I was half asleep with a face mask cracking on my chin when the buzzer went. One in the morning. Nobody good buzzes at one in the morning. Sophie was already in bed with her noise cancelling on, which is her whole personality after 11. Mia was in the kitchen in those grey shorts she pretends are pyjamas. I heard her laugh before I heard the door.
Then I heard him.
Tom. The one from March. The one who did the speech on the pavement outside The Princess and then posted a story of an empty pint like that counted as closure. Tesco flowers. I know they were Tesco because I saw the little sticker on the cellophane the next morning, half peeled, stuck to our hall radiator. Red and yellow. The kind you grab because the garage is still open and you need a prop.
He had a speech as well. Of course he did.
I should have stayed in my room
I didn’t. I stood at the top of the stairs like a nosy landlady and watched Mia open the door in her socks. He started mid sentence. Something about how he’d been walking. Something about how he couldn’t sleep. Something about how she still had a hoodie of his and he only wanted that back, which was a lie so thin you could see the streetlight through it.
Mia let him in.
I filmed nothing. That is the part I keep coming back to. Six months ago I would have had the notes app open and the camera rolling from the landing because I do anything for a story and I am not cute about it. Last night I just stood there with the mask tightening across my mouth and thought, don’t. Not this one. Not her.
Growth, apparently. It felt a lot like being left out.
He sat on our sofa. Shoes still on. The flowers across his lap like a peace offering that had already given up. Mia made him tea. Builder’s, two sugars, the mug with the chip. I know because I heard the spoon. I know because this flat is small and sound travels like gossip.
What I could hear from the landing
He said he’d changed. He said work had been a lot. He said he knew he’d been a mug last time. He used the word mug about himself, which is always a performance. Men only call themselves that when they want you to disagree.
Mia said she was tired. She said it was late. She said he couldn’t stay. Then she said he could sit for ten minutes. Then ten minutes became the kettle boiling again.
I went back to bed. I did not go back to sleep.
At some point Sophie must have taken the headphones off because I got a text at 1:41.
is that tom
yes
flowers???
tesco
peak
That was the whole exchange. Sophie does not waste words when she is right.
I lay there listening to the rise and fall of it. Not shouting. Worse. Soft voices. The kind that mean someone is winning and it is not the person who lives here.
Around two I heard the front door. I thought that was it. I thought he’d gone and we could all pretend this was a funny story in the morning. Then I heard the toilet flush and the tap and Mia’s bedroom door, not the front one.
Right.
So.
The morning after is always louder
I got up at ten because I am not an animal. Sophie was already in the kitchen in the big shirt, scrolling, pretending she hadn’t been waiting for an audience. The flowers were in a pint glass. She had trimmed the stems. That is how you know Sophie is furious. She tidies.
Mia came out at half ten looking like a person who had slept for three hours and was going to die on that fact. Hair in a claw clip. Last night’s mascara doing that smudged thing she thinks is chic. She said morning. She put bread in the toaster. She did not mention the man who had been on our sofa talking about hoodies.
Sophie said, so.
Mia said, don’t.
I said, Tesco flowers though.
She almost smiled. Then she didn’t.
He left at half six, she said. Nothing happened. He was sad. I felt bad. That’s it.
Sophie looked at me. I looked at the pint glass. The water was already going brown.
Nothing happened is the most crowded sentence in this flat. I have used it. Mia has used it. Sophie has used it once and then rewritten the whole weekend in her head until it fitted. We all know what it means. It means something happened and we are not ready to give it a proper name.
Then the group chat woke up
Our chat is called who’s coming home tonight, which felt funny when we named it and now feels like evidence.
Sophie dropped a photo of the flowers at 11:03. No caption. Mia replied with a voice note that was 47 seconds of her saying she was fine, it was nothing, he was just drunk, she should have left him on the step, she knows, she knows, she knows.
I listened to it twice on the loo like a coward.
She does that thing with her voice when she is not fine. It goes bright and quick and a bit posh, like she is presenting the evening news about her own life. I have heard it after the other two as well. There was the one in June who kept liking her gym stories for a month after she blocked his number. There was the one before Tom who turned up at her work drinks and called it a coincidence. Pattern is not a personality. It is just what you keep choosing when you are lonely and the night is long and someone is standing there with a speech.
I typed three different replies and deleted all of them.
The one I sent was: you don’t have to be fine by lunch.
She hearted it. Then she posted a story of her coffee. No face. Just the mug and the window and Parsons Green looking damp and photogenic. That is how she tells the world she is unbothered. I know because I do the same thing with lipstick and a slightly better angle.
I am not better than this
Here is the bit I was going to leave out and then didn’t, because honesty is the vice I actually keep.
I have opened that door. Not for Tom. For other versions of him. The ones who text from the night bus. The ones who remember your buzzer code from three months ago and test it like a theory. I have made the tea. I have said ten minutes. I have listened to a speech I did not believe because the alternative was going back to a quiet room and thinking about whether I am becoming somebody or just becoming loud.
So I am not sitting here in moral linen. I am sitting here in yesterday’s jumper, slightly annoyed that I didn’t get the footage and more annoyed that I wanted it.
Mia is the messy one on paper. Sophie is the one who judges quietly and then buys replacement oat milk. I am the one who writes it down and calls it content. We have roles. They slip. Last night they slipped and nobody liked the new arrangement.
Tom texted her at 12:14 today. I know because she left her phone face up on the counter while she went to find a charger. I did not read the lock screen. I clocked the name. That is not the same thing, even if it feels like it.
She says she is not going to reply.
She will reply.
Not tonight, maybe. Tomorrow, after a shower and a playlist that makes her feel like the main character of a worse film. She will write something short and cool and he will call it mixed signals. I could script it. I wish I couldn’t.
The bit nobody puts in the caption
Shared flats do this thing where your private life stops being private the second it needs a hallway. You can bring someone home and still pretend it is just you. You cannot bring an ex home at 1am with garage flowers and keep the story inside your own skull. The walls are thin. The kettle is loud. Somebody is always half awake with a face mask on, deciding whether this is funny or sad or both, which it usually is.
Sophie has already put the pint glass in the sink. The flowers are in the bin under the coffee grounds. Mia is in the bath with the door locked and a podcast I can hear through the pipe. I am at the table writing this instead of asking her if she wants company, because I am better at sentences than I am at sitting on the bathroom floor.
She says she is fine.
She isn’t.
I am not going to post the photo of the radiator sticker. That would be cheap even for me. I took it anyway. Old habits. I will look at it later and feel a bit grim and a bit pleased that I noticed the detail, which is the whole problem with me in one sentence.
If you have a Mia, do not send this to her. If you are a Mia, you already know. The speech is never the point. The point is that he still remembered the buzzer, and you still opened the door, and the rest of us had to live with the sound of it.
Anyway. Sophie wants to order. Mia says she is not hungry. I am putting her name on the order anyway. She always eats the dumplings when they arrive.
