Fit For Purpose by Julian Parrott (novels for students .TXT) 📕

few nights. None had any of the connection that he had experienced with Nia. He was at a loss.

Rachel’s husband, Owain, came in from the evening milking and joined him at the large, well-worn oak table.

“Thanks for looking after Jack,” Tom said.

“No problem, she’s a good dog. I like having her around. She’s a good ratter.”

Tom looked down at Jack circled up in front of the Aga. This sweet, friendly, dog was still hard-wired to be a hunter-killer.

Rachel brought a fresh pot of tea for the table and joined the men.

“So, how was the trip?”

“It was good,” Tom said trying to hide his hurt.

Tom looked down at his tea. It had been good, so what happened?

Rachel misread Tom’s reticence.

“Oh my God,” Rachel said. “You shagged her, didn’t you? You shagged Nia Williams.”

Tom blushed.

Later, Rachel drove Tom and Jack back to the boat. She felt Tom’s melancholy.

“I don’t know what happened,” Tom told her. “It had been brilliant and then it just changed, she just changed.”

“Oh Tom,” Rachel said with genuine sympathy. “I’m so sorry.”

Rachel wanted Tom to open up and to embrace life again. She’d seen glimpses of the old Tom since he had returned from Canada and knew it was because of Nia, but why did it have to be her, she thought, why couldn’t it have been someone ordinary woman he met in a canal-side pub?

***

London, Same Day

Later that evening Nia curled up in her favourite chair, warmed by the study’s Adam fireplace and her cup of cocoa. She was reading a script. Her potential role was of a 1960s’ hospital matron hiding her homosexuality as other nurses and young doctors discovered the freedom the sexual revolution brought for straight people. It was a good, supporting role, but the matron was another dowdy, repressed middle-aged woman and Nia was thinking she was getting typecast. She was distracted and couldn’t concentrate. She put the script down. She thought of Tom. Tom who did not think her dowdy. Tom who had taken her breath away. Why did she feel it so necessary to send him away and to do it so cruelly?

Nia knew she had so carefully crafted a life where she was insulated, protected, and safe. She had accepted that the price to pay to avoid the emotional pain that had once ripped at her insides was to avoid the connection, the attachment to anyone who could hurt her. It also meant that she denied herself opportunities for deep emotional relationships. It was a simple, bitter calculus. And, there was that dark voice in her head, that sometimes sounded like her father, telling her, punishing her, that she didn’t deserve happiness. She liked Tom, felt that there was something, something special, but she wasn’t ready for the investment that could result in any more heartache. They had a fun, evanescent weekend but best for Tom if he wasn’t pulled any deeper into her world. Best for her, she thought.

Nia tossed and turned throughout the night in her cold house. At four a.m. she decided that she’d text Tom and let him know that she wasn’t ready for a relationship. She worked on the scene in her mind and played it out like the good actor she was. She’d simply tell Tom that she wasn’t too serious about relationships, that her career was her major motivation, and she had a lot of work coming up. Too busy for a romance. She hated it; it was all true but it was also a lie. She typed the scene into the text box but didn’t send it. Something stilled her finger as it hovered over the send key.

***

November 28th

Nia went through her day with the text still loaded on her phone. She ran on a treadmill at her gym until her lungs ached. She cardio-kickboxed until she almost vomited. She leaned into the gym shower’s hot stream of water until another patron asked if she was okay. Nia had had lots of affairs so why, she wondered, was this one so different? She knew the answer, and it scared her. She changed at the gym; Dr Martens, yellow leggings, heavy blue dress, black bomber jacket, scarf, hat and gloves. She even applied some subtle make-up. She went to meet Jane for coffee and sympathy.

The bohemian cafe was all but empty when Jane breezed in, late as usual. Nia was sitting with a coffee that had already grown cold. Jane looked her perfectly coiffured self. Her glasses were orange to match the orange and blue silk scarf that brought a flash of colour to her understated grey wool suit. Jane sat down, and Nia looked up from stirring her coffee. Jane could tell something was wrong.

“I think I need some time away,” Nia began.

Jane peered over the rim of her glasses, “Aw fuck, Nia dear, you just returned from Canada. What on earth is wrong?”

Nia just simply told her that she had broken up with a new guy, Tom. It was news to Jane that Nia considered anyone a ‘new guy’, but she wondered about Nia’s earlier interest in some background information on Tom Price.

“The soldier?” Jane asked.

Nia nodded.

“When and where did you meet him?” Jane continued.

“On the flight from Canada and he’s no longer a soldier,” Nia answered. “He’s a great guy, sweet, generous, funny.”

“English lad?”

Nia nodded.

“And good looking?” Jane asked.

“Yes, ruggedly handsome.”

“English guy diffident?”

Nia didn’t grasp the question, “What?”

“You know, cool — but not trendy cool,” Jane extrapolated. “Like E.M. Forster said, it’s not that Englishmen can’t feel, it’s just that they are afraid to. They think it’s bad form, or something.”

“No, not Tom. He was so authentic, full of feelings. In fact, he made me feel…” Nia stopped and looked down. Jane noticed Nia’s eyes welling. “He made me feel.”

“Nia,