Good Material

by Dolly Alderton

Here’s what I’m getting at: I don’t know if I really want to move on, because the further away I get from the pain, the further away I get from her.

And every day spent with her was something to come down from and every day that would be spent with her was something worth losing sleep over. I eventually fell asleep spooning her, my chest pressed into the valley of her shoulder blades, my face buried in her matted smoke-and-perfume-scented hair.

“Life is a bit more difficult for women. More difficult than it is for us, I mean. And you don’t need to ask them to explain why or understand it all. You just need to be nice to them.”

They just get drunk and take the piss out of each other. Sometimes I felt like I was the only way he could access his emotions, which was too much pressure on me.

“I love my son,” she said. “And I don’t say this as his mum, I say it as a woman who’s got twenty-six years on you. Everything you want to do in your life, you can do without a man, Jen.”