It’s Not Me, It’s You. Mhairi McFarlane

man involved, is there?’

      It was so unexpected a question that Delia had to stop herself snorting.

      ‘Of course not!’

      She looked at her mum, who was fussing with her handbag and avoiding Delia’s eyes. This was what they’d come up with, in their concern. She was chasing a boy.

      ‘I promise you, there’s nothing to this but needing to get away for a while. I’ve barely seen Emma in the last few years, let alone had time to get to know anyone else.’

      Her father nodded. As they hustled out of the hallway, her dad huffing and puffing, holding her case at waist height – fathers didn’t acknowledge the wheels on trolley cases, they had to be picked up – Delia felt sodden with guilt for worrying them like this.

      Her mum drove her to the station in the old Volvo, with Delia anxiously trying to play down the whole unemployed peril with nonsensical chatter. If she talked fast enough, surely her mum wouldn’t notice.

      ‘This whole break Paul and I are having, it was the right moment,’ she said, hoping echoing Emma would be the charm.

      ‘You’re moving to London permanently?’ her mum asked, timidly. Her parents pretty much never lost their tempers or exerted their will. Something in their quiet forbearance was so much more shame-inducing than any shouting or outright disapproval.

      It was a good question. It gave Delia stomach snakes. It’d been her right to be vague with Paul, not with her mum.

      ‘No! I don’t know. It’s more to get away from things for a while.’

      The parental relationship loop: fibbing to protect them from worry, and them sensing being fibbed to, and worrying. The truth – that she had no idea what she was doing – would be more worrying, so Delia had no choice.

      On the train she sat next to a short old man in a bulky coat, who started a conversation about pollution, which Delia politely tolerated, while wishing she could listen to her iPod.

      As they got to Northallerton, he pointed to the tracks and said: ‘See those pigeons?’

      ‘Yes …?’

      ‘Pigeons know more than they’re letting on.’

      ‘Do they?’ Delia said.

      ‘Think they carried all those messages and never read any of them?’ the man said, incredulously.

      Delia said she was going to the buffet car and switched carriages.

      Arriving in London, she taxied from King’s Cross to Finsbury Park and told herself she’d definitely economise from tomorrow onwards. It was late, she was tired, and full of Fondant Fancies, cheese toastie, acidic G&T and a mini tube of Pringles, all picked at in nerves and boredom.

      As Delia left the station, the evening air in the capital smelled unfamiliar: thick, warm, petrol-fumed. She was hit by a wave of home sickness so hard it was in danger of washing her away.