It arrived at 4:12. One line. No hello. No name. Just “Hi Chelsea, we’ve had a complaint about noise from the flat. Please keep it down. Thanks.”
I replied at 4:13. Heart emoji. Nothing else.
He has not followed up. Coward.
I was still in the kitchen when it came through. Lights on. Music down to that stupid level where you can hear the words and also hear the fridge. Mia had someone’s jacket on like a dress. Sophie had given up and gone to her room with noise cancelling headphones and the moral high ground. There was a boy on our sofa who I am fairly sure arrived with someone else. The night had that loose feeling, the one where nobody can remember who invited the last three people and everybody has decided not to care until morning.
Then the phone lit up and suddenly I cared a bit.
The complaint, obviously
We are not animals. I need that on record. We do not throw speakers out of windows. We do not set off fireworks in the courtyard. What we do is live in a converted house in Parsons Green where the floors are pretty and the walls are a suggestion.
If you put a glass down too hard, next door knows. If you laugh in the hall, the woman upstairs starts her thesis on antisocial tenants. If you have sex that is even slightly convincing, the whole building gets a newsletter.
So yes. There was noise. I am not going to pretend we were hosting a book club. Someone put on a song that slaps at midnight and becomes a war crime at 3am. Someone else dropped a bottle. I may have shouted “leave it” at a volume that did not match the request. These things happen when you let a Friday get ideas.
The landlord texting at 4:12 felt personal. Not because he was wrong. Because he waited until the exact hour when nobody has a decent defence. You cannot argue acoustics when you are holding a lime and someone else’s trainers.
Why the heart emoji
Look. I could have written a paragraph. I am good at paragraphs. I could have said we were winding down, that it would not happen again, that I respect the neighbours and also the deposit.
I did not.
A heart emoji at 4:13 does two jobs. It acknowledges the text. It also refuses to start a trial. If I write “so sorry, won’t happen again” I have pleaded guilty in my pyjamas. If I write nothing I look feral. The heart sits in the middle like a girl who heard you and will not be taking further questions.
Mia saw me send it and started laughing so hard she had to sit on the counter. Sophie opened her door just long enough to say “you are going to get us evicted” and then shut it again. The boy on the sofa asked if we were in trouble. I said “professionally, no.” Then I turned the speaker off properly. Growth.
I stood in the hall for a minute after that, listening. The flat went thin and quiet in that guilty way. You could hear someone upstairs shift in bed. You could hear the street doing its late night London thing, foxes and a taxi and a girl saying “I am getting in, I am getting in” to someone who was not getting in.
No second text. No call. Just the original message sitting there like a wet coat.
This building has ears
Our landlord is not a villain in a film. He is a man in his fifties who owns two flats and thinks that makes him a property person. He wears gilets. He says “guys” in emails. He once spent twenty minutes explaining the boiler as if I had not already googled it.
He also never comes himself after midnight. That is the coward bit. He outsources the bravery to his phone. He sends the note from bed, I assume, while his own house is silent and his own neighbours are asleep and he gets to feel like he has managed the situation.
He has not managed the situation. He has poked it with a stick and then hidden.
The woman upstairs is the usual suspect. She has a ring camera personality without the camera. Everything is a pattern to her. Last month it was the recycling going out too late. Before that it was Mia’s laugh, which I will admit carries. Before that it was me coming home in heels on a Sunday morning, which is not noise so much as a lifestyle.
I do not hate her. I hate the architecture. You cannot stack twenty somethings on top of people who go to bed at ten and then act shocked when the floorboards take a side.
What actually happened before 4:12
Pre drinks here. Then a bar that was trying too hard. Then back here because the club queue looked like punishment and Mia said she had wine that was “fine if you do not think about it.”
People followed. They always do. One of them had a Bluetooth speaker, which is how civilisations fall. I should have taken it off him at the door. I did not, because I am a better writer than I am a bouncer.
There was dancing that was really just standing with knees. There was a kiss in the hallway that turned into more than a kiss until Sophie walked past to get water and said “absolutely not against the coats.” Fair. We moved. The sofa is not as private as people think. Neither is my room if you are the type to get vocal. I am the type to get vocal. This has been established.
By four the night had gone soft around the edges. The music was the problem more than the sex, if we are being forensic about it. The sex was brief and then interrupted by the text, which is a sentence I cannot believe I have to live with.
He, the boy, not the landlord, thought the phone buzz was funny. I thought it was a plot twist. I showed him the message. He said “heart emoji is insane.” Then he tried to keep going. I said “read the room.” The room had just been written to by management.
Morning after, which is always worse
I woke up to Sophie making coffee like a person preparing a statement. Mia was already in last night’s makeup, scrolling, saying “do you think he will come round.” I said no. Men who text at 4:12 do not knock at 10. They want the record, not the confrontation.
We did the flat in that hungover hush. Bottles in a bag. Glasses in the sink. Someone’s vape on the windowsill. I opened the window even though it was cold because the place smelled like lime and perfume and a decision.
No email. No second text. No “can we have a call.” Just the original note and my little red heart underneath it, looking unhinged in daylight.
I almost wrote a proper reply then. Something adult. Something about being mindful. I deleted it. The heart had already done the damage and the charm. Adding sentences would have made me look like I was begging to stay, and I pay the rent on time. I am messy. I am not a squatter.
Sophie said we should buy the upstairs woman flowers. Mia said we should buy her earplugs. I said we should buy better curtains and learn to whisper. Nobody did any of those things. We went to Pret and acted like citizens.
The deposit is still the quiet character in this
I am not actually trying to get us thrown out. That would be a dull ending and also I like this flat. The light in the kitchen is good. My room fits a double and a pile of clothes that I call a system. The street is pretty when you are not being documented by a neighbour in a dressing gown.
A heart emoji is not a plan for the rest of the tenancy. It is a stall. I know that. If he texts again I will have to do the grown up paragraph. I will say we had friends over, it got away from us, it will not be a weekly feature. I will even mean some of it.
Until then I am leaving the heart where it is. It is funny. It is slightly rude. It is the most honest thing I sent all night, apart from “come here” which is none of his business.
People online love to act like renters should live like they are in a show home. No guests after nine. No music. No life. Pay two thousand a month for the privilege of tiptoeing. I will keep it down. I will not pretend I do not exist.
If he is reading this
Hi. Yes, it was us. No, I am not going to name the neighbour. Yes, I know the time stamp makes me look like a liability. You texted at 4:12 and I answered at 4:13 because I was awake and I heard you. That should count for something.
Come and say it to my face next time. Bring the gilet. I will make tea. We can talk about the boiler and the floorboards and the fact that this house was not built for three girls and a Friday.
Until you do, I am taking the silence as a win. You wanted it quieter. You got a heart. You did not get a row. You did not get an essay. You got the least amount of girl you can get at that hour.
Coward.
Anyway. We have a bottle bag by the door and a new rule about speakers. Sophie added it to the list on the fridge under “remove strange men before 9am.” I initialled it. In lip gloss, because some of us have a brand to maintain even when management is watching.