Mia sent the pin. Not even a name. Just a dropped pin and the words “trust me” which, coming from her, should be a warning label. Sophie had already gone home at midnight like a person with a calendar. I said I was five minutes behind her. I was not. I was in the smoking area of a place in Shoreditch that had started playing that tired peak-time house they put on when they want you to leave, and some boy in a too-tight shirt was telling me about his seed round. I nodded like I care about seed rounds. I do not. I care about whether the night still has a pulse.
It did. Apparently.
The pin that kept moving
The first address was a side door by a building site. The second was a loading bay. By the time we actually found the stairwell I had walked through two courtyards and a car park that smelled like wet concrete and somebody’s vape. Friend of a friend, that was the whole explanation. You hear that phrase enough in London and you stop asking for a CV. Either the door opens or it does not.
It opened.
Six flights. I counted because I was in heels I had no business wearing past last orders. There was a girl in front of me carrying a bottle of something clear like it was a handbag. Behind me a lad with a Bluetooth speaker the size of a toaster, already playing something tinny through the stairwell so the whole ascent had a soundtrack. I laughed. Not a cute laugh. The sort you do when you realise you have committed.
At the top there was a fire door with the alarm taped over. I am not proud of noticing that. I am a journalist on paper. I notice things. Then I walk through them anyway.
No licence, no list, no nothing
There was no cloakroom. There was no bar. There was a plastic table with bottles on it and a speaker balanced on a plant pot that I am fairly sure was stolen from the lobby. Someone had strung up those cheap festoon lights you buy when you are moving house and want the empty rooms to feel less tragic. The City was just there, all of it, looking cheaper than it does in the daytime. Gherkin, Walkie Talkie, that ugly cluster of glass they keep adding like nobody asked. From up there it looks like a model village built by a man who only owns grey jumpers.
I did a slow circle. Maybe twenty people. Maybe thirty. The numbers at these things are always a lie because half of them are in the stairwell or on the phone pretending they know where they are. I recognised two faces. One from a birthday in Peckham last month. One from Instagram, the sort of girl who posts her coffee before she drinks it. She clocked me the same second I clocked her. We did that little nod. Not friends. Not strangers. London in a look.
The music was not good. I need to be honest about that or the whole piece is a fantasy. It was fine. Phone through a speaker, then somebody’s proper set-up once the boy with the toaster arrived and plugged into a battery pack. House, then something faster, then a tune I actually like and refused to admit I like because it is the sort of thing they play at weddings now. I danced anyway.
That is the bit I keep coming back to. I danced like the content was already posted. Shoulders, mouth a bit open, that face I do when I know a photo is happening even if nobody has lifted a phone yet. Performative. I know. Sophie would say I cannot go to the loo without considering the angle. She is not wrong. She is just annoying about being right.
The view makes idiots of people
There is a specific type of man who appears the second you are near a view. He stands too close to the edge and talks about property. This one worked in “the City” which could mean anything from actually trading to fetching coffees for people who trade. He pointed at a building and said his firm had a floor in it. I said congratulations like he had given birth. He asked what I did. I said I write. He said that must be fun. I said it depends who I am writing about.
He laughed too hard. They always do when they have not decided if they fancy you or if they want to explain interest rates.
I let him talk for four minutes because the light behind his head was doing something decent and I was lining up a photo I did not take. Battery at 11 percent. Always. I live my entire social life at 11 percent. Then Mia appeared with two drinks that I think were just warm white wine in plastic cups and pulled me away by the elbow like I was about to sign a contract.
“He is married,” she said.
“I was not going to marry him.”
“You were going to let him think you might.”
She is not wrong either. It is a talent. Or a vice. I have stopped separating the two.
What four in the morning actually feels like
People romanticise 4am like it is a personality. It is not. It is cold. Even in September. Especially on a roof with no walls and a wind that comes off the river and goes straight through whatever dress you thought was a good idea at 9pm. My feet hurt. My mouth tasted like limes and bad decisions. Somebody kept offering gum like that would fix the night.
A girl I did not know sat on the ledge with her legs hanging over and everyone did that anxious laugh. Not because it was funny. Because if she slipped, the whole thing becomes a news story and none of us wanted to be the quote. She did not slip. She filmed herself instead. Of course she did. I almost asked her to take one of me. I did not. I still think about that, which is embarrassing.
There was a moment, maybe ten minutes, where the speaker cut out and it was just London underneath us. Buses that are not really buses anymore, just lights. A siren somewhere towards the east. A couple arguing on a balcony three buildings over, properly going for it, the kind of row you only have if you have been together long enough to know which buttons work. We all went quiet in that nosy way. Then the music came back and the spell broke and someone shouted for a lighter.
I had one. I always have one. I do not even smoke properly. I carry it because nights like this run on borrowed fire.
The almost-end that was not the end
Security found us around half four. Not police. The building kind. High-vis and a torch and the tired voice of a man who has done this before and will do it again next Saturday. He did not shout. He just said we needed to pack it up and that the residents on the fifth floor had complained about the bass. Fair. If I lived on the fifth floor I would complain about us too.
Nobody ran. That is how you know it was not a proper illegal rave. Proper ones scatter. This was a group of people who still have Uber accounts and Monday plans they will ignore. We gathered bottles like we were being marked on it. I wiped lipstick off a cup with my thumb. No idea why. Some leftover finishing school instinct my mother paid for and I only remember when I am nearly in trouble.
On the stairs down, the married man tried again. Asked for my number like the eviction had been foreplay. I gave him the one I use for Deliveroo and newsletters. If he texts, he gets a percentage off noodles. That feels like justice.
Outside, the street looked stupidly normal. A fox. A man in chef whites smoking like he had seen worse. Two girls from the roof already arguing about whose house was closer. Mia was on the phone to a cab that was seven minutes away and then eleven and then “approaching” for a full geological era.
I took one photo from the pavement. The building, not my face. You cannot see the terrace from the ground. That is the whole trick of these places. From the street it is just another new development with bikes in the lobby and a plant that is dying on purpose. Up there it was a night. Down here it was just 5am in east London and I needed chips.
The bit I did not post
I have fourteen photos from the roof. Most of them are unusable. Motion blur. Someone’s elbow. A shot of the skyline where my finger is over the lens because I am an idiot when I am happy. There is one that almost works. My profile, lights behind, mouth slightly open like I am about to say something clever. I look like the version of myself I sell. I have not posted it.
Yet.
Sophie saw me come in. She was in the kitchen in that cardigan she wears when she is disappointed in a gentle way. Kettle on. She asked if I had fun like she was asking if I had been sensible. I said yes. I said there was a view. I said nobody fell off. She said that is a low bar. I said most of my bars are low at that hour and she did that tiny smile she does when she wants to be angry and cannot quite manage it.
Mia slept in her makeup. I slept in my dress, which I will regret when I find it behind the bedroom door later and it smells like other people’s cigarettes. I woke up at noon and the first thing I did was look at the photos again. Still not posted. I told myself I was being mysterious. I think I am just scared it will look smaller on a screen than it felt with the wind in my hair and a city underneath that I keep trying to belong to harder.
That is the confession, I suppose. Not the roof. Not the married man. Not the taped-over alarm. The fact I danced for an audience that was not there yet. I keep doing that. Living a beat ahead of the caption. It works until it does not. Last night it worked. My feet disagree. My bank account, after the surge pricing, also disagrees.
Would I go back if the pin dropped again tonight?
Do not be stupid. Of course I would. I would wear different shoes. I would charge my phone. I would still dance like someone out there is already watching. Because maybe they are. And if they are not, I can fix that in the morning, once I have had a coffee and decided which photo makes the City look expensive again.