Emily Barr - The Sleeper

‘What time did you get up?’ he asked, moving blearily towards the coffee machine.

‘I don’t know.’ I remember making an effort to focus on him, to smile. ‘Five-ish I think. I’ve done loads. I’m nearly finished.’

‘Oh, Lara.’

I turned to look at him. He had his back to me as he poured himself a cup of lukewarm coffee. I loved working early in the mornings. He never understood that. I told him and told him but he always looked at me knowingly, and assumed I was putting on a brave face.

‘What?’ I made an effort and pushed my work away. He came and sat at the table with me. I picked up my coffee, even though it was cold, and cradled it for a vestige of comfort.

‘Lara,’ he said again. His face was crumpled with sleep. ‘This is no good. You know? If we’re going to start a family, if it’s going to happen for us, and it is. It’s only been a few months. We need to lead less stressful lives. We need to get out of London. There’s a job advertised that I could go for.’

I sighed. Sam had always had a tendency to come up with grand schemes, and this, as far as I could see, was another.

‘What’s the job?’ I was expecting it to be something dull, in Hampshire or Surrey.

He smiled.

‘It’s at a luxury yacht builders, in Falmouth. I’ve been reading up on Falmouth. It would be a great place to live. Absolutely perfect for a family.’

I laughed at that. ‘Right. We’ll go and live in Falmouth. Just like that. Where is Falmouth, anyway? Devon? What will I do?’

He got up and came to stand behind my chair. He leaned down and encircled me with his arms.

‘Cornwall,’ he said, into my hair. ‘And you, my darling, will have a baby.’

‘Sure,’ I said lightly. ‘You get the job, then. And we’ll give it a go.’

I did not expect for one second that it would actually happen, as smoothly as if it had been preordained, or I would have been less flippant. Sam was offered the job, and we moved here. The shipbuilders wanted him to start as soon as possible, and within no time we sold our house (luckily for us, at the top of the market, though at the time it seemed as though prices were going to stay on the upward trajectory for ever), left our London jobs and drove west. When we reached the west, we drove west some more, and after that, we carried on driving west. Eventually, twenty or so miles short of the furthest possible westerly point, we parked outside our new house and started our new life.

I like life in Cornwall, in lots of ways. I love Falmouth. If I had a family and a job to keep my brain working, I could be content here. There are beaches and fields, woods and little shops. You can catch a train to bigger places, easily. I often quite like the feeling of being remote from most of the rest of the country. It is not Falmouth that’s remote, it’s everything else.

However, being here, just me and Sam, without a baby, without any close friends, without a job, is no good at all. Now we are closer to forty than we are to thirty, and I am not living like this indefinitely. Falmouth is fine. I am fine. Sam and I, wherever we were, would not, any longer, be fine.

He is upstairs, because our house is upside down, built on the side of a hill. I find him in the kitchen, washing up Prosecco glasses and cake plates.

‘Hey,’ he says. ‘There you are.’

‘We didn’t finish that bottle.’ I take it out of the fridge and hold it up to the light. ‘Let’s do it. Go on.’

His laugh is slightly nervous. ‘It’s not even five o’clock, Lara, and you’ve already had plenty. Seriously?’

‘Yes. Come on. I’ll dry those glasses. Here you go.’

‘What’s the matter?’

I was going to sit him down and tell him carefully, but in the event I just blurt it out.

‘Leon phoned earlier,’ I tell him. ‘You know that. While Iris was here. Sam, I’ve been offered a job. In London, working with Sally’s company. Doing exactly what I used to do. They’ve asked me to come on board for a development project in Southwark. Changing old warehouses into flats, retail, all the stuff I used to do. I’ll be the development manager, and do my old job, essentially. All they’ve done is buy the site. The rest of it – team, designs, all the political stuff with making it happen – will be mine. Everything I’m good at. It’ll be a six-month contract. Short-term.’

I stop, look at him, and wait.

‘No way.’

I knew it. ‘Think about it, Sam. The money is going to be amazing. Six months. It’s not for ever.’

‘But it’s in London. I can’t leave my job. So we can’t go and live in London for half a year, can we?’

I gulp down a bubbly mouthful: it tastes thin and metallic.

‘You can’t leave your job,’ I agree, sounding like the most reasonable woman in the world. ‘But I can commute. I’ll stay at Olivia’s or with my parents. There’s a train. A night train. I could catch it up there on a Sunday night and come home on a Friday night. We’ll have a brilliant time at the weekends.’

‘No.’ His voice is flat. ‘Lara, that’s just not an option. We moved out of London to get away from all that. We’re going to adopt. You’re not going back to the rat race. Why on earth do they want you to turn your life upside down to do that, rather than use one of the thousands of qualified people in London who could do the job? You say that it’s everything you’re good at, but actually that stuff is what you used to be good at. We’ve moved on from those days, thank God.’

It is important, I feel, that he does not realise how this makes me feel.

‘I want to do it.’ I keep my voice flat calm. ‘I miss using my brain, Sam. I failed at having a baby. This is something I know I can do. I am still good at my job. I can’t get work down here. I want to work. And, the main thing is this: we can come out of that half-year with our debts paid off.’

I am going to take that job, even if I have to leave him. I am hot with guilt at this secret. I almost hope he says no. Then I will get to leave.

‘Oh, Lara.’ When he says that, my victory is tangible.

I knock my drink back. He does the same. He looks at me with mournful eyes. I have disappointed him, again. Outside, the sun glints off the water. Two pigeons land on the balcony railing. The crane swings around, carrying a huge square container bearing who knows what off the deck of a massive ship that has come from who knows where.

In the early hours of the morning, as the world outside is just starting to stir, I snap wide awake. Sam is turned towards me, snoring gently, his face pink and creased from the pillow.

I am going to London. My life will be busy. I will be on the move constantly. It will not, in any sense, be the easy option. I will have to work like I used to work, and after my years outside the workforce I’ll need to prove myself. Going to London will mean throwing myself into being a professional woman again; it will mean looking immaculate, being poised and confident, working with plans and with people. My job will be to make things happen. All of this feels, from this distance, like diving into a refreshing pool on a hot day.

The birds outside are making such a racket that I cannot believe that he, and everyone else, is sleeping through it. The sun creeps around the edge of the blind and lights the room perfectly.

Our bedroom is small. You have to squeeze past the bed to get to the cupboard. We were going to extend the whole of the downstairs of this topsy-turvy house, when we had a family. This room would have become bigger, and there would have been paraphernalia. I know exactly what it would have involved, because we used to talk about it all the time. We read books and planned what was going to go where. There would have been a Moses basket, a changing table. The changing table would have had a shelf under it, and on the shelf would have been a little pile of folded Babygros and tiny cardigans.