London, if only for an hour.

I arrived just as the sun was rising, or would do if the country were not trapped under a thick blanket of cloud. I think the city is still drunk, afters are still happening. The air in the station had been thick with petrol and something sour, the hollows under my eyes were especially pronounced. I am gaunt. Two coaches and a flight.

I’m here to take a coach north — Manchester — after leaving Florence in a rush. Rain streaks down the window pane as we leave Victoria.
My last grandparent has been admitted to hospital, on the one year anniversary of her husband's death.
Something that feels cruel and cosmic, but I know she stopped looking after herself on purpose.

The city slides by, streets that I used to know. Friends, colleagues, ghosts. O is somewhere out there, older now and ready to settle.
He still thinks if I moved back, we could do it; a small house, warmth in routine. I imagine it as I watch the rain pitter patter.
A child’s hand in mine, puddles, toast, heavy grey air.
He still thinks there’s a version of life where I move back, where we have two children and a small terraced house.
I picture it now, perhaps as a distraction, the thought dies quickly.
London stopped being mine a long time ago, nothing there for me now except the occasional job and food with friends.

I realise that none of my grandparents saw me fall in love.
None saw me build anything that lasted.
Fran (my grandma) would have loved a person so stable for me.
One of the only people that saw the complexity of my home situation and shrugged.
We met when I was twenty-one but I felt fifty.
I had already raised two children, I did not birth them but they are mine.
I was so tired back then, tired like I am right now.
All bones and alertness, traumatised yet pretending nothing was heavy, he saw through it.
I was given space to land and later, to leave, to be young and discover myself in the city that is my main love - Bristol.

He messages me: How’s Florence? Should I come visit?
I tell him I'm leaving in the next couple hours. My grandma has been admitted to hospital, I'm getting there as soon as I can, even if it means some overnight coaches.
He offers to drive me from London to Manchester.
I say no — boundaries.
Non-monogamy doesn’t mean revisiting ghosts.
He retorts. Your partner’s so far away, how would they know?
It’s loneliness talking, London breeds that.
I'm not in the business of softening edges for men anymore though, I do no more emotional labour. Especially when grieving.

My therapist says I stay in open relationships to avoid men like O — the ones who might actually stay.
That my self-worth is so low I mistake freedom for unworthiness.
Maybe she’s right.

Glass apartment blocks loom over the motorway.
I hate this city. I hate £7 coffee orders.

My tears give rise. Not for O. Not even for my grandmother, though the anxiety is looming and I wonder whether I will make it to say goodbye this time. Just for everything.
For the high that had to come down.
For joy’s shadow, which is always grief.

Fran — my grandmother — spent her life tethered to a man who counted her money and measured her sleep. The man who raised me for the first 7 years of my life.
When he died, she was free for the first time.
She could choose when to cut her hair, but freedom came bitter.
She said the house was haunted, it echoed. She missed the sound of someone breathing beside her.
Safety, even when it was cruel.

And I think:
My bed will be empty too, until spring.
Funny, to think of that now — love and sex — while she’s fighting. But I suppose that is what the looming threat of death does, drags every question to the surface as your anxiety builds and you breathe tensely through your nose.
Will I die alone, too?
Will I call it freedom?