Chapter 25
686 Words
25
Wendy was used to feeling under pressure. That was the nature of the job. But that sort of pressure was different from what she was feeling now.
It was nice to feel wanted. Of course it was. She was delighted that her hard work had been recognised and that Culverhouse wanted her to progress further in her career. She was stunned that Xav liked her as much as she liked him and wanted to move things on to the next stage. They were both things she’d wanted for a long time, but still there was something holding her back.
If she was true to herself, she knew deep down that she couldn’t have both. Being a constable or sergeant and trying to hold down a relationship was difficult enough; it would be almost impossible at a higher rank. The level of responsibility would leave her with absolutely no time of her own. She didn’t want to do that to Xav. She’d seen how many relationships went sour in this job, and she cared too much about him to knowingly enter into a relationship she knew was likely to end badly.
She’d been browsing through f*******: earlier that evening, when she’d come across one of her old school friends who was forever posting daft motivational messages and sharing statuses from some self-help guru called Sam King. She usually ignored them, but today one caught her eye.
It simply said:
Ask yourself: Are you happy right now?
There was no indication of what the reader should do based on the answer, nor was there a link to sign up for a ‘free webinar’, as was usually the case with these things. It was clearly a load of old bollocks, but it had got her thinking.
Was she happy right now? She was content; she’d go that far. She was in an easy place: living on her own, doing a job she was good at, never really pushing herself in any area of her life. That way, she couldn’t be disappointed or hurt. She’d had enough of that before.
But, if she was completely honest, she wasn’t what she’d call ‘happy’. She no longer had any family around — not now her brother was in jail hundreds of miles away in County Durham. She barely saw any of her old friends — the job had put paid to that. The only human contact she got outside of work was with Xav. Until then she’d probably have counted Cookie as her only friend, but she wasn’t entirely sure you could call a cat a real friend.
There’d been a lot of talk on TV and in the media recently about loneliness. When Wendy thought of people being lonely, she thought of old folk whose spouses had died, children had flown the nest and who had nothing to do all day but watch daytime TV and call local radio phone-ins.
Beat officers saw it all the time: old people dying alone in their homes and being found four weeks later after someone just happened to notice they hadn’t seen them in a while. Little old ladies answering the door to find a man with a knife and a rucksack. Elderly gentlemen being swindled out of their entire life savings by fraudsters. These were the lonely people. Weren’t they?
She’d never really considered the concept of loneliness, although she’d freely admit to feeling lonely occasionally. It had never been anything deep: just a sense that she would’ve quite liked a bit of company from time to time. But as she thought about it, she realised that loneliness ran much deeper than that.
There were times when she felt less lonely. And she’d quickly come to realise that was most often when Xav was around. She found him warm, interesting and funny — everything she wanted in a companion. And, after all, wasn’t feeling less lonely the whole point of having a partner?
She loved it when he was around. She slept better at night, felt safer and looked forward to evenings at home. The more she thought about it, the more she realised what she had to do.
She knew she couldn’t go on in this limbo any more. She’d made her decision. She would ask him to move in with her.
- Writer
