Authors note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, events and incidents are the products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Happy?
Prelude:
London can seem a cold city. Not just literally, although the sight of some of its denizens hurrying to and fro, coats and scarves wrapped around them against the wind, was becoming a more frequent occurrence now that autumn's touch had settled on the capital. No, it could also seem cold through indifference, its populous embracing a mood of anonymity to one another, this sense of coldness especially noticeable to someone born and reared in a small town in Ireland.
Ashley Burke, her married name being Chatsworth but she had clung onto Burke for her job and almost all other things, passport, driving licence, bills and gym membership, had been born in Ireland twenty nine years previously but for seven years now she had called London, England her home.
Right now, she stood at the kitchen sink of the home she shared with her husband Colin, cleaning the last of the plates from dinner. Ashley had met her husband a week after arriving from Ireland. She had graduated from university after completing a course as a translator, French, Spanish and Portuguese being the three languages she had focused on. Ashley had hoped to secure herself a job working within the political realm, a translator for a politician operating within the European Union.
Brexit put an end to that dream, she found there were no opportunities, the UK's imminent departure from the coalition of European states meaning that the requirement for her skills was a thing of the past. Instead, she had looked at businesses, legal firms, anyone still maintaining ties to Europe and who might avail of her skills.
Colin was a solicitor at one of the law firms she interviewed at for a position. Ashley hadn't gotten the job, but she had found herself with a date that night. Within six months they were engaged, a year almost to the day after they had met, Colin and Ashley were married.
Her career however hadn't moved with the same alacrity as her personal life. Rejection followed rejection. If it hadn't been for Colin encouraging her to stick with it, Ashley would have packed it all in and sough a return home to Ireland. Finally, her husband to be had suggested starting her own business. An upsurge in migration had hit the United Kingdom and many of those travelling there were not native English speakers. Moreover, the paper snowstorm that faced people seeking asylum, seeking government benefits or just navigating life in this new land was overwhelming to many. With Colin helping her at first, a new business was born, offering migrants both translation services and help with legal forms, state forms, business applications and so on.
Ashley even rented herself a small office. Clients coming in to meet with her, happy faces as she helped. Life was good, things were good. Then came Covid.
She could still work but now it was from home, everything done via Teams and Skype. Many prospective clients hadn't access to computers, so her workload halved leaving her with a lot of time on her hands. Having to spend so much time at home with Colin didn't help. He seemed unperturbed by it all, content to motor through the madness that had gripped the entire world while she felt simply trapped and that the best years of her life might be slipping by, confined within the walls of their own home. That was the point, in hindsight, where Ashley began to wonder if their marriage was as strong as they had thought.
"Happy?" Colin would lean over and kiss Ashley on the cheek, asking the same question. It had become almost a nightly ritual. She would smile and answer, "of course," before finishing up whatever she was doing. Then there would follow an hour of television before they both retired for the night, normally before 11pm.
Where once there were kisses for no other reason than 'just because', where sex had been twice or three times a week... now the kisses were almost like what you would place on an elderly Aunt's cheek, sex became almost a scheduled affair, once a month at best.
Once restrictions had been lifted, Ashley had hoped things might get better, get back to where they had been. Her business picked up a little but not enough that renting an office made any sense. Rental prices had increased during the time she had been working from home and Colin hadn't felt it was wise to spend money given the unreliability of her business income. This had hurt her, making her think he viewed her career as a hobby rather than a viable employment opportunity. She wouldn't say it to him however, preferring to roll with the disappointment rather than create any animosity.
So, she was still stuck at home after the nightmare that was Covid had passed. Colin was back to the office, the daily commute, complaining each evening about traffic and the smells of fellow commuters as they crowded cheek to cheek in overflowing tube carriages. Still, he left each morning whistling cheerfully, while Ashley was left in the silence of their home.
It was the gym that saved her. During Covid she had taken to exercising in their postage stamp sized back garden and she had discovered a joy in her body. Back in Ireland she had played camogie till her late teens and Ashley found herself rediscovering the fitness levels she had enjoyed as a teen. Not just rediscovering them, surpassing them.
That however was the only bright light in her life. As 'normality' resumed and she returned on a visit to family and friends back home, Ashley was dismayed to find how much her friends had changed and how little she had.
Her friends were all like her, married. However, unlike her, they had all gone on to start families as well. Some were content to stay at home raising their kids, others worked hand in hand with their husbands, sharing responsibilities as they both continued working. Whatever the path, one and all seemed in a far better place than Ashley Burke did.
When she was twenty-two and about to be married, Colin had told her he didn't ever want children. He was twenty-eight and moving steadily up the ranks in his legal firm. As far as Colin was concerned, no children meant more time, attention and money for them to enjoy as a couple. Things hadn't worked out like that though.
Oh, the money was good, great in fact. Their home was lovely, they had an expensive car, a Range Rover, and luxuries like cultural weekends away to Venice, Istanbul and the like were a fairly regular occurrence.
The time and attention parts weren't as advertised though, Colin falling into a casual attitude as far as their relationship went. To be fair, Ashley did much the same. All they seemed to have were these kisses in the morning and at night before bed, the occasional bunch of flowers and that was pretty much that.
Post Covid and the intimacy had fallen through the floor. They still had sex but it now it seemed seasonal and almost sterile as regards passion. The fault lying on both sides. Ashley however seemed the only one worried by it.
Returning from Ireland, Ashley had mentioned, as casually as possible, the changes in her friends' lives. Colin's response was as expected, commiserating her friends' foolish choices, remarking on how much better he and she were without such drama in their lives.
Ashley hadn't argued the point, open communication between them also something that seemed to have fallen off through time. She didn't even have anyone in London to open up to. Meeting Colin so early after moving there, her friends were in fact his friends originally. Working for herself meant no coworkers to bond with. She did have people she chatted with at the gym but Ashley viewed them more as acquaintances rather than close friends. Even with the restriction of Covid lifted, at times she still felt isolated in a bubble of her own design.
And so it was the gym that she turned to again. With time on her hands, Ashley would set out each morning to a small gym she had discovered a few miles from her home. There were closer gyms, but she enjoyed the atmosphere there and the fact that she had to travel was actually a bonus, filling in part of a day that might otherwise have been empty.
After each session, she rewarded herself by crossing the road to a lovely cafe called The Daffodils Bloom. It served a nice selection of pastries and offered a generous menu of coffees and teas. As there were no schools or creches nearby, Ashley was able to enjoy her treat without the hubbub of mothers wheeling prams, screaming babies or snot nosed children dashing from one table to the next. It was calm and she liked calm. There were a number of different staff in the cafe but all of them were of Caribbean extract.
The area both the gym and cafe were located in was a borough of London with a large percentage of inhabitants from places like Jamaica, Barbados and the West Indies.
Her personal life was at a low ebb but Ashley wasn't about to give up. She was conscious of how precious time could be, Covid had taught her that much at least. She wasn't prepared to accept her life as it was. Besides, the anniversary of their first date was just two days away.
Chapter One:
