Look I was not even meant to clock her. I was meant to be at a birthday in Shoreditch, drinking something overpriced out of a tin, being photographed next to a balloon arch I would later pretend I found ironic. That was the plan. Then she walked in with her hair done and his hands already on her waist like the last three months never happened.
Last time I saw her she was sitting on a closed toilet lid in a basement bar off Old Street, mascara halfway down her face, telling me he had gone quiet for six days and she could feel it in her chest. This time she is on his shoulders in the middle of the room, laughing like she invented the concept. I still have the voice notes. That is the problem.
How I even know her
We are not friends. I need that on the record before anyone starts. We are the kind of London almost-knowns who keep ending up in the same kitchen at 1am because someone knows someone who works in media and someone else brought a speaker. She does something clever at Recomply. Compliance, onboarding, the boring grown-up stuff that pays proper rent. I do the opposite of that. We have spoken maybe four times. Three of those times she was fine. One of those times she was wrecked.
I remember the wrecked one because I was the idiot who went into the loo for lipstick and came out with a story. She did not ask me to stay. I just did, because I am nosy and because a crying girl in a cubicle is content whether you admit that or not. She talked. I listened. I also hit record, which I am not proud of in the daylight and I am slightly proud of at night. That is the honest version.
She said his name like it still belonged to her. She said he had told her he was not ready, then posted a story from a dinner that was very much a date. She said she felt stupid. She said she knew she should delete him and then she did not delete him. Classic. I have done all of that. I have also done worse. I handed her a tissue and told her he was mid, which was kind, and then I went back to the bar and told Mia the edited version.
The birthday that should have been nothing
Saturday. A warehouse place near the Overground that thinks it is still 2019. Someone from a PR desk turned thirty and invited seventy people so the photos would look full. I wore black because I always wear black when I want to look like I did not try. Sophie came for one drink and left before eleven, which is her whole personality. Mia stayed, obviously. Mia stays for the wreckage.
I saw him first. That is how these things work. You clock the man and then you clock the girl attached to him and your brain does the maths before you have even put your drink down. Same jaw. Same stupid expensive jacket. Same way of standing like the room should rearrange itself around him. Then I saw her face and I actually laughed, not because it was funny, because it was so on the nose I thought someone was winding me up.
She looked good. I can say that without being a cow. Hair glossy, dress that photographed, the sort of happy that makes other women suspicious. He lifted her up like it was a music video and she screamed in that delighted way girls do when they want to be seen being delighted. People filmed it. Of course they did. I did not. I just stood there with my mouth slightly open like an idiot and thought, you have to be joking.
Mia clocked my face immediately. She does that. She leaned in and went, is that the bathroom girl. I said maybe. She said it is. Then she said the thing I did not want her to say, which was, have you still got the notes.
What is actually on the notes
I listened to them in the smoking area like a menace. One is forty-one seconds. One is almost two minutes. The long one is her saying she knows he is seeing someone else and she can live with not being chosen if he would just say it. She says his first name eleven times. I counted. She does this little laugh in the middle that is not a laugh at all. That is the bit that would travel if I was the kind of person who sent things into the wild.
I told myself I kept them in case she ever needed them. That is a lie I have used before. I kept them because I collect other people’s mess the same way some girls collect matchboxes. It makes me feel like I am in the room even when I am not the main character. Deepest fear, being nobody, all of that. A voice note is a tiny bit of proof that I was there when something real happened.
Does that make me grim. Yes. Am I going to pretend otherwise for the sake of sounding evolved. No.
The bit where I nearly did it
There is a group chat that should not exist. It is six girls who all write or shoot or show up at the same parties and pretend we are above gossip while living on it. I had my thumb on the upload button for a full minute. Not the audio. A text. Something like, funny seeing the Recomply girl so healed. That would have been enough. People fill in the rest themselves. You do not have to be cruel if you are precise.
I did not send it. Not because I suddenly grew a conscience. Because I looked at her on his shoulders and felt something I did not like, which was recognition. I have been the girl on the shoulders. I have also been the girl on the toilet. Sometimes in the same month. If someone had posted my voice notes from a bad Thursday I would have called it bullying and then privately admitted I would have done the same.
So I locked my phone and went back inside and danced badly next to a speaker that was too loud. That is my version of growth. It is not impressive. It is just what happened.
Then he saw me
Of course he did. London is small in the way people deny until they are stuck in a room with their last three mistakes. He did the nod. The little tight smile of a man who cannot remember if he has slept with you and does not want to get it wrong. For the record, he has not. I have standards. They are low, but they exist.
She followed his eyeline and found me. That was the actual moment. Not the shoulders. The look. You could see her doing the same maths I had done. Bathroom. Tissues. The girl with the dark hair who stayed too long. I raised my tin at her like we were fine. She raised hers back. Very civilised. Very London. Two women smiling with their teeth while a man stood between them with no idea he was the plot.
I could have gone over. I could have said you look happy, I am glad. I could have said nothing and just been a person at a party. Instead I went to the loo, redid my lip, stared at myself for too long, and drafted four different captions I will never post.
Sunday morning tribunal
Our kitchen at eleven. Sophie in a jumper that costs more than my weekly shops. Mia in last night’s eyeliner. Leftover pizza that nobody is proud of. I told them the whole thing because I always do. Sophie said I should delete the notes. Mia said I should keep them in a folder called insurance. I said both of you are annoying and also both of you are right.
Sophie asked if I wanted her to be okay. I said I think I wanted the story more than I wanted her to be okay, and then I felt sick saying it out loud. That is the confession bit, if you came here for one. I like being the person who knows. I like the little rush of I was there first. It is not noble. It is not even interesting once you strip the party out of it. It is just hunger dressed up as observation.
Mia said I should at least write it. Which, fine. Here we are.
What I am not going to do
I am not posting the audio. I am not naming her. I am not naming him either, even though half of Shoreditch already knows the jacket. I am not sliding into her DMs with a fake check-in. I am not going to Recomply’s next drinks to see if the plot has moved on. I might, actually. I am trying to be honest and I can feel myself lying in real time.
What I will say is this. People recover in public now. They fall apart in bathrooms and then they get back on someone’s shoulders and the internet calls it delulu or healing depending on the lighting. Both can be true in the same week. She might be fine. She might be performing fine. He might have chosen her. He might just be good at birthdays. I do not know, and the not knowing is what makes my thumb itch.
I still have the notes. I listened to the short one again while I wrote this, which I realise does not help my case. She sounds younger than she is. She sounds like me on a worse night. That is probably why I have not sent them. Not kindness. Recognition with better hair.
If I see her again I will say hi like a normal person. If I do anything else, Sophie will kill me, and she would be right to. Anyway. That was Saturday. I have another thing on Thursday and I already know I will scan the room for her before I scan it for the bar. Peak behaviour. I know. I am still going.
