Page 5 of I Know How This Ends

Atmospheric pressure is measured in hectoPascals.

As I explained during one very early and not particularly well-liked video, it describes the force exerted by the weight of

the air above us, and this pressure changes depending on the area around it. On a weather chart, thin lines called isobars

join places with equal sea-level pressures, and they are helpful in identifying areas of high pressure (anticyclones) and low pressure (depressions).

It also makes the sky look as if it has fingerprints, which is lovely.

I just have no idea what pressure is called when it’s coming from your parents.

“Darling, you’re naked.”

Scowling, I wipe water out of my eyes. I’ve been submerged for forty minutes, sporadically surfacing just to take a deep breath

and dive again, like a humpback whale. Apparently, nothing is sacred, not even my own nudity.

“I’m in the bath, Mum,” I say, angling the phone so she can just see the top half of my head. “Nakedness is kind of a requisite.”

“It’s nearly midnight.” My mother’s nostril takes up half the screen. “Why aren’t you in bed? You need to get more sleep,

sweetheart. You’re starting to look a little haggard.”

“Thanks.” I rub more water out of my eye. “Just hold on while I drown myself.”

“Don’t be so dramatic, darling.” Mum turns slightly. “George! She’s still up. Come and say hello. Quickly! Put the pot down!”

For a moment I wonder if my parents have taken up a brand-new, illegal Australian hobby, and then I realize Dad is gardening

in the background.

“Can you let me get out of the bath first, before we have a family meeting? And if you want me to sleep, you could think about

not calling me at this time.”

“We’re still getting used to the time difference,” Mum explains, as if nine hours ahead was advanced algebra, not math a six-year-old

could accomplish without a calculator. “We just wanted to see how you’re doing.”

Ten weeks ago, my parents retired and immigrated to Australia, to the sunny little northern town my mother is from and where

I grew up. Now they’re micro-managing me from the other side of the world, which is, frankly, more efficient for everyone

concerned.

“She’s doing fine,” Dad says from out of shot. “Stop worrying.”

“She doesn’t look fine to me,” my mother objects sharply. “She looks like she has the bath too hot. Darling, one day you’re going to get up too fast

and faint and knock your head on the toilet and die alone on the bathroom floor, with no clothes on and nobody to find you

for days and days, maybe weeks, and then what will we do?”

This was worryingly specific.

“Get a hobby that isn’t harassing me?” I sigh. “Hang on. I’ll get out now.”

Slightly dizzy, as predicted, and now scared of my own loo—thanks, Mum—I put my phone face down, climb out of the bath and

grab my dressing gown. “Right.” I hold my phone back up. “How can I help you this evening, at this completely antisocial time?”

“You haven’t picked up your phone for weeks,” Dad explains gently. “We just wanted to check that you’re doing OK because we can’t truly relax if you’re not. Well, we can. It’s really very nice here. But it’s not as relaxing as it could be.”

I smile fondly at my father. As spicy and resentful as I pretend to be—because it’s fun, mostly—it was actually me who told

them it was time to leave England. I kept finding brochures scattered around their dark little Bristol house, with images

of sunny beaches and golf courses circled in purple ink and “ Not Yet ” written next to them. When what they actually meant was Not Until Maggie Is OK Again and When Exactly Will That Be? And day by day, the little lines around me grew denser and denser until I could barely breathe.

“I’m doing brilliantly,” I say as cheerfully as I can. “My Instagram page is growing every day.”

My parents glance at each other patiently, as if starting your own successful business is the equivalent of knitting your

first scarf, and it’s cute but not what anyone particularly needs details about.

“That’s not what we meant, darling.” Mum puts her glasses on like a little owl and gets closer to the phone camera, as if

that’s how technology works. “Tell us you’ve at least unpacked.”

I look around the living room. Nope. “Yup.”

“Great. Show us.”

“Ugh. Fine.” Feeling like a teenager, I hold up the camera at the apartment, filled with cardboard boxes and broken floor

plates. “No. Happy?”

“Margot Elizabeth Wayward.” Now I know I’m in trouble, because I don’t even have a middle name, she just makes one up whenever

she’s scolding me. “This won’t do, will it? Do we need to come back and sort you out?”

Dad looks momentarily horrified. “Joanne, we’ve got dinner with the Gilberts tomorrow and I’ve been marinating the chicken.”

He gets a dark glare from Mum and reassesses. “Which is not as important as the welfare of our only daughter, obviously.”

A bolt of hope. “Or Maggie could come out here? We can send you the money for tickets.”

“I’m fine . If anything, I am thriving .”

(I say while staring at five empty pot noodles lying on the coffee table.)

“And are you Getting Back Out There? Not just spending all your time browsing the internet or with Julia and Evelyn?”

I am not browsing the internet , Mother, I am developing content . We’ve had this conversation multiple times, but clearly it’s had zero impact.

“Yup,” I say through gritted teeth, staring at a box that says “MARGOT WAYWARD—PHOTOS.” That one can stay firmly Sellotaped

shut, thank you. “Just yesterday I met a man who wanted to extend his family to include me.”

Mum beams with palpable relief. “Well, that sounds promising!”

“Without the permission of his wife.”

“Ah.” There’s a silence. “Keep trying. Darling, you’re not getting any—”

“If you say younger ,” I hiss, towel-drying my hair with one hand, “I swear to God you will both be put in a very cheap retirement home without any extracurricular activities. I’m thirty-six,

not eighty-six.”

“Actually,” Dad says calmly, still subtly repotting his plant just out of shot, “I recently read about a woman who met her

first true love at ninety. A lovely meet-cute in neighboring hospital beds. Fell for each other immediately. Very romantic.

Admittedly, they only lasted a few days together, I think some kind of infection, but it’s never too late, that’s what I’m

saying.”

“Fuck me,” I say flatly. “Something to look forward to.”

“ Language , sweetheart,” Mum sighs. “You have a PhD, Margot, so you clearly have a bigger vocabulary than you pretend. And I was going to say, you’re not getting any more healed .

” This is palpably untrue because that’s not a normal sentence.

“Open yourself up, Maggie. Let someone in. Give someone a

chance.”

“Please stop buying Live Laugh Love –adjacent pillows, Mother.”

“Does the coffee filter need changing, Joanne?” Dad sniffs his mug. “It tastes weird.”

“If you want the coffee filter changed, change it.”

“Well, I will, but I don’t know when to.”

“When it tastes weird, George.”

“It’s been a pleasure,” I say sharply, glancing at the clock. “Thanks for this essential update. I’ll be sure to pick up next

time you call.”

“Keep looking for a real job!” Mum leans urgently toward the phone. “There has to be something out there. And go see your grandfather! He’s all on his own now, Maggie, like you.”

“Bloody hell,” I snap, and put the phone down.

But those little pressure lines keep tightening, and I’m still wide awake at 2 a.m., perambulating the flat like an impatient

ticket inspector and prodding boxes with my toes. I can still see Aaron: humming while he stirs a home-made soup in the kitchen,

lying outstretched on the sofa with his huge feet on my lap. He is everywhere I look: scattered like clouds across a summer

sky, casting shadows all around, blocking my light. Aaron would have found something fun to do with the spare bedroom, which

he’d have unpacked immediately. He’d have loved the tiny garden and would have built a barbecue, or at least started and then

talked about it for the next six months.

Except Aaron’s not here, and never has been. It’s a house haunted by his absence, and I can almost hear him say, Blimey, Margot. It’s been nearly eight months. You need to start moving on.

I want to say, I am trying, Aaron, I promise.

But I can’t, because he’s not here.

I can’t, because it’s not true.

With a bolt of supreme effort, I grab a pair of scissors, open one of the “KITCHEN SHIT” boxes, pull out a spatula and carefully

place it in a kitchen drawer.

For a few seconds, I stand back and stare proudly at it.

That wasn’t so hard, was it? Tomorrow, I might upgrade to the pair of tongs I have literally never used because takeout just doesn’t require any.

Yawning widely, I crawl into bed, pop in my mouth guard to stop me grinding my teeth to powder and try hard not to see Aaron,

his heavy arm casually flung over my waist. The space around my middle feels weirdly empty. That side of the bed still has

him lying in it, even though it’s brand-new. New mattress, new sheets, new covers: I made absolutely sure of it.

Clamping down on plastic, I pick up my burner phone and methodically trawl through all five dating apps I’ve downloaded for

variety, of which there is none. If online men were like weather, meteorologists would have a much easier job and there’d

be fewer complaints about “inaccuracy.” The messages are alarmingly predictable, and it’s difficult to decide which is less

attractive: a generous offer from a stranger to lick me or an inability to distinguish between a possessive adjective and

a contraction. One has opened with a detailed explanation of what he’d like to do to me, as if I’m a woodwork project looking

to be sanded.

Instead, I find myself searching Henry’s profile again.

This time, I’m looking for the data he hasn’t included: the signs of what’s really going on, hidden in plain sight. But all

I can work out is that Henry wears a yellow tartan scarf when it’s cold, like a children’s cartoon bear, and his ears go extremely

pink when it’s hot ( sunscreen , Henry). He hasn’t co-opted a child or dog that isn’t his, and there aren’t any group shots of friends simply to prove he has

some, but which accidentally show every woman in a twenty-mile radius that he’s not the most attractive one. He is a tantalizingly

blank canvas—the dots of him are drawn in the things that aren’t there—and for the first time since I started online dating,

I feel... faintly excited.

Henry has sent me his phone number, even though I stopped giving out mine at Date Three: i.e. the unexpected introduction

to a stranger’s genitals.

But he seems lovely, so I impulsively text from my burner phone:

Hi Henry. This is Margot. It’s 2:32 am so apologies if I look a bit mad—can’t sleep. I don’t suppose you fancy dinner this evening instead, do you? X

I study the message for a few seconds: uncharacteristically impulsive.

Send.

To my surprise, there’s an almost immediate response:

Hi Margot. I’m on a night shift right now so also awake. Tonight works for me. You pick a location. Henry x

And there it is: hope.

I haven’t felt it for so long, I barely recognize the airy lifting of my insides, like a blast of heat under a hot-air balloon.

I feel myself expand very slightly and rise. I’d forgotten what it feels like. It’s nice. Sweet. But the dark, cold, tugging

undercurrent running beneath it—that, at least, is familiar.

I am absolutely terrified.

Great! Here’s a link to the restaurant. Hope you like Italian! Margot. X

Outside, rain hammers against the windows: the sky bellows, shatters, breaks apart. It’s comforting, knowing I’m not the only

one. That the sky is out there, doing it too.

Then I roll over and stare at the empty space next to me.

One storm at a time.