The Switch

by Beth O'Leary

‘I’ve come to the decision that dating is genuinely worse than loneliness. At least when you’re alone there’s no hope, right?’

sometimes miss the idea of a husband, someone whose arm I could lean on for a tricky step down off the bus, who might take hold of my umbrella while I paid for my cup of tea.

I reach for the keyboard, but Bee waves my hand away. ‘Make him stew!’ she says. I roll my eyes. ‘That sort of nonsense is for young people,’ I tell her. EileenCotton79 says: That would be lovely. How about Friday?

‘Oh, the Greenwood family have had a very interesting few years,’ Grandma tells me, dropping into the lower-octave, this-is-really-juicy voice she reserves for her finest pieces of village gossip. ‘When Jackson’s

‘it’s not that I don’t like the idea. But just because a person’s elderly doesn’t mean they can’t be dangerous.

It’s easy to forget, when you’re missing someone, that they’re more than just the person you remember: they have sides to themselves they only show when other people are around.

‘I think you’re amazing, Leena Cotton. You are kind, and beautiful, and absolutely unstoppable, and God, that thing that you do, running your hand through your hair like that, it …’ He rubs his mouth with his spare hand, jaw clenching and unclenching.

‘I’ve not known what to do,’ he says, his voice so quiet it’s almost a whisper. His lips are inches from mine. ‘For weeks I’ve thought about it. I don’t want to break up a relationship, that’s wrong. But I also don’t want you to leave without knowing.’

As soon as I’ve worked out how, I’ll give you five stars.’

‘When people talk about loss, they always say that you’ll never be the same, that it

will change you, leave a hole in your life.’ My voice is choked with tears now. ‘And those things are undoubtedly true. But when you lose someone you love, you don’t lose everything they gave you. They leave something with you.