ELLE.COM/UK April 2O2O
better. I was too anxious to be alone in the beginning, too afraid
of falling asleep without him. I went out with friends, drinking under
fading skies until the laughter turned to tears. I was 27 and single
for the first time in five years. So much of the person I’d become
was entwined with someone else, it was a struggle to work out
what was left of me. How was I to recover from the fact that the
man I thought I would marry had walked out of the home we had
made together, having told me he had fallen out of love with me?
We’d been a little ahead of our time, Josh and I. We met
in our early twenties and ended up falling into a long-distance
relationship that existed in precious, cut-off worlds – weekends
spent on the expanse of the Pennines, hours tapped out through
Gchat. I was living in London trying to make it as a journalist, while
he was still a student up north. We quickly became the most grown-
up couple in my social group, eventually buying a flat together.
On paper – or rather, on Facebook – it looked idyllic: bargain
mid-century furniture and dinners from the posh butcher, while our
friends stumbled messily through their early twenties. We fells I neared the park, I felt my lungs expand. The cold air
filled my throat, fine rain misted my face. In one direction,
hordes of commuters in polished brogues and heels
walked towards the train station. I, in my mud-encrusted worker
boots, walked in the other direction, towards a place that, over
the past few months, had become my sanctuary.
The community gardens were easily missed, hidden behind
a high Victorian wall. But beyond the ancient bricks lay a magical
world where a grapevine-filled greenhouse crested over a sea
of carefully tended allotments, all crafted by volunteers.
Both tradition and romantic comedies dictate that in the wake
of a break-up, one should spend time in a fugue state of misery and
hangover, the whispers of cocktails and regret on every breath.
Instead, I’d been pushing a spade through heavy soil and nestling
precious bulbs into the dirt with my bare hands.
I had tried it, the hedonism; at least for the first few months. The
summer blasted by as I shrugged off the settled life I had grown
used to and tried on different versions of myself in an attempt to feel45Elle MEMOIR
PHOTOGRAPH by MARTINA FERRARAIN THE THROES OF HEARTBREAK, Alice Vincent FOUND SOL ACE IN THE MOST UNLIKELY
OF PL ACES, AND SET ABOUT PUT TING DOWN ENTIRELY NEW ROOTSTh e REBOUND