We said we wouldn’t decide on a Friday. That was the rule. Nothing that changes a family’s shape should be agreed when everyone’s tired and someone’s already thinking about pasta. So we waited until Sunday. We waited until the washing was on, the table was clear, and the house had that quiet, temporary calm it gets when you can pretend you’re in charge of your own time.
Then Marta opened the laptop.
There is a particular sound a laptop makes when it means business. Not the cheerful chime. The heavier one. The one that says: this is a document, not a mood.
We’d been circling the idea since the school said it out loud. Un trimestre. A term. Not a move. Not a decision. Just a stretch of time long enough to stop pretending this was still a holiday experiment.
On paper it looks neat. September to Christmas. Or maybe after Christmas to Easter. Dates in boxes. Flights in rows. Work commitments in other boxes. School calendars copied and pasted from two different countries that do not agree on what a week is.
Bryan, being Bryan, started with constraints. What can’t move. Court dates. Client deadlines. The bits of life in Devon that do not care about Spanish sunshine or good intentions. He had that look he gets when he’s half at home and half already arguing with a future problem.
Marta started with people. The kids’ teacher. Her cousin. The woman at the bakery who now asks how long we’re staying before she asks what we want. She didn’t say it, but I could see the map in her head was not made of dates.
We didn’t argue. That was the strange part. We just filled cells.
Flights first. You always do flights first because they make it feel real. One click and suddenly you’re not discussing an idea, you’re discussing a cost. We tried a few combinations. Too expensive. Too many connections. Too much arriving at midnight with children who have already decided they hate the world.
Then the UK house. Who checks it. Who waters whatever is still pretending to be alive in the garden. The neighbour who once said “just pop a key through” in a way that suggested we should never actually do that.
Then school. Not the Spanish one. The other one. The one you have to explain this to in careful sentences that start with “we’re not leaving” and end with “it’s just for a bit”.
There was a moment, about an hour in, when nobody spoke. The spreadsheet was open. The numbers were there. The dates were there. The silence was the bit where you realise this is no longer theoretical.
Bryan broke it by saying, very quietly, “If we’re doing it, we can’t do it halfway.”
That’s the thing about him. He doesn’t like drama, but he hates hedging even more.
Halfway is three weeks. Halfway is “we’ll see how it goes”. Halfway is living out of two suitcases and telling yourself it’s fine.
A term is different. A term means proper routines. It means buying shampoo instead of bringing it. It means the kids stop counting sleeps and start counting weeks.
We didn’t press the button that day. But we did something worse. We filled in the school form. Not the “expression of interest” one. The actual one.
It asked for addresses. Two of them.
It asked for emergency contacts. In two countries.
It asked for dates.
And once those dates were typed, even without being sent, something shifted. The house didn’t notice. The kettle didn’t care. But we did.
That night, after the kids were in bed, we sat on the sofa and tried to watch something stupid and failed. Every joke landed half a second late. Every quiet bit was louder than it should have been.
We’re not moving to Spain. We keep saying that. This is not a story about a big brave leap.
This is a story about trying to live in two places without tearing something.
But I think we both know that a term is not a neutral unit of time. A term is long enough for habits to form. Long enough for the kids to stop feeling like guests. Long enough for us to stop saying “when we go back” quite so often.
We didn’t decide on a Friday.
We didn’t even decide on a Sunday.
But we did open a document that doesn’t close itself.
And that, it turns out, is how these things actually start.