“I’ll see you later, Ames. A few hours, tops.”

“If you say so,” Amelia said plainly.

“What’s the matter?”

“I just don’t like you dropping these things on me at the last minute. We should be celebrating.”

“We can when I get back, I promise. I love you.”

“I love you too,” Amelia replied as she walked into the block of flats.

I loved Amelia, and I hated upsetting her. She would always pepper me with questions about something I thought was completely irrelevant. She would say it was because she missed me, but I always thought she just liked keeping tabs on me. I’d never given her a reason to worry, but I always felt like I was lying to her even when I wasn’t. The inquisitions were becoming more frequent, too. I put it down to moving stress and her growing anticipation of starting a family. But on this occasion, her instincts were bang on the money, and I couldn’t really blame her for wanting to know more. I didn’t like lying to her about anything, really. It sounds stereotypically misogynistic, but she did tend to overreact sometimes. I felt like I had everything in hand, and I didn’t have the brain capacity to keep up with her constant questioning. It was easier to just trivialise what I was doing.

I drove around the corner and parked up; I nearly ripped the steering wheel straight off the column I was gripping so tightly. I took out my phone and gave Steve a call. He answered, but I could barely hear a word over the rowdy sounds of whatever pub where he was currently drinking himself stupid.

“Ste?” I shouted.

“Harry! You back in Filey?” Steve boomed.

“No, mate. I’m down in Manchester. Are you out?”

“Yeah, friend. We are at the Plow. You should come down!”

“I just said I’m in Manchester. For god’s sake, Ste, go outside. You can’t hear a word,” I shouted. I could hear him making his way outside, and the background noise became tolerable to my ears.

“Right, go on. I’m outside.”

“That’s better. Listen, I need a borrow, and it’s a big ask. But it won’t be for long.”

“Harry, mate, I’m tapped. Everything I’ve got I spent on the caravans. I’m sorry.”

“No worries, mate. I understand.”

“What about your mum?”

“No chance, Ste. If Amelia finds out we took a penny from her, I’ll be single within the week.”

“Well, there’s always the Broadheads, but the interest will be steep.”

The Broadheads were two brothers up in Leeds. Broad by name and broad by nature. They were the kind of monsters you didn’t want to owe money to, and only the most desperate dared to take on a Broadhead loan. I didn’t know if it was true, but I’d heard they threw someone from a fifth-floor balcony because they didn’t keep up with payments. I worked as a financial advisor, and I knew the worst possible place to get money from was a loan shark. But I’d exhausted all lines of conventional credit, and I didn’t have any options left.

“The Broadheads, Steve? I’ll end up with concrete shoes,” I joked.

“You won’t pal. They’re sound. As long as you pay up.”

“Can you vouch for me?”

“Sure. Me and Nick go way back. What do you even need it for anyway?”

“The house. It’s more expensive than I’d planned.”

“You’re risking your legs getting broken for a house?”

“I thought you said they were sound?”

“Yeah, but a house? Why?”

“Ames will be upset if we don’t get it. It won’t even matter once my new salary kicks in.”

“Oh god, no one can upset Amelia, right?”

“Things have been going well recently, and I don’t want to ruin that.”

“Fine, that’s your business. When do you need it?”

“As soon as possible. We put the offer in today.”

“We can drive up there over the weekend, pal.”

“Okay, Ste, thanks, I’ll be in touch.”

My heart was pounding through my chest just from the thought of it. I hadn’t done anything like it, and whatever the outcome, Amelia couldn’t know what I’d planned. The pressure on me was enormous. We had a plan: get married, buy a house, and start building a family. But embroiling myself in the criminal underworld was a step in a direction I’d fought all my life to avoid travelling in. It’s the kind of thing my dad would have done, and I was adamant not to be the kind of father and husband he was. Dad constantly trod on eggshells around my mother, and I saw first-hand what it did to their marriage. I adopted a rather flippant stance on the situation by telling myself it was a makeshift solution to a temporary problem. I had cash flow issues, that’s all.

I trusted Steve. If he had said it was kosher, then it was. He knew more about dodgy dealings than anyone else. If it weren’t for people like the Broadheads, he would still be selling stolen cars for scrap. He’d built his little leisure empire in Filey with a cash injection from them and was still walking around with his legs unbroken, so they couldn’t be as bad as the stories made out. I actually felt a little excited about our little foray into lawlessness, partly because it was so far removed from how I usually react to these situations. I was excited to see Filey again, too. I’d been away from it for far too long. I wanted to scrape the smog of Manchester out of my lungs. I’d swap the car exhaust fumes for the ocean breeze any day of the week, and even though the context of my trip home was a bit grim, I was excited to see my hometown again. I just needed to find a palatable excuse for Amelia so I could get up there. I’d always loved visiting Manchester when she and I started dating, but once you live here, you take off the rose-tinted glasses. You start seeing the problems. The grime. The constant hustle and bustle of people trying to flee their debt-driven existences.

I’d parked the car in the usual spot next to the block of flats we lived at. Luckily, the lift was working, but it was arduous to walk up the stairs to the 30th floor. It was only temporary whilst we were looking for a house. I wished Amelia and my mother got on well enough for us all to live under the same roof temporarily. It would have saved us a fortune; the rent prices in Manchester were astronomical. Amelia could have easily just got another job in the pharmacy in Filey if it came to it, but she was adamant she wanted us to live in Manchester.

I did miss everyone in Filey, and married life didn’t allow for as many visits to your hometown as I would have liked. We always had something we needed to do, which always threw a spanner in my visiting plans. I knew for a fact that Amelia hated going there, too, which didn’t make it any easier to plan anything. I had loads of friends back in Filey, and in Manchester I felt terribly isolated from them. Amelia’s opinion was that our marriage should suffice, but I’d always been very social in my youth, and she wasn’t really like that.

Ater the lift had pinged on the 30th floor, I stepped out and walked over to our flat door. I could hear Amelia sobbing inside. It was an extremely specific cry; I couldn’t really explain it, but I knew exactly what she was upset about. It had become a common occurrence, regrettably. We’d been trying for a baby for a few months with no success. We thought we got a positive result a while back, but it turned out to be a faulty test. I really wanted it to happen, and I was as supportive as I could be, but it was becoming tiresome. The number of couples we knew who had managed to conceive on the off chance or even by accident made us feel awful about ourselves, as though there was something wrong with us.

It usually went one of two ways. She was usually either upset and would spend the evening either crying unconsolably or throwing fits of rage as she vented on me. To be honest, I preferred the former. I’d much rather be handing out tissues and consoling her than picking up pieces of broken plates and glassware off the floor. It’s shameful, but I waited for a minute or two outside the door before entering. I needed to psych myself up for both eventualities.

“Amelia, are you okay in there?” I asked sheepishly through the bathroom door. There were a few seconds of silence before she responded.

“No,” she whispered hoarsely through the bathroom door.

“Can I come in?”

“Yes,” she responded.

I inched my way into the bathroom, and the floor was filled with packaging from what looked like a full box of pregnancy tests. She was clutching one of them tightly and sat on the closed toilet seat, sobbing like the whole world had ended.

“It’s going to happen eventually, Ames. We just need to stay positive and keep trying.”

“What if it’s not possible, Harry? What if there’s something wrong with me?”

“There isn’t. It just takes time.”