Look. I keep telling Sophie it was a party. She keeps telling me it was twelve people standing in a warehouse kitchen in Hackney Wick at six in the morning watching a Bluetooth speaker die like it owed them money. Both things can be true. I was there. I have the photos I am not posting, and I have the Deliveroo bag I should have thrown away, and I have the particular ringing in my ears that only happens when the music has already given up and nobody has the dignity to go home.
We did not plan it. That is the first lie people tell about afters. They always sound plotted, like someone sent a pin and a dress code. This one started because the actual night ended too early and nobody wanted to be the first person on the Overground looking like they had made a series of poor decisions. Mia knew a boy who knew a girl who had keys to a unit off Queen’s Yard. Not a club. Not even a proper studio. Just a kitchen that used to belong to someone who cooked for events, with a big steel table and a tap that took three seconds to remember it was a tap.
I said yes before I asked where. That is my brand, apparently.
How you end up in a kitchen at 4am
The official bit finished around half two. You know the one. Lights up, coats, that horrible politeness at the door where everyone pretends they have a plan. I had a plan. The plan was another drink. Mia had a lighter and a location and the sort of confidence that only works if you do not inspect it. Sophie had already gone home, which is how Sophie stays Sophie, and also how I end up texting her at dawn like a child who has found a frog.
Hackney Wick at that hour is all brick and canal breath and people who look like they might be going to work if you squint. We were not going to work. There were eight of us when we left the last place. By the time we found the right shutter there were twelve, because that is how these things inflate. Someone always knows someone who is “just around the corner.” They never are. They arrive forty minutes later with a bottle that has already been opened and a story about an Uber that cancelled.
The kitchen lights were the cheap bright kind. No atmosphere. No smoke machine. Just stainless steel and a noticeboard with somebody’s old risk assessment still pinned up, which I thought was funny until I realised I was leaning on it to take my heels off.
The speaker situation
There was one speaker. Of course there was one speaker. It belonged to a boy in a navy jumper who kept saying it was “fully charged, no stress.” It was not fully charged. It lasted through two proper tunes and half of a third, then it started doing that pathetic little fade that cheap electronics do when they want you to feel personally rejected.
We stood there like idiots watching the light blink. Someone tried a lead. Someone else tried a different phone. Mia put her hand on it like that would help. I laughed, which made me look cruel, which I slightly was. Without music a room full of people who came to keep the night going just becomes a room full of people. You can hear how tired everyone actually is. You can hear the kettle. You can hear a girl in the corner telling a story she has already told twice.
I still danced for a bit. On principle. If you stop moving you have to admit the night is over, and I was not ready for that particular honesty. A boy I did not know clapped when the speaker finally packed in. Not in a mean way. More like, well. That’s that then.
Twelve people and nowhere to put your bag
Here is the guest list as I remember it, which is not well.
Mia, obviously. The boy with the keys, who kept saying we could not be loud even though we had already lost the only thing making noise. Two girls from the original night who I am fairly sure work in “content” and will never follow me back. A photographer who did not take any photos, which I respected. A tall one in a leather jacket who said he had a studio downstairs and then never went downstairs. A girl eating olives from a jar she found in a cupboard. Me. And three people I could not pick out of a line-up if you paid me, which is the most London thing about the whole evening.
There was nowhere to sit that did not feel like you were in the way. I ended up on the counter next to the sink, legs hanging, watching the olive girl offer the jar around like it was hospitality. It was hospitality. That is what afters actually are when you strip them. Not a secret club. Just people refusing the ending, passing around whatever is left.
I kept catching myself in the microwave door. Hair done. Lipstick not done. That smug face I do when I know I should have gone home with Sophie and chose the worse story instead. I fixed the lipstick anyway. Maintenance. Content. Habit. Call it what you want.
Then the Deliveroo arrived
Six on the clock, give or take, and someone’s phone lit up with that little rider map. The whole kitchen went quiet in a way the speaker never managed. We all watched the dot. It is embarrassing how exciting a plastic bag becomes when you have been awake long enough.
The rider looked at the unit number, looked at us, and made the face of a man who has delivered fried chicken to stranger kitchens before and would like to stop. I tipped him on the app and smiled like this was normal. He did not smile back. Fair.
It was not even a glamorous order. Chips. A burger that had suffered. Something sweet that had melted into the box. We ate it standing up, sharing bits with our fingers, the way you do when plates would make it too real. The leather jacket boy said it was the best meal he had all week. I believed him. I also believed he says that every week.
I had three chips and the corner of the bun and immediately wanted a shower and a solicitor. Instead I sat back on the counter and thought, this is the bit I will keep. Not the club. This. The ugly light. The bag on the steel table. Twelve people pretending a warehouse kitchen is a venue because the alternative is the night bus and a conversation with yourself.
What you talk about when the music dies
Without a soundtrack people get honest, or they get louder, which is the same thing after a certain hour.
Someone admitted they had told their boss they had food poisoning. Someone else asked if anyone had seen a girl in a green dress from earlier, which is never a casual question. The photographer said he was “taking a break from dating,” then spent twenty minutes describing a date. I told a version of last weekend that made me sound funnier than I was. Mia kicked my ankle. She does that when I start performing.
I almost told them about the boy from Mayfair. The one who used my face wash. I did not. Some stories need a better room. This kitchen had heard enough.
The keys boy started stacking cups like that would make us leave. It did not. We are not a crowd that responds to domestic hints. We respond to daylight, and even then only if it is rude about it.
Daylight is a snitch
It came in through the high windows the way it always does in those buildings. Grey first, then that thin east London white. You could see the canal if you squinted past the frames. You could also see everyone’s face properly, which is rarely a gift.
That is when it stopped being a party in the way other people mean it. Makeup doing what makeup does at sunrise. Conversations dropping to the practical. Who has an Uber. Who lives this side. Who is pretending they have a meeting. I had nothing until the afternoon and I still said I should go, because saying it makes you feel like a person with a calendar.
We left in dribs. Nobody does a group goodbye at that hour. You just peel off and hope you still like each other on Thursday. Mia and I shared a car as far as we could justify. I watched Hackney Wick slide past looking industrial and a bit pleased with itself, which is how I felt, if I am being honest, and I am trying to be.
Sophie, obviously
I walked into the flat at a time that made the kettle feel judgemental. Sophie was already dressed. Of course she was. She took one look at me and said, “Was there even music?”
I told her about the speaker. I told her about the Deliveroo. I told her I still call it a party. She said it sounded like a cry for help. Then she made tea, which is her way of being right without crowing about it.
Mia crawled in an hour later and sided with me, but Mia would side with a house fire if it had good lighting. We sat at the little table and did the Sunday tribunal early. Names. Order of events. Who was fit. Who was mid. Who will become a problem if I post anything. I ate toast I did not want. I checked my face in my phone camera and hated how alive I still looked. Alive is useful. Alive photographs.
Sophie asked if I was going to write it up. I said maybe. I was already writing it in my head, which is the closest I get to rest.
Why I am keeping the name
I know what it looked like. A kitchen. A dead speaker. A bag of chips going cold on steel. Twelve people who could not face the fact the night had finished without them. You can call that sad if you want. Plenty do. My own flatmate does it with love and a raised eyebrow.
I call it a party because we stayed. That is the whole trick. You take a room that is not meant for you, you fail at the music, you eat someone else’s order at sunrise, and you still manage to make it feel like the city bent a bit. Not a big bend. Just enough that the morning has a story attached instead of a blank.
Would I do it again? Yes. Will I pretend it was chic? No. It was fluorescent and a bit grim and I laughed more than I should have at a speaker giving up. That is the truth of half the good nights I have had in this city. They do not look like the pictures. They look like a warehouse kitchen in the Wick, twelve coats on one chair, and me on the counter telling myself this counts.
It counts.