Chapter Text
"Oh a lovely name," Charlie lied "nice and traditional choices." The tired looking parents currently sat in front of Charlie's desk smiled at each other, and then gave an adoring look to the sleeping baby in its pram.
"Thanks." Said the mother "The middle names are both of our dad's names."
Charlie smiled, hoping his face wasn't giving away his true feelings. He was sure this name would be in the running for name of the week, if not, if would at least make a spot on the team's infamous 'Noticeboard of Nutty Names".
Charlie had been a registrar for Leeds Council for over three years and he truly loved his job. Not just for the ridiculous names people chose to call their babies, but for the feeling of pride he got whenever he helped a person through a key moment. People needed registrars at life changing times: the birth of a child, the death of a loved one, or when getting married, and Charlie relished in being able to sympathetically guide people through them all.
His love of history brought him into the role. Charlie could happily waste several lunch hours in the archives looking at the near two hundred years of history of the people of Leeds. He loved flicking through the old records, feeling the rough paper under his fingers, and squinting at the impossibly tiny and swirly handwriting of registrars gone by.
Charlie had spent years drifting from one unsatisfactory job to another, but since starting in this role, he truly felt he had found his purpose.
The proud new parents left his office, clutching their tiny son's birth certificate. Charlie waited until the office door swung shut behind them, before jumping up from his seat, and heading to the interconnecting door between his office, and his colleague Kim's next door. He knocked out of politeness, but knew she didn't have any customers in, so immediately opened the door and lent on the door frame.
Kim froze with a slice of chocolate cake halfway to her mouth, a guilty expression in her face.
"Busted." Charlie said, chuckling.
"It was our Theo's third birthday this weekend." Kim replied in her broad Yorkshire accent, and took a large bite of the cake.
Charlie and Kim had started working for the council around the same time, although Kim wasn't new to the role itself, having worked the same role in other councils before. She was a couple of years older than Charlie, and had two young sons who, just like her, both had unmanageable frizzy ginger hair, and a seeming never ending supply of energy.
She wiped chocolate frosting from the sides of her mouth with her fingers. "What can I do for you Mr Spring?" She said.
"I have a name for the wall." Charlie replied, a glint of excitement in his eyes.
Kim sprang up from her seat, clapping her hands together with glee. "Ooh show me, show me, show me!" She squealed.
Charlie led her back to his desk and showed her the name from his last appointment. Kim read the record entry over his shoulder and frowned. "Thomas Taylor? What's wrong with that?" She asked.
"The intiails" Charlie replied "Look at the initials."
Charlie watched Kim as she re-read baby Taylor's full name and he couldn't help but grin as her eyes widened in shock. "Oh no" she said "oh no no no."
"Yep." Laughed Charlie "Thomas William Arthur Taylor. That child's initials spell Twat."
***
Charlie sat idly doodling in his notebook as the service manager Sophie continued her speel about some new law that had been passed affecting the age at which people can marry. The monthly team meeting was long, and dull. Fortunately Sophie had placed an order with the lovely coffee shop around the corner, and therefore they all had enough pastries and caffeine to keep them going.
"So now we need to talk about deaths" Sophie announced. "As I'm sure you've noticed, there's a large increase in the number of appointments required at the moment."
"Flu." Kim whispered not so quietly to Charlie "Every January. Knocks people down like skittles."
"Yes thank you Kim." Sophie said "Currently there are 23% more deaths for this month than there have been previously for January. Now, according to the hospitals, they don't expect this strong flu to ease off until at least March, so we need to make sure we're prepared and able to offer enough appointments to keep up with the demand. I'm sorry to have to tell you therefore that I'm pulling a few of you off the normal diaries and you will exclusively be registering deaths for at least two weeks."
The team gave a collective groan. Death appointments were never fun, but they were a necessary part of the job. So long as your day was a mix of all the different appointments available, a couple of deaths a day were manageable. A full day of death appointments, however, could be quite taxing. It would mean up to eleven deaths to register a day. Eleven difficult to spell medical causes of death, eleven separate doctor's handwriting to decipher, and eleven different grieving families.
"Kim, Steve and Fatima," Sophie continued "I have put you three on this for the first two weeks, then we'll review after that, and I'll put another team on it if necessary."
Kim flopped her head back against the wall behind her and let out a little sigh. Charlie gave her a sympathetic smile, but secretly was quite glad he wasn't on Sophie's list.
Sophie cleared her throat. "Now because we have three people out of action for death appointments, I'm afraid I'm going to have to shuffle people around to pick up the slack elsewhere. Charlie." Charlie looked up from his doodles to see Sophie looking at him. "I know this isn't your favourite, but I'm putting you on Ceremony Admin for the next fortnight."
Charlie's heart sank. If there was one part if his job he wasn't keen on, it was Ceremony Admin.
The council had three venues of their own licensed for marriage ceremonies, as well as over fifty independent venues across Leeds. Ceremony Admin's job was to deal with all enquiries related to couples wishing to book their wedding ceremony, and dealing with all the paperwork once they have done. It meant keeping a close eye on the diaries and ensuring ceremonies are scheduled so that the council's team of registrars and officiants conducting weddings are able to make it from one venue to the next on time.
The worst bit of the whole role though, in Charlie's opinion, was the tours. Any couples wishing to marry at one of the council's venues could book to view the rooms. Charlie hated this bit as it meant dealing with newly engaged couples who often had big dreams and even bigger expectations, but not the biggest brain cells.
He hated making idle chit chat with them about their wedding plans and trying to sound like he cared. Sales was never something he enjoyed and he really disliked the feeling of pressurising people into booking.
"Sure, no problem." He lied.
***
The following morning the offices were freezing and Charlie was grumpy. He had never been a morning person anyway, but this morning it had been dark, cold, and sleeting when he left his house, and the temperature hadn't improved much since.
Charlie was sat waiting for his laptop to fire up with his hands clasped around a steaming mug of tea in a pathetic attempt to warm himself up, and he had yet to remove his coat, hat and scarf.
His mood hadn't been improved by the dreadful date he had been on last night. It was with a man called Chris who Charlie had met a few weeks ago when enjoying his work's belated Christmas night out. Charlie had been several cocktails in when Chris had approached him, and his memory of the night was hazy. He had been surprised to wake the next morning to a flirty text message from a number he had saved as 'Chris tall blonde. Scottish'. They exchanged several messages and had eventually agreed to meet last night for a drink after work.
In agreement with the contact listing, Chris was indeed very tall, blonde and Scottish. Charlie realised within half an hour of the date beginning however, that these three attributes were the only nice things about him.
Chris had been loud and rude to the bar staff, talked about himself for most of the date without asking anything about Charlie in return, and it was clear to Charlie that they had absolutely nothing in common. If Charlie had been at all considering a second date, this was truly ruined when a group of Chris' colleagues entered the bar, and Chris proceeded to talk (well, shout) exclusively to them, three tables away, for twenty minutes without once introducing Charlie. After finishing his drink, Charlie grabbed his bag and coat, made an excuse that he needed to catch a bus, and left. While stood at the bus stop he had blocked and deleted Chris' number.
On returning home, Charlie had briefly said hi to his housemates, before heading to his room and dramatically flopping down onto his bed. He stared at the ceiling. Charlie was fed up of going on dates that weren't heading anywhere.
He'd been single for nearly four years now, and didn't want to be anymore. He had tried, and failed, being a one night stand sort of person. (He just felt awkward and nervous the next day.) He was made for monogamy and long term love. He wanted someone who he could cuddle with, go for lazy weekend walks with, binge watch series with, have mind blowing sex with, and plan a future with. Charlie's friends would tell him he was being too fussy, but Charlie had known a love like that before, why should he settle for less?
Kim poking her head through the doorway connecting their rooms had pulled Charlie back to the present. "Morning Charlie boy" she grinned. "Cold?"
"Fucking freezing." He replied, stoney faced.
Kim disappeared from the doorway to go hang her coat up in her office. "My street was a nightmare this morning." She shouted. "I slipped on ice, and fell smack on my arse as I got near the bus stop. Honestly I was so embarrassed my face went the same colour as my hair!"
Charlie gave a unenthusiastic chuckle and opened up his diary for today. Kim reappeared at the door, a mug in her hand. "Fancy a brew?" She asked.
"Got one" Charlie said, without looking away from his computer screen.
Finally starting to warm up, he pulled his scarf and hat off, and ran his hand through his curls. He looked through appointments he had for tours today. They were annoyingly all spaced out through the day; 10.30, 12.00, 14.45, 16.15. Charlie made a note of the people who he was seeing, if they had any preference of venue,and when they were hoping to book for.
As he got to the 16.15 appointment he gasped at the name on the booking: N.Nelson.
Charlie's ex was an N.Nelson; Nicholas Nelson. They had been together for most of their teens and into their early twenties. Nick was actually the reason Charlie was living in Leeds in the first place, having followed Nick up north so they could attend the same university. They had been together for so long they were never even referred to as inviduals. They were Nick and Charlie. Always together, for always. That's what everyone had assumed, the two men included. However four years ago it had abruptly ended.
Charlie had been three years out of university with a history degree that he had enjoyed doing, but had been no help in steering him towards a living. He was working in a call centre for a bank based on the outskirts of Bradford. The office was in a converted mill, in what previously housed the large industrial weaving looms. Now there were over two hundred people on the phones all day, every day.
Charlie hated working there. He hated the constant hubbub of chatter, the terrible shift patterns, the knowledge that this job was going nowhere, and he especially hated having to raise his hand for permission to go to the toilet as if he was still at school.
He would return home to the flat he shared with Nick and vent about how fed up he was. Nick tried to be sympathetic, but Charlie knew he didn't really understand. Nick had decided in the final year of his undergraduate degree that he wanted to go into teaching, so while Charlie finished the final year of his degree, Nick completed his PGCE and went on to obtain a teaching post at one of the schools he did a training placement at. Nick loved his job, and especially thrived when it came to pupils who perhaps needed extra help. Within two years he was qualified to be the school's SENCO, as well as teaching year six and training the schools football and rugby teams.
Charlie was initially very proud of his boyfriend, but eventually this pride became jealousy, which in turn became resentment. Charlie felt he had relied on Nick his whole adult life and didn't know how to exist without him. It was time to be on his own, make his own choices and take responsibility for the mess his work life had become.
When he explained his decision, Nick had cried. Charlie expected this. Unlike him, Nick was an open book when it came to his feelings. Charlie and him had spoken for hours into the night, Nick begged him not to leave and desperately kissed him. Wet, messy kisses, mixed with salty tears. Charlie gently pulled away. He stood up, gave Nick one last gentle kiss on the top of his head, before picking up his suitcase and leaving.
When Charlie had returned to their flat to collect some of his things, Nick had purposely been absent. From that day to this, with the exception of a few initial text messages, Charlie had not seen or heard from Nick Nelson.
Still, someone would have told him if Nick was getting married, surely? They still had mutual friends, and no one had mentioned a thing.
Charlie pulled his phone from his pocket and searched through Nick's Instagram, scanning for anything that might suggest he was engaged. The last photo was from before Christmas. It was Nick and his colleagues on their Christmas night out, all wearing tacky jumpers and cracker crowns. Charlie scrolled further. A picture of his dog, rugby selfie, dog, interior of a coffee shop, dog. Nothing to suggest he was getting married, or even that Nick had a partner at all.
Charlie put his phone away, feeling slightly clamer. It must be a different N.Nelson he was meeting today. Nigel Nelson, or Nadine Nelson perhaps. It certainly couldn't be his N.Nelson, could it?