I woke up to sixteen unread messages and one photo I did not remember posing for.
Not a good photo either. Smoking area. Yellow light. My mouth half open like I was mid sentence and the flash caught me being a person instead of a version of one. You know the kind. The kind you would never post. The kind your friends post for you.
Mia sent it at 3:41am with no caption. Then Sophie reacted with the laughing emoji, which in our flat is never actually laughter. It is a verdict.
I thought I had been discreet. I had not. I had been recording myself without meaning to.
What I told myself on the way out
Friday. Parsons Green. I did the usual circuit of the bathroom mirror, the hallway mirror, the black screen of my phone. Lip gloss twice. I told Sophie I was meeting one person for one drink. I even said the words “early night” with a straight face, which is how you know I was lying to myself first.
She was on the sofa with a face mask and a spreadsheet. Mia was already in a taxi. Different night, same city.
Look, I like a story. That is not news. I will cross a room for a better ending. I will stay for a worse one if the lighting is interesting. What I forget, every single time, is that I have two flatmates and a group chat that functions like a small, well dressed newsroom.
The chat is called Who’s Coming Home Tonight. It used to be a joke. It is not a joke anymore. It is a filing system.
Soho does not do private
We ended up on a street that always smells like perfume and bins. I will not name the bar because I still want to get back in, and also because the boy works near there and I am not trying to get anyone sacked. He was tall in a way that photographs well and talks in a way that does not. Fine. I was not there for a TED Talk.
First drink was fine. Second drink was a decision. By the third I had that warm feeling where you start believing you are being subtle. I put my phone face down. I thought that counted as restraint.
It did not count as anything.
I sent Mia a voice note in the loo. Thirty eight seconds. You can hear a tap running and some girl asking if anyone has a hair tie. You can also hear me saying, and I quote, “he is mid until he smiles and then I forget I have standards.” I said it like I was being funny. I was being honest. Those two things keep getting me in trouble.
Mia listened to it at 1:12am. I know because WhatsApp is a snitch. She forwarded it to Sophie with the text “she is doing it again.” Sophie replied “of course she is.” Then they both went quiet, which is worse than commentary. Quiet means they are collecting.
The smoking area photo
I did not see anyone take it. That is the bit that bothers me, if I am being precious about it.
We were outside. He was telling me something about a start up that I will not repeat because I was not listening and I refuse to pretend I was. I was cold. I was performing being cold so he would offer his jacket. He did. I let him. Classic. Cheap trick. Works.
Someone from Mia’s extended chaos circle was there. A girl I have spoken to twice and smiled at four times. She took a photo of the whole huddle, tagged nobody, and sent it to Mia because that is what people do now. They do not post. They archive. They wait.
The photo is blurry, which I almost respect. My hair looks expensive. My face looks like I have made a choice I will have to explain in the morning. His hand is on my waist like he has known me longer than ninety minutes. He had not.
I did not know the photo existed until I was in an Uber with my shoes in my lap, eating a chip from a bag I do not remember buying. That is when the first screenshot landed.
Screenshots have a tone
People think a screenshot is neutral. It is not. A screenshot is an opinion with a crop tool.
Sophie sent my own messages back to me. The ones I had sent the boy. Nothing filthy, before you get excited. Just that slightly too keen “where are you now” energy. The double tick of a woman who has decided. Seeing your own charm laid out in a rectangle is a particular kind of humiliation. It looks thirstier than it felt in the moment. It always does.
Then Mia sent the voice note again, this time with a transcript she had typed out for sport. She even put a full stop after “standards.” Like a teacher marking homework.
I typed “can we not.”
Sophie typed “we can. we are just not going to.”
Fair.
Morning in the kitchen is where the trial happens
Sophie makes tea like it is a legal proceeding. Mug down. Silence. Then the question that is never really a question.
“So. Early night.”
I had concealer on and last night’s earrings still in. I looked like a woman who had been edited badly.
Mia came in wearing his hoodie. Not his. Different his. Do not get confused. We have a lot of floating menswear in this flat. It is a habitat.
They put the phone on the counter and scrolled like they were showing me a property listing.
Photo.
Voice note.
My texts.
A map pin I had shared and forgotten about.
A story view from a number I did not recognise, which turned out to be the girl from the smoking area, which turned out to be how Mia got the picture in the first place.
I stood there eating toast that was too hot and tried to look bored. I was not bored. I was caught. There is a difference and I keep forgetting it.
I told them I had been discreet.
Sophie did that little laugh she does when I say something statistically untrue.
“Chels. You sent a voice note from a toilet. That is not discreet. That is a podcast.”
The bit I will admit if I have to
Here is the unflattering part, and I am only writing it because I already know they will screenshot this too.
I like the receipts. Not in the morning. In the morning I want a closed door and a lie in. But at 1am, some ugly little part of me wants a witness. I want the story to exist outside my head so it becomes real. Fame is just a bigger version of that. You think you want privacy until the room goes quiet.
I can dress it up as honesty. I am good at honesty. Honesty gets you forgiven for things that manners would not. I can say I tell my friends everything because I trust them. Some days that is true. Some days I tell them because a night does not count unless someone else can repeat it back to me.
That is a slightly tragic sentence. I know. I am leaving it in.
The boy texted at 11:07. A photo of the watch he thought he had left. He had not left a watch. He had left a lighter and a very average impression. I almost sent the smoking area picture back to him for sport. I did not. Growth, or whatever.
I sent it to the group chat instead, with the caption “exhibit d.”
Mia wrote “you are unwell.”
Sophie wrote “put the good towels in the wash.”
I did put the towels in the wash. I am not a monster. I am just documented.
What the chat actually is
People outside this flat think a girls group chat is candles and voice notes about feelings. Ours is closer to a news desk that drinks. We fact check each other. We keep timestamps. We remember who said they were going home and who got in at five looking like they had lost an argument with a strobe light.
It sounds cruel when I write it down. It does not feel cruel in the room. It feels like being known, which is the closest I get to being looked after. Sophie will roast you and then leave paracetamol by the kettle. Mia will forward your worst voice note and then lend you the only pair of sunglasses that hide a night like that.
I would not survive a secret. I have tried. Secrets go stale in this building. The walls are thin and the WiFi is excellent.
Still. There is a version of me that wants one night that belongs only to me. No crop. No transcript. No yellow smoking area light turning a private choice into group entertainment. I keep saying I will have that night. I keep taking my phone into the loo.
Anyway
He asked if I wanted to do it again. I said maybe, which in my dialect means I need to see whether the story has already peaked. If the chat has used it up, there is nothing left to go back for. That sounds colder than I feel. I felt quite fond of him for about forty minutes. Then I felt fond of the anecdote.
I looked in the hallway mirror before I sat down to write this. Habit. The lipstick is already on. Of course it is.
If you are reading this in our chat before I have posted it, congratulations. You already had the receipts. I am just giving them a headline.
