The cloakroom line at this place is always a joke. Everyone knows it. Nobody does anything about it. You stand there with your coat over one arm and your dignity over the other and you pretend this is still glamorous. I redid my lip gloss in the back of my phone camera because the lighting in that corridor is filthy and I refuse to look filthy even when I am about to behave that way.
He was already in the queue. That is the part people always want to skip to. Fine. He was already in the queue.
The boy in the black shirt
I clocked him because he was not doing the usual Soho performance. No shouting. No filming himself. Just standing there with his jacket folded like he had been told off as a child for dropping things. Tall enough. Dark hair. The sort of face that looks better after midnight than it would at brunch, which is my favourite kind if I am being honest, and I usually am.
He looked at my earrings first. Both of them, still attached at that point. Then my mouth. Then he said, “This queue is criminal,” which is not poetry, but it is accurate, and accuracy at 12.40am is rarer than a working lock.
I said, “You should see the toilets.”
That was the whole courtship. I have had longer conversations with Uber drivers.
We got talking properly once we were back on the floor. He was with two mates who had already vanished into the smoke. I was with Mia, who had already found a different disaster and looked delighted about it. Sophie had stayed home, which is how Sophie stays employed. I had a vodka soda I did not need and a dress that kept travelling up my thighs every time anyone walked past. I kept tugging it down. Then I stopped tugging it down. You can guess which version photographed better in my head.
Look, I know how this reads. Rich girl, late night, stranger, cubicle. I can hear the comments already. I still did it. I would do it again if the lock worked and the lighting was this unflattering. There is something about a bad mirror that makes me want to be worse.
One cubicle that actually locked
The ladies was a state. Wet floor, one smashed dispenser, a girl crying into her phone about a boy who was almost certainly still in the building. Two of the three cubicle doors were hanging on by hope and a bit of gaffer tape. The third one clicked. Properly clicked. I laughed when I heard it. I actually laughed.
He had followed me in with the sort of confidence that only works if the other person has already decided. I had already decided somewhere between the cloakroom ticket and the second drink. I am not going to dress that up as fate. It was horniness and a working lock. Sometimes those two things arrive together and you would be stupid to waste them.
We did not talk much once the door was shut. There is no speech that improves a toilet cubicle. The floor was sticky. The cistern kept sweating. Someone in the next stall was having a full conversation about whether to text their ex. I had my palm flat against the door because I did not trust the lock as much as I wanted to, even though it had done its job.
He kissed like he had been waiting all night for permission he did not actually need. Hands under the dress. Mouth on my neck. I had one heel braced against the pipe and the other doing its best on a floor that wanted me dead. It was not elegant. It was not supposed to be. If you want elegant, book a hotel and stop lying to yourself about what Saturday in Soho is for.
I went down on him first because the geometry of that stall does not favour romance and because I am good at it. That is not a humble thing to write. I am not in a humble mood. He made a noise he tried to swallow and failed. Someone washed their hands on the other side of the door like nothing was happening, which is the most London thing about the whole night. People here will ignore a fire if it is socially awkward to mention it.
When he fucked me it was quick and a bit desperate and exactly as good as a locked cubicle is ever going to be. I came with my teeth in his shoulder so I would not give the crying girl extra content. He came with this stunned little laugh, like he could not believe we had actually gone through with it. I could believe it. I have a high sex drive and a low tolerance for waiting until we are “somewhere nicer.” Somewhere nicer is how you talk yourself out of the thing you already want.
We stood there for a second after, breathing like we had run for a night bus. I pulled the dress down. He did his belt. I checked my face in my phone again because of course I did. Smudged, shiny, still good. That is the maintenance people mistake for vanity.
The earring, the attendant, the walk of no shame
I only noticed the earring once we were back in the corridor. Left one gone. Little gold thing my mother bought me when I graduated, which is a grim detail if you want to moralise, and a funny one if you do not. I went back. Obviously I went back. I am not leaving jewellery in a Soho toilet for some other girl to find and call vintage.
It was on the floor next to the pan, sitting there like evidence. I picked it up with two fingers and a full-body flinch. Then I washed my hands for longer than any doctor would require.
The cloakroom attendant had been watching the corridor the whole time. Older woman, black polo, expression of someone who has seen every version of this city and stopped being shocked in about 2014. Our eyes met when I came out. She did not smile. She did not frown. She just looked at me the way you look at a spill you are not paid enough to mop.
I tipped her twenty. Cash, because that is the only language that corridor understands. She took it, nodded once, and handed a coat to a boy who had no idea what he had just walked past. I respect that. If I ever get famous enough to need staff, I want them exactly that unimpressed.
Mia found me by the door and said, “You were ages.”
I said, “Queue was criminal.”
She looked at my neck, then at the earring I was still holding, then at him standing a polite three metres away like we had only shared a cigarette. Mia is not stupid. She just knows when not to do the interrogation in public. We will do it in the kitchen tomorrow with tea and too much honesty. That is what the flat is for.
What I did with the rest of the night
We did not go home together. That surprises people more than the cubicle. He asked. I thought about it. Then I thought about Sophie asleep with her noise-cancelling on, and the group chat, and the fact that a story is cleaner when you leave before anyone starts making plans.
I gave him my number because I am not a coward and because he had decent hands. He texted before I even got to Tottenham Court Road. One line. No essay. I like that in a man and almost never get it.
The night bus was half full of people pretending they had also had a normal evening. I sat by the window with my coat on my lap and the earring in my fist like a charm. Makeup still on. Hair doing something illegal. I caught myself in the dark glass and thought, yes, that is her, that is the girl who will write this up before she has even slept.
I am aware that is the wound under the fun. I do things, then I need them to exist outside my body. A locked door in Soho is only a locked door until I put it on the internet. After that it is content. I know how that sounds. I still opened the notes app on the bus.
Sunday morning Sophie asked if I had a good night. I said yes. She said I had a mark on my neck. I said the queue was long. She made coffee and did not push it, which is why she still lives with me and half the people I meet at parties would not last a week in our kitchen.
The earring went back in once I had washed it like it had been through a war. It had. Little gold survivor. I wore both of them to brunch as if nothing had happened, which is the other half of being good at this. You do the messy thing. Then you show up looking expensive and let people wonder.
Would I queue that long again for a cubicle with a lock that works? Yes. Obviously yes. Soho on a Saturday is not for careful girls. I have never been one of those, and I am too old now to start practising.
If the attendant is reading this, keep the twenty. You earned it. And if the boy in the black shirt is reading this, you already know which night I mean. Do not be weird in the comments. Just text like a person.