She didn’t even knock this time. Just turned the radio up and sent a group-chat screenshot that said “congratulations I guess”. Fair.
I saw it at 2:47am, phone face down on the pillow, his arm thrown across my stomach like he’d paid rent. Radio 2 coming through the wall. Sophie never puts Radio 2 on at that hour unless she is making a point. Sophie does not make points out loud if she can help it. She makes them with volume knobs and punctuation.
Congratulations I guess.
I nearly laughed and then I didn’t, because his mouth was on my neck again and the headboard was doing that thing it does when you forget the flat is made of cardboard and good intentions.
The night did not start as a story
It never does. That is the lie people tell themselves so they can act shocked in the morning.
We were in Soho. Not the pretty bit they put on the maps. The bit where the pavement is sticky and someone is always arguing with a bouncer who has already decided. Mia had abandoned me for a boy with a vape and a theory about Ibiza. I had a vodka soda I did not finish and a dress that kept riding up every time I breathed.
He was just there. Tall enough. Clean enough. The sort of face you do not remember in daylight and do not need to. He said something mildly funny about the queue for the toilets. I said something mildly cruel back. That is usually how it starts with me. A little bite. A little grin. Then the decision is already made and I am only catching up with it.
We kissed against a wall that still had last week’s flyers on it. His hand sat on my waist like he was checking I was real. I let him. I like being checked. I like the second before someone realises I am going to let them take me home.
In the Uber I redid my lip gloss in the dark window. He watched. I let him watch that too. Maintenance, not romance. There is a difference and I am very clear on it even when I am not clear on anything else.
Parsons Green at an hour that should be illegal
The flat always looks different when you bring someone back. Smaller. Louder. Like it knows.
Sophie’s door was shut. Light underneath. Of course. She does late emails the way other people do prayer. Mia’s door was open a crack and her lamp was on, which means she was either still out or already in and pretending she wasn’t. I did not investigate. I had other plans.
Kitchen light off. Shoes off. His jacket on the chair that already has three jackets on it. I caught myself in the microwave door and thought, yes, still here, still doing this, still the girl who will write it down later.
My room is next to Sophie’s. We have discussed this. We have discussed the walls. We have discussed the fact that the building was clearly designed by someone who had never had sex or never liked the person they were having it with. We have not discussed a solution because the solution is me shutting up and I am constitutionally opposed to that.
He sat on the edge of the bed and looked at me like he was waiting for instructions. Men do that more than they admit. They want you to be the night. Fine. I can be the night.
The dress came off easier than it went on. He was good with his hands and average with his mouth and very committed to the idea that this was going well. It was going fine. Fine is enough when it is late and you have already decided.
Then the headboard started.
It is an old thing. Painted once. Loose in the corners. It knocks the wall in a rhythm that is impossible to disguise as anything else. I know this. I have known this since the first month we moved in. Knowing it has never once made me stop.
I thought about putting a pillow there. I thought about slowing down. I thought about Sophie with her laptop and her sensible cardigan and her little sigh.
Then I didn’t think about any of that.
Radio 2 is a moral judgement
The music came through around the second time. Not loud. Just present. A man’s voice talking about the weather and a song your dad would know. That is Sophie’s version of a slammed door.
He didn’t notice. Of course he didn’t. He was busy. I noticed. I always notice. Part of me likes that I notice. It means I am still in the room with myself, not just with him.
My phone lit up on the floor.
Sophie: congratulations I guess
Then the screenshot of the group chat, which is just the three of us, which means it was for me and for the record.
Mia, three minutes later: HOW is it always you
Sophie: I have a pitch call at 9
Mia: put a towel under the bed leg like a normal person
I did not reply. My hands were occupied. Also I was smiling into his shoulder like an idiot. There is no dignified way to receive a review in real time.
We finished. He said something soft I will not repeat because it did not belong to the night and I do not collect things that try to become mornings. I got up, found my phone, put it face down again. Redid the gloss in the wardrobe mirror because my mouth looked like a rumour.
He asked if I wanted water. I said yes. He went to the kitchen naked and I heard him open the wrong cupboard twice. That is how you know a man has not been here before. The glasses are not where anyone thinks they are.
Morning is where the invoice arrives
He left at 7:10. Kissed the side of my head. Said he’d text. I said sure, in the voice I use when I mean I might answer if the sentence is interesting.
Sophie was already in the kitchen. Hair in a clip. Blazer on the back of the chair. Coffee that smelled like she had been awake long enough to have opinions.
She did not look at me at first. She looked at the toaster. Then she looked at me.
“I turned it up,” she said.
“I know.”
“I have a call.”
“I know that too.”
She sipped. I waited. This is our choreography. She wants me to flinch. I want her to admit she is a little bit entertained. Neither of us quite gets what we want and that is why we still live together.
“You could at least move the bed,” she said.
“Then I’d have to rearrange the whole room.”
“Yes, Chels. That is the idea.”
Mia appeared in a hoodie that is technically mine and made a noise like a sitcom audience. She opened the fridge, stared into it as if it had wronged her, and said, “Was he fit at least?”
“He was fine.”
“Fine does not shake a wall.”
“The wall is dramatic. The wall wants a story.”
Sophie put her mug down a bit too carefully. “Some of us would like a story that starts after nine.”
I spread butter on toast I did not want. The flat was quiet in that particular way it gets after someone has left and the evidence is still in the air. His aftershave on my wrist. A sock by the bathroom that was not ours. The headboard sitting there looking innocent, like it had not been involved.
“I’ll buy earplugs,” I said.
Sophie snorted. “You will not.”
She was right. I will not.
What I am actually sorry about
I am not sorry I brought him home. I am not sorry it was good enough to be loud. I am not even sorry Sophie heard, which I realise makes me sound like a nightmare flatmate. Perhaps I am. I pay my rent on time and I replace the milk and I do not eat her yoghurt. That has to count for something.
What I am sorry about, if we are being precise, is that I like the proof. The radio. The message. The fact that the night did not disappear just because the door closed. I have this fear of being nobody and it shows up in stupid places. A headboard against a shared wall is a stupid place. It is also effective.
If a thing happens and nobody hears it, did I even have a night? That is the unpretty thought I do not put in captions.
Sophie thinks I do it for attention. She is not entirely wrong. She is not entirely right either. Sometimes I do it because I want to. Sometimes I do it because my body gets there first and my brain writes the caption after. Sometimes I do it because the alternative is staying in, scrolling, feeling like a person who used to be interesting.
Mia gets it. Mia has done worse on a Tuesday. Sophie gets it and hates that she gets it. That is why she sends screenshots instead of coming in and telling me to keep it down like a normal adult. A screenshot is distance. Distance is how she stays fond of me.
The practical bit nobody wants and everybody needs
If you live with other people and you are going to live like this, here is what I have learned, none of which I follow well.
The bed should not share a wall with the person who has morning meetings. I know. I chose the bigger room anyway. Of course I did.
A towel under the leg does actually help. Mia is annoying when she is correct.
Do not have the kitchen conversation in last night’s makeup. It weakens your negotiating position. I did it anyway. I looked like a very expensive warning label.
If they text you during, you do not have to reply. That is not rudeness. That is focus.
And if they say congratulations, say thank you. Or say nothing. Do not say sorry unless you mean it. I did not mean it.
He texted at lunch
One line. Last night was fun x
I stared at it on the bus. Fun is a nothing word. Fun is what you call a night when you do not want to look at it too hard. I typed three replies and deleted all of them. Then I sent a photo of my coffee and a full stop. Let him work.
Sophie came back from her pitch looking pleased with herself. She dropped her bag, looked at me, and said, “Please tell me he is not coming back tonight.”
“He’s not.”
“Good.”
A pause.
“You could still move the bed,” she added.
I looked at the hallway, at her door, at mine. At the stupid thin wall that has heard more of my life than my mother has.
“I could,” I said.
I won’t. Not this week. Maybe not next week either. I will buy better concealer and a bottle of something decent and I will try to remember that other people sleep. I will fail at that last part the next time a night turns into a person in my doorway.
Mia put the screenshot back in the chat this afternoon with a party hat emoji. Sophie left it on read. I screenshotted the screenshot. That is the closest we get to a house meeting.
The headboard is still loose. The radio is still her favourite weapon. I am still the girl who will write it down before the gloss wears off.
Congratulations I guess.
Yeah. Congratulations.
