The Colour-Coded Calendar

By Rowan Bennet

Six adults. Three couples. One colour-coded calendar.

Naomi runs everything - the school, the household, the meticulously scheduled arrangement that has three couples in a Home Counties village sharing far more than the school run. Seren draws what she sees and loves what she draws. Priya guards the perimeter. Tom makes tea in every crisis. Jack builds things that hold. Lena reads bodies for a living, and she's been reading Naomi's for months.

What started as a logistics problem - six people, five children, desire that won't fit into date night - has become something none of them expected: a structure that works. The calendar keeps them safe. The WhatsApp group keeps them sane. The Thursday rotation keeps them satisfied.

But satisfaction is a moving target. When Naomi discovers she wants something she's never had words for, and Seren realises she's been carrying a feeling she can't name, and two men who didn't expect each other find something that's staying - the arrangement doesn't break. It adjusts. Because that's what competent adults do.

The Colour-Coded Calendar is about desire that's worth the admin. About the fantasy of people like us, living like this. About the distance between the school gate and the bedroom, and the same people navigating both with the same fierce, ordinary, magnificent competence.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0956710832
• ISBN13: 9780956710833
• Release Date: April 2026
• Publisher: Second Needle
• Length: 386 Pages
• Weight: 1.13 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.0" x 6.0"