Her name was Imogen. Nice jumper. Nice nails. The sort of voice that makes a waiter stand up straighter. I liked her immediately in the way I like people who laugh at the first rude thing I say. That is my whole screening process. If they flinch, I talk about the weather. If they lean in, I give them Friday.
I gave her Friday.
How it started, which is never how I say it started
Look. I always tidy the beginning. Makes me sound less like I collected him off a pavement. The true start was a birthday in a basement off Great Portland Street that thought it was still 2019. Warm wine. A playlist that had given up. I was meant to be there for twenty minutes and a photo. I stayed because the boy at the end of the banquette had a mouth that looked like trouble and a watch that looked like rent.
Ed. That is the name I am using. It is close enough.
He was not my type on paper. A bit corporate. A bit pleased with himself. The kind of man who says he does not really do clubs and then knows every promoter by nickname. I still let him buy the second drink. I still let him talk about a deal I did not care about. I still went outside with him when he said the room was too loud, which it was, but that was not why we left.
You know the rest of that hour. Or you can guess it. I am not writing a manual. I am writing the bit I actually said out loud at lunch, which was worse, because I said it like it was a story I had already told twice and improved both times.
I told Imogen about the taxi. I told her about him asking if I wanted to go to his or if I was the sort of girl who needed a plan. I told her I said I was the sort of girl who needed a bathroom and a better lighting situation. She laughed. Proper laugh. Hand on the table. I thought, good, she gets it.
I kept going.
The version I should have stopped at
There is a clean version of Friday. We snogged in a doorway. He was decent. I left before breakfast because I had a facial booked and I am not an animal. That version is true enough. It is just not the version that makes a lunch move.
The version I used had the kitchen. His kitchen, not mine, thank God, because Sophie would have staged an intervention with a dustpan. He made toast like it was a personality. I sat on the counter in last night’s dress and stole his coffee. He asked if this was a one-off. I said most things are until they are not. He smiled like I had said something clever instead of something I say when I want someone to keep looking at me.
I told Imogen about the text he sent at noon. One line. No kiss. No essay. Just a location and a question mark. I told her I left him on read for forty minutes on purpose. I told her I then replied with a full stop energy that still somehow got me another drink on Saturday afternoon.
She said, God, he sounds familiar.
I said, they all sound familiar after a certain age.
She said it again, quieter. Familiar how.
I did not clock it. I was too busy being good at lunch.
The face change
It happened when I got to the part about his flat. The plant he was proud of. The framed photo of a family ski trip he had not taken down even though the girl in the front had the same mouth as him. I said that. I actually said, there was this photo and I thought, right, so he comes from people who do mountains in matching jackets.
Imogen put her glass down.
She said, wait.
I said, what.
She said, this Ed. Tall. Works near Liverpool Street. Thinks he is funnier than he is.
I felt the room tilt in a very small, very expensive way.
She said, that is my brother.
I did the laugh first. The automatic one. The one you do when someone tells you their dog died and you have already started a sentence about something else. Then I looked at her properly. Same mouth. Same way of holding a glass like it might judge them. I had sat opposite the family ski photo for three hours and then described it to the girl in it.
Peak. Proper peak.
She laughed too. Not the lunch laugh. The other one. The one that says I cannot believe you and I also cannot believe I am still sitting here.
I should have stopped. Any normal person stops. You apologise. You change the subject to work or holidays or whether the burrata is worth it. I did apologise. I said I was an idiot. I said I would never have told it like that if I had known. All of that was true.
Then I finished the anecdote anyway.
Commitment to the bit
I do not know what is wrong with me. That is a lie. I know exactly what is wrong with me. Once a story is mid-air I would rather crash it than leave it hanging like a bad fringe.
So I told her the last bit. The Saturday drink. The way he said his sister would lose her mind if she knew he was seeing someone who writes about seeing people. I had thought that was a joke. It was not a joke. It was a warning I walked past in heels.
Imogen listened to the end. I will give her that. She did not throw wine. She did not stand up and do a speech. She just sat there with her nice jumper and her nice nails and let me bury myself in real time.
When I finished she said, he told me he met a girl at a birthday. He said she was sharp. He did not say she would be sitting here describing his toast.
I said, to be fair the toast was not good.
She almost smiled. Then she asked if I was going to write about it.
I said, I already was, in my head, which is worse.
She asked if I would use names.
I said no. Then I said probably not. Then I said I would change enough that only three people would know, and two of them live with me.
She nodded like that was an answer. It was not an answer. It was me being honest in the least useful way.
What I did after, which was not graceful
I paid. She let me. That felt like a sentence.
Outside I stood on Marylebone High Street and opened the group chat like it was a church. I typed the whole thing in one go. No edits. Mia sent a string of crying emojis and then asked if Imogen was fit. Sophie sent a voice note that started with my full name, which is never good, and ended with you cannot keep treating other people’s relatives like material.
I know. I know I cannot. I also know I already have.
I did not text Ed. That is the part people will not believe. I wanted to. I wanted the clean version where I get there first and make it charming. I left it. Let his sister do it. Let him sit with the fact that his Friday night has a narrator now and the narrator has a Substack personality even when she is pretending she does not.
He texted at four.
You had lunch with Imogen?
I stared at it until the screen went dark. Then I wrote back, yes. Then I wrote, she is funnier than you. Then I deleted the second bit because I am trying, in theory, to be a person.
I sent, small world.
He sent, that is one word for it.
Then nothing. Which is its own genre of London romance. The fade that still wants credit for being mature.
The bit I keep turning over
Here is the thing I keep catching on. I was not trying to be cruel. I was trying to be good company. Those two get dressed in the same bathroom at my house. I make people lean in and then I am surprised when the room is smaller than I thought.
Sophie says I use stories the way other girls use perfume. Too much, too close, so nobody can tell what I actually smell like. She is annoying when she is right. Mia says I should have clocked the mouth. Mia is annoying when she is also right.
I keep seeing Imogen’s face at the moment of impact. Not angry. Interested. Like she had found a stain on a dress she still might wear. That is what got me. If she had shouted I could have been the villain and gone home satisfied. Instead she let me finish, which is a worse kind of manners.
Would I tell it again, knowing? No. Yes. I do not know. I would tell a different version. I would start later. I would leave out the plant. I would not mention the photo. I would still want the laugh at the start, because that laugh is the whole job. Get them in. Keep them in. Do not look down until you have landed.
I looked down in Marylebone with a card machine receipt in my bag and a story that had already left the building.
Where it sits now
Ed has not asked to see me again. I have not asked either. Imogen liked one of my photos two days later, which is either a threat or a truce. In London it can be both before pudding arrives.
The flat has a new rule, invented by Sophie and enforced by nobody. Run the name past the room before you perform the night. I said fine. Then I told them about a different boy from a different Thursday because the silence after lunch was making me itchy.
They groaned. I made tea. I redid my lipstick in the kettle. It is a terrible mirror. It still works.
I keep thinking about commitment to the bit, which is a phrase people use when they want a medal for not shutting up. I did not shut up. I finished the anecdote in front of his sister and I watched her decide, in real time, what kind of girl I was. She decided I was the kind who would publish it with the names filed off and the toast left in.
She was not wrong.
If you are Imogen and you have got this far, I am sorry. And I am not. Both of those can sit on the same small plate. I told the wrong story to the right person and I still wanted it to land. That is the confession. Not the Friday. The lunch. The fact I heard the word sister and kept talking like the sentence had a booking it could not cancel.
Anyway. That was lunch. I have another one on Thursday. Different girl. Different wine bar. I have already promised Sophie I will ask who her brothers are before I start.
I probably will not ask soon enough.
