late summer in yorkshire

Another thing I remember is standing in the old red phone box at the bottom of the road in Dunnington. It was surrounded by fields on three sides with an industrial estate where I later worked for two months. N must have been in Welwyn for some reason. I think it was the beginning of the second year – I moved into the little house with the blue door before her. She was angry with me. I had the big heavy black phone receiver to my ear. I didn’t know what to say. There’s such a feeling of impotence when someone is angry with you on the phone, there’s no way of dealing with it. You just stare at the receiver and wait for the world to give you some space to breathe. Look out through the red cross hatch of the phone box at the fields and endure the words and the silence that follows. At the end she said to me, I remember it distinctly, no one else does this to me. You’re the only one who brings this out in me. I knew that in some way this meant I was special, I had a kind of cursed special status, which I knew anyway. But it didn’t help. I was torn apart, staring at the fields, just fighting to stay in the game. I thought to myself, great. Why do I have to be so special?