Nobody closed the curtains. That is the first thing I remember properly. Not the song. Not the boy. The light. Proper daylight, the rude kind, coming through that thin Soho grey and landing on a table that had given up hours ago. Someone’s jacket on the floor. A lighter that was not mine. A drink I did not remember ordering sitting there like it had been waiting politely.
It was six. Maybe ten past. Time had stopped being a useful measurement around three, when the place should have emptied and instead just changed temperature.
Someone at the other end of the booth said, “shall we get another round in,” like we were at a lunch that had overrun. No irony. No check of a phone. Just the sentence, dropped into the room as if night was still a solid object you could lean on.
I said yes. Of course I said yes. I contain very little impulse control and a lot of curiosity. Also I was already writing the opening line in my head. Daylight through the curtains they forgot to close. That one arrived fully formed. Rude of it, really.
How we got there, which is to say badly
We had started in the normal way. A bar that still has a door policy and a playlist that thinks it is cooler than the people in it. Mia in the good heels she keeps borrowing. Me in black because black photographs and also hides whatever happens to it by morning. Sophie had said she was coming and then she had not, which is her love language. She will hear about this later and pretend she is shocked.
There was a birthday that was not ours. There was a promoter who recognised Mia from a night in Dalston and decided we were an asset. There was a booth that felt like a promotion. Then there was the second place, the one with no windows you could trust, and then this last room that I am not entirely sure we were meant to still be in.
Soho does this. It lets you think you are leaving and then hands you one more door. You take it because the alternative is the night bus and a conversation with yourself you are not ready for.
I had been kissing someone whose name I had and then briefly lost and then had again. He worked in something that sounded like money if you did not listen too hard. He had a nice mouth and a bad habit of checking the football scores between songs. I did not mind. At that hour you are not interviewing. You are collecting.
The room at dawn, if you can call it that
Staff had that look. The one that says they have already done the maths on how long they can legally keep the lights this low. One of them was wiping a surface that would never be clean. Another was pretending not to see that we were still vertical.
The music had gone soft. Not off. Soft. Like the night was trying to talk itself down.
Daylight makes everyone uglier and more honest. You can see the mascara map. You can see who has been crying and who has just been dancing with their mouth open. I caught myself in a mirror behind the bar and thought, well. There she is. Still going. A bit shiny. A bit smug. Alive enough to be annoying about it.
Mia had taken her shoes off. That is how you know a night has crossed a line. She only does that when the floor has already won. She was telling a story about a boy from last month with her hands, the full performance, and two people who did not know her were nodding like it was a TED talk. I love her for that. She can hold a room at 6am with nothing but gossip and a smudged lip.
The boy with the nice mouth put his hand on my knee under the table. I let it stay. Not because it was a proposal. Because the light was strange and I wanted a plot point.
They ordered more drinks
I need you to understand the commitment. The sun was up. People outside were already on their way to shifts and gyms and whatever respectable version of London gets advertised in the evening papers. Inside, a man in a wrinkled shirt raised two fingers at the bar like last orders had not happened in another lifetime.
They brought them. That is the part that still makes me laugh. The machine kept working. Glasses down. Ice that was mostly water. Something brown. Something clear. A beer for the one person trying to pretend this was still sport.
I took a sip of whatever landed in front of me and it tasted like the decision you make when you have already made it.
Time was not real. That is not a caption. That is a medical fact of certain rooms in W1. Clocks exist. They just stop being in charge. You look at your phone and it says 06:14 and your body says midnight and your mouth says “one more” and all three of those things feel equally true.
A girl I did not arrive with started crying into a napkin about a situationship in Peckham. Nobody flinched. Six in the morning is when the truth leaks. I gave her a tissue from my bag that had lipstick on it already. Community service.
What I should have done
Gone home. Obviously. Water. Makeup wipe. The self respecting version of Chels who has a journalism degree and a flat in Parsons Green and a Sophie who will make tea without a speech.
I did not do that.
I went outside for air that felt too clean and stood on the street while Soho did its costume change. Delivery bikes. A man dragging a bin. Two girls in last night’s clothes walking towards the station like it was a red carpet. I clocked them. They clocked me. A little nod. The sisterhood of the unclosed curtains.
I smoked half a cigarette I did not want. Posted nothing. That felt like discipline. Then I took a photo of the street with the club door still open behind me, no faces, just the light, and saved it. I would need it later. I always need it later.
The boy came out and asked if I wanted to go to his. I said I wanted breakfast first, which is my way of buying a chapter. He said he knew a place that opened early. Of course he did. Men who survive till six always know a place that opens early. It is in the training.
Eggs, daylight, the comedown that is not quite a comedown
We sat in a café that did not care who we had been four hours ago. He ate like a person with a plan. I ate like a person stalling. The coffee was too hot and I drank it anyway because I needed my hands to do something other than hover over my phone.
He asked what I was thinking. Dangerous question at that hour. I told him I was thinking about the curtains. He laughed like I was being cute. I was not being cute. I was filing.
Mia texted a photo of the booth after we left. Empty glasses. One shoe that was hers. A smear of something on the table I will not investigate. Caption: “soho at six still going x.” She had beaten me to my own title. I sent her a middle finger and then a heart. That is our full emotional range.
Sophie sent: “are you alive.” I sent a photo of the eggs. She sent: “come home.” I sent: “soon.” Soon is a flexible word. I have stretched it across whole postcodes.
The bit I will not tidy up
People love a night out when it has a neat ending. Taxi. Keys. Face wash. A lesson. I do not have a lesson. I have a room that forgot the sun existed and then got caught by it. I have a round of drinks ordered in daylight. I have a knee under a table and a story I can sell because I stayed long enough to see the light do something unflattering and interesting.
Was it a good night? Define good. Nobody got hurt. Somebody cried. I still had my purse. Mia still had one shoe. The boy still had my number, which he will use or he will not. I am not holding my breath. I am holding the image of those curtains and the way the dust showed up in the beam like the room had been lying all evening.
I got home after eight. Sophie was already dressed like a person with meetings. She looked at me, looked at the clock, and put toast in without asking. That is love, I think. Or at least flatmate logistics with a bit of grace.
I washed my face. I left the mascara that would not come off. I sat on my bed in yesterday and wrote the first line again to see if it still worked.
Daylight through the curtains they forgot to close. Someone ordered more drinks like time was not real.
It was not.
It still is not, if I am honest, not until I sleep. And I am not sleeping yet. I am finishing this. Then I will. Probably.
