The Deep End

Chapter 1: The Uncoupling

The thing about an amicable divorce is that nobody brings you casseroles.

Colin Yardley had expected—well, he wasn't sure what he'd expected. Weeping, maybe. Thrown crockery. A dramatic scene in the rain, the kind you see in films where someone's mascara runs beautifully and a taxi appears at exactly the right moment. Instead, he and Penny had sat across from each other at the kitchen table on a Tuesday evening, shared a bottle of reasonably good Merlot, and agreed that twelve years was a solid run but that neither of them had been truly happy since roughly 2019.

"I think we should get divorced," Penny had said, in the same tone she might use to suggest they finally repaint the downstairs bathroom.

"Right," Colin had replied. "Yes. I think you're probably right."

And that had been that.

Now, six weeks after the papers were finalized, Colin stood in the doorway of his new flat—a two-bedroom conversion above a dry cleaner's on Barton Street—holding a cardboard box labeled KITCHEN MISC in his own meticulous handwriting. The flat smelled of carpet cleaner and someone else's life. The previous tenant had left behind a calendar from 2021 still pinned to the kitchen wall, open to March, as if they too had given up somewhere around then.

"It's got character," said Stuart Hayward, Colin's best friend since university, who was leaning against the kitchen counter with his arms folded and the expression of a man trying very hard to be supportive.

"It's got damp," Colin said.

"Same thing, really."

Colin set the box down on the counter and looked around. The kitchen was narrow enough that he could touch both walls if he stretched his arms out, which he'd tested immediately upon moving in because he was the kind of man who tested things like that. The living room had a window that overlooked the car park of a Tesco Express. The bedroom had a built-in wardrobe with a door that didn't close properly, which meant it swung open at three in the morning with a creak that sounded, in the dark, exactly like a home intruder with poor joints.

It was, by any reasonable measure, a downgrade from the four-bedroom semi in Cheswick where he'd spent the last decade. But it was his. Entirely, uncomplicatedly his.

"You'll settle in," Stuart said. "Give it a week."

"I've been here nine days."

"Give it two weeks."

Stuart was a good friend in the way that a golden retriever is a good pet—loyal, enthusiastic, and completely incapable of reading the room. He'd been married to his wife Diane since they were both twenty-three, which meant he had absolutely no useful perspective on what Colin was going through but was determined to provide perspective anyway.

"The thing is," Stuart continued, pulling a beer from Colin's fridge without asking, "divorce is actually a fresh start. Think of it like—like a blank spreadsheet."

"Please don't use spreadsheet metaphors to comfort me. I'm an accountant, not a robot."

"I'm just saying. New flat, new chapter. You could do anything. Take up pottery. Learn to sail. Get one of those meal kit subscriptions."

"I don't want to learn to sail, Stuart."

"You might. You don't know. That's the beauty of it."

Colin opened the cardboard box and began unpacking its contents: a cheese grater, a whisk he'd never used, three mugs with increasingly passive-aggressive slogans that Penny had given him over successive Christmases ("I'm Not Arguing, I'm Explaining Why I'm Right," "World's Most Adequate Husband," and simply, "No"), and a garlic press that had been the subject of their most heated argument in twelve years of marriage.

The garlic press fight of 2022. Penny maintained it was unnecessary when you could just use the flat of a knife. Colin maintained that a garlic press existed for a reason and that reason was pressing garlic. They'd gone to bed without speaking. It had felt, at the time, like the worst night of his life. Now, holding the press in his hand in this damp kitchen above a dry cleaner's, it struck him as the kind of stupid, comfortable argument that only people who truly shared a life could have. He missed it. Not the press—the arguing.

He put the garlic press in a drawer and closed it firmly.

"Have you talked to Rosie today?" Stuart asked.

Rosie. His daughter. Fifteen years old, sharp as a tack, and possessed of the particular brand of withering teenage judgment that could make a grown man question every decision he'd ever made, starting with his haircut.

"She's coming this weekend," Colin said. "I've set up the spare room. Bought new bedding. Purple, because she likes purple."

"She liked purple when she was twelve."

"What does she like now?"

"I have no idea. I don't have children. But I'm fairly certain fifteen-year-olds have moved on from purple."

Colin made a mental note to check with Penny about the bedding situation. Then he made a mental note to stop making mental notes about things he could just text his ex-wife about, because that was one of the behaviors their couples therapist had identified as "avoidant communication patterns." Then he made a mental note to stop thinking about their couples therapist.

"The point is," Stuart said, and Colin braced himself because Stuart's points were never actually points so much as gently meandering observations, "you're thirty-eight. You're in decent shape. You've got all your hair, which at our age is basically a superpower. You're going to be fine."

"I know I'm going to be fine."

"So why do you look like someone's cancelled Christmas?"

"Because I'm standing in a kitchen the size of a phone box, unpacking a garlic press that represents the emotional zenith of my failed marriage, Stuart. Give me a minute."

Stuart raised his beer in acknowledgment. "Fair enough."

They stood in silence for a moment, which was as close to emotional depth as their friendship generally got.

"Do you want to order a curry?" Stuart asked.

"Yes," Colin said. "I very much want to order a curry."

---

The curry arrived in forty minutes, which was eleven minutes longer than the app had promised, and Colin noted the discrepancy because he was the kind of person who noticed discrepancies. They ate it on the sofa—a secondhand thing Colin had bought from a woman on the internet who'd described it as "gently loved," which turned out to mean "aggressively sat upon"—and watched a nature documentary about octopuses.

"They can change color," Colin said, genuinely moved. "And shape. They can change their actual shape, Stuart."

"It's a squid, mate."

"It's an octopus. Eight arms. Squids have ten."

"I don't think that's—"

"It is. I looked it up last week."

Stuart gave him a long look. "You looked up the difference between octopuses and squids."

"I was curious."

"This is why you're divorced."

"That's not why I'm divorced."

"I'm not saying it's the only reason."

Colin threw a piece of naan bread at him, which missed and landed on the carpet. He picked it up, examined it, decided the carpet was too suspect to invoke the five-second rule, and put it on his plate anyway because wasting food felt wrong on a moral level.

The documentary moved on to the mating habits of the octopus, which involved the male detaching one of his arms and handing it to the female, who would then use it to fertilize her eggs at her leisure.

"See," Stuart said, pointing at the screen with a fork. "Even octopuses are out there dating. What's your excuse?"

"My excuse is that I haven't been single since I was twenty-six. I don't know how to date anymore. I don't even know what dating is anymore. Is it still dinner and a film? Or is it all apps now? Do people still buy flowers? Am I supposed to have opinions about craft beer?"

"Everyone has opinions about craft beer."

"I don't. I drink lager. The same lager I've been drinking since university. Am I supposed to suddenly care about hops?"

Stuart leaned back and adopted what he clearly thought was a wise expression. "Here's my advice. Just be yourself."

"That's the most useless advice in the history of advice."

"It worked for me."

"You met Diane at a house party when you were both nineteen and drunk on cheap vodka. You didn't have to be yourself because neither of you was conscious enough to be anyone."

"And yet here we are, fifteen years later. Happy as anything."

Colin looked at his friend—genuinely happy, genuinely clueless—and felt a complicated surge of affection and irritation that he suspected was the foundation of most male friendships.

"I'm not ready to date," Colin said.

"Nobody's saying you have to date right now."

"Good."

"But you should probably start thinking about it."

"Stuart."

"I'm just saying. The octopus managed it, and he had to give up an arm."

Colin looked at the television, where the male octopus was indeed handing over his reproductive arm with what could only be described as resigned dignity.

"Fine," Colin said. "I'll think about it."

He did not, at that point, think about it. He finished his curry, watched the octopus documentary through to its conclusion (the female died after her eggs hatched, which made him cry, which he blamed on the vindaloo), and went to bed in his new bedroom with its creaky wardrobe door and its view of absolutely nothing.

He lay in the dark and listened to the sounds of his new life: the hum of the dry cleaner's extraction fan below, the distant thump of bass from a pub three streets over, the creak of the wardrobe door swinging open like a ghost with boundary issues.

He was thirty-eight. He was divorced. He was alone in a flat that smelled of other people's laundry.

He was, he supposed, free.

The wardrobe door creaked again.

"Oh, shut up," he said to it, and eventually fell asleep.