Free Bound to You by Nichi Hodgson

know. I guess that just means half the week sleepless.’
    He grinned and pulled the sleazy Greek face. ‘Oh, I hope so. I’ll be making up for the nights we are alone.’
    ‘You’ll have to. I can’t sleep without you any more, Christos. The bed’s emptiness, it . . .’
    I couldn’t get any more words out after that. I think we must have held each other as though our love depended on it, but I don’t remember. Amnesia felt preferable to a memory of abject pain. Like the first time we’d tried to make love and failed. Why didn’t I remember the first time? Was that some ominous portent for everything we built together afterwards?
    An officious attendant waved at me, demanding I clear security.
    ‘Three weeks, Nichi
mou
. Then we’ll be back together again.’
    I nodded dumbly. ‘Together again’ had a hollow ring. Together again didn’t mean the same thing any more.
    The next morning, which was Saturday, I woke up early and cheerfully determined. I was fed up with feeling sorry for myself, of thinking myself abandoned, and decided to reframe the separate-living situation as an opportunity for newfound liberty. I could write and read uninterrupted. I could go to extra yoga classes. I could have dinner whenever I wanted, including in bed if I so chose, with my plate on my lap and my laptop resting on my lower legs, a practice that Christos absolutely forbade.
    So I began to pack. After all, my new room was ready for me whenever I wanted it. The sooner I moved in, the sooner we moved on to the next phase of our relationship. I would have to wait for Christos to bring a couple of large things over to the flat in the car when he returned, but I could take a suitcase, at least, and maybe a rucksack.
    I packed what I could and, an hour later, heaved myself up on to the tube with my belongings, like a determined snail. When I changed at Victoria, a beautifully mannered young man with exquisite tattoos covering his arms asked if I’d like a hand with my suitcase. I said no. I made it a rule to never carry a bag I couldn’t lift myself. I didn’t need any help.
    At my flat, my new housemate Helen was watching TV in the living room, laughing raucously at some animal outtakes programme. I said a polite hi then dragged my bags into my new room. There was a bookcase, desk and dressing table with an elegant oval mirror mounted on it. Identikit furniture from Ikea, I guessed. And a double bed. But that was it. God, it was like being a student again.
    I put a framed photo of me and Christos on the desk so that I could see it from the bed. Suddenly I didn’t want to stay here tonight after all. I’d move in properly tomorrow.
    On Monday morning I made a different commute to work, via Waterloo Bridge, often voted ‘best view of the capital’ by its residents. I thought of the Dr Johnson quote: ‘When a man is tired of London he is tired of life’, and marvelled at the thought that I had barely awakened to the city at all.
    This was to be my last week at the hospital. When I got back from Greece there was a letter waiting for me to say that I had been successful in my application for an internship at an arts magazine, and could I start a week on Tuesday. I had applied for the post months ago. It was the perfect distraction from the impasse that was currently my relationship with Christos.
    When I arrived at work I rang the job agency that contracted me out to the hospital to tell them that I’d no longer be needing my secretarial position, then informed my line manager, Susan. She was a gracious lady in her early forties, richly attractive, with one of those immaculate blonde bobs that always hung just so.
    ‘Come back any time you like, my lovely, if the writing doesn’t work out. Hope they’re paying you well at this new place?’
    ‘Well, actually, they’re not paying me at all.’ I don’t know why I felt ashamed, but I did. It wasn’t my fault the creative industries thought it OK to exploit flaming