Tom

Tom is Queenie Jenkins’s long-term partner, the man with whom she imagines marriage and children, and ultimately the person whose decision to move on makes their separation final. Their relationship is marked by the gap between future plans they can discuss and painful experiences Queenie struggles to share. When Tom finally describes that gap as a pattern of being shut out, the breakup becomes not a sudden reversal but the culmination of accumulated hurt and failed communication.

Identity and Shared Future

Tom appears in Queenie Jenkins’s life as a partner whose plans extend well beyond the immediate present. At dinner with his family, his grandmother Joyce imagines their future children as a combination of Queenie’s features and Tom’s: lighter skin, Queenie’s hair and eyelashes, and Tom’s straight nose. Queenie is shocked by the casualness of the racialized description, but the table gives no sign that others find it objectionable. Later, she asks Tom what is wrong with her nose. He reassures her that he likes it, yet initially misunderstands that her question concerns the future child Joyce had just described. The exchange shows how an apparently affectionate family fantasy can leave Queenie feeling scrutinized, while Tom does not immediately grasp what has unsettled her.

Tom has a detailed idea of the life they might build. He says that in six years they will have a house, that he will have persuaded Queenie to marry him, and that they will have three children. His reasoning is practical and specific: one child would be selfish, two would compete, and three could look after one another once the eldest was eight. The confidence of this picture contrasts with the insecurity that later defines their relationship. It is a shared future spoken of as though it were settled, even as the couple’s ability to address present pain is deteriorating.

A Relationship Under Strain

By the time Tom asks for a break, he and Queenie argue every day. Their conflict has become severe enough that he regularly returns to his parents’ home on weekends and sometimes stays there during the week, commuting from Peterborough. After one particularly bad argument, he says he needs a break and thinks Queenie should move out. They spend the night talking and bickering, then agree that she will leave for three months before they revisit the relationship. The arrangement gives their separation a stated limit, but not a shared understanding of what they will be deciding when that period ends.

During an argument in the water, Tom explains that the preceding months have been awful for him. He is still trying to forgive Queenie for what happened at his mother’s birthday, but his larger complaint is that she has refused to talk to him throughout the relationship. He recalls her closing herself off, crying and locking herself in the bathroom while he sat outside and told her he was there if she wanted to speak. In his account, her withdrawal and his attempts to remain available have become a repeated pattern; he feels that she has pushed him away. Queenie is startled to hear how he has experienced their relationship. His words make visible a grievance she had not understood, without undoing the hurt or the silence between them.

Separation and Failed Reconciliation

The three-month break does not stop Queenie from treating Tom as central to her life. Near its end, she writes that she misses him and asks whether he has had enough time. The next Christmas, she buys him a present partly from guilt but mainly from ritual. She is preparing to spend the holidays without him and his family for the first time in three years, and recognizes that the separation also releases her from the work of choosing gifts for his parents and enduring casual racism in his family. The present preserves a habit even as the relationship that gave it meaning is breaking apart.

Queenie eventually returns to the apartment they shared, arriving in the rain and finding Tom outside their old door. She tells him that the months apart have been terrible, confesses to one-night stands and other relationships, admits that she has been lonely and waiting for him, and apologizes for what she has done. Tom says this is the first time she has actually apologized, including for pushing him away, lashing out, and her mood swings. When she moves toward him, he stops her and says it is too late; in his view, it had been too late months earlier. The reunion attempt therefore becomes a reckoning rather than a restoration: Queenie finally speaks openly, but Tom does not take her belated honesty as a reason to resume their relationship.

The final revelation sharpens the mismatch in their understanding of the break. Queenie had thought they would revisit their relationship after three months. Tom says he understood the agreement as a chance to see how each of them was doing, not as a promise to start again. He then tells her that Anna is his girlfriend and has been for a while. His new relationship confirms that the break has already become a separation in practice, even while Queenie has continued to hope for reconciliation.

Conflict, Care, and Boundaries

Tom’s role is not limited to leaving. In one moment when Queenie feels sick and asks him not to touch her, he asks whether she wants anything, placing a hand on her shoulder. She tells him to get off and wriggles away. His offer of care meets a clear refusal; the scene makes the distance between concern and welcome concrete, without suggesting that his intention overrides her boundary.

The breakup also involves failures on both sides as they understand them. Queenie later tells her therapist that she pushed Tom away, did not know why she felt so bad, and could not explain what was wrong until it was too late. She connects this period with her miscarriage: although she had not wanted a baby, she still experienced the loss of the pregnancy as a loss. That account adds context to the distress and communication failures surrounding the relationship, but does not erase Tom’s experience of being shut out or turn the separation into a simple matter of blame.

Ending and Narrative Significance

At the book’s later family gathering, Queenie looks again at Tom’s contact page. His photograph was taken on their first anniversary on Clapham Common, where they first met, just after he promised that whatever happened between them, he would never abandon her. The picture holds the intimacy of their earlier promise beside the fact that the relationship has ended. Queenie decides it is time to move on and deletes his contact. The gesture gives the separation a practical finality: she does not erase what the relationship meant, but stops using the old promise as a reason to keep waiting.

Tom’s arc is disclosed largely through the contrast between future-facing intimacy and belated confrontation. The house, marriage, and three children he once imagined are set against commuting from Peterborough, daily arguments, an unclear break, and Queenie’s return to find that he has a girlfriend. His account of her withdrawal complicates Queenie’s view of the breakup, while her eventual apology arrives after he has decided the relationship is over. By ending with Queenie deleting his number, the narrative shifts its emphasis from whether Tom will come back to whether she can accept the ending and return her attention to the people who remain present in her life.