a bus pass. It’s so strange seeing all our old, familiar belongings together. In plural. Side by side. Our mugs crossing handles on the shelf. Our books a rainbow pattern of spines, cover pressed to cover. There is no more boundary, no line, no demarcation. Share and share alike. What’s mine is yours, and what’s yours is mine. We have already exchanged so many unspoken, fragile, precious things that we do the same on a material scale without thinking. After all, one day there will be no more yours and mine; there will just be ours.  

It’s strange and wonderful and at the same time utterly, completely normal. We spent so long planning and scheming and worrying (especially me; I could get a First in Worrying and Paranoia with no problem) and it’s not even going to be a permanent arrangement- yet nothing could possibly seem more natural now. In a way, I am regressing, losing that toughened exterior I had to learn to cultivate during that testing, terrifying year, and starting to think things like “What’s it going to be like without him when we go home for Christmas?” But no; we’re not the lovestruck, naive youngsters who were still mapping out uncharted territory, carefully probing the shivering depths of lust and love. We’re not the other halves of absent lovers, living in the back of each other’s minds, strewn over continents and time zones, encouraging with tear-filled eyes, talking about everything and nothing, sharing such wonderful, such traumatic experiences, kissing the pillow goodnight. We’re the student couple on the second floor who are sometimes a bit noisy, often silly, sing a lot, have managed not to set off the smoke alarm yet, fold out the kitchen table to play (miniature) table tennis, have rearranged the desks so that they’re side by side at the wide Georgian windows, don’t want a Broadband upgrade over the phone, thanks, are pretty good at putting their rubbish out on time and are polite to the guy who paints the bannisters.

When I think of ‘home’ now, two places loom in my mind- the cosy house on the main road where I was raised, with the farmyard-patterned baby bedroom, the fuzzy stairs I first learned to shuffle down, the lawn my parents and I had tea-parties on, the birdbath supported by a cherub whose curls are eroding and crumbling with time- then this majestic curved sliver of a hilltop house, which we have filled with our things and ourselves and our lives and our love. And though I cannot choose between them, one realisation is clear in my mind. One contains the bright fronds of my past, all curled away like silken kites around neat spools, the cupboard door softly but firmly closed. The other is bigger and full of a white, warm light, a deep and true and poignant something which fills me up, bears me like a bird upon a current, envelops me in safety and in splendour, and I know it is my future.