Mia was already on it. She had that look. The one where she is smiling at nothing and fishing in her bag for keys she does not need yet. Sophie was doing the opposite, obviously. Checking Citymapper like the last train was a moral issue. I told her the last train was a suggestion. She told me I was a liability. Fair.
We were in Soho, which always feels like it should keep going even when it does not. People spilling onto the pavement, pretending they have a plan. Most of them do not. Most of them will end up in a chicken shop arguing about whose idea this was. I have been that girl. I was not being her last night.
The bit where nobody actually goes home
There is a moment after last orders where everyone performs the idea of leaving. Coats on. Cigarettes. That little huddle by the door. Then somebody says the fatal sentence.
Come back to ours.
I said it. Of course I said it. I always say it. The flat is in Parsons Green, which is not glamorous at 2am, but it is ours and the freezer is reliable and the neighbours have already survived worse. Sophie made a face. Mia was already booking the Uber like she had been waiting for permission.
Ten of us, in the end. That was not the plan. The plan was four. Plans are cute. Then you blink and there is a boy from the smoking area whose name I only half caught, two girls Mia knows from a birthday in July, some bloke Sophie works with who I am fairly sure fancies her, and a girl in a silver skirt who I had spoken to for all of nine minutes. She seemed game. That is all you need at that hour. Game, and a charger.
The Uber smelled like perfume and wet pavement. Somebody put on a playlist and then immediately took it off again because it was trying too hard. I sat in the middle and redid my lippy in the window. Force of habit. Also the lighting in those cars is criminal and I refuse to arrive looking like I have given up.
Kitchen, not living room. There is a difference.
People who do not live here always want the living room. Soft lighting. The nice sofa. That is how you know they have not done this properly. The living room is for people who are winding down. The kitchen is for people who are not finished.
Ours is not big. Worktop, little table that wobbles if you lean on it, fridge that makes a noise like it is dying. It is also the warmest room, which matters when you have just come off the street and half the girls are still in dresses that made sense under club lights and make less sense under a ceiling bulb.
Mia cracked the freezer like she was opening a safe. What was left: one bottle of vodka that had been in there since New Year, a sad bag of ice, two Magnums, and a pizza I am almost certain was Sophie’s. We ate the pizza anyway. Cold first, then somebody put the oven on and we ate it hot as well, standing up, burning our mouths, calling it dinner. It was not dinner. It was damage control.
I poured drinks in actual glasses for about four minutes. Then we ran out of clean ones and it became mugs. Then it became the vodka bottle going round because washing up at half three is a personality trait I do not have.
The speaker was Mia’s. One of those cheap Bluetooth ones that sounds fine until you turn it up, and then it sounds like it is arguing with the song. We turned it up. Obviously. Somebody put on that tune from earlier in the night and for a second the kitchen did that thing kitchens sometimes do. It felt like a room that had decided to be a club. Not a good club. A specific one. The kind where you know everyone’s first name and nobody’s last.
Who was actually there
I will not do full names. I am messy. I am not thick.
There was Smoking Area Boy, who turned out to be called Tom or Dom, I genuinely still do not know, and who kept offering to go to the offie like that made him useful. There was Silver Skirt, who sat on the counter and told a story about a wedding she had been to in Surrey that went so wrong it circled back round to funny. There was Sophie’s work bloke, who hovered near the kettle and laughed a bit too hard at everything she said. Poor thing. She was not looking at him. She was looking at the time.
Mia was in her element. Shoes off, hair up, holding court about a man she had nearly gone home with in February and then had not, because he said something mid about his ex. I love her for that. Standards at 3am are a rare skill.
Me? I was doing what I do. Talking. Refilling. Checking my face in the microwave door because it is the only thing in that kitchen that gives you anything back. I looked decent, considering. A bit shiny. A bit pleased with myself. That is the afters face. You cannot fake it and you should not try.
At some point Silver Skirt asked how we all lived together without killing each other. Sophie said we have a rota. I said we have denial. Both true. The bins still get done. The rest is vibes and passive aggression and the occasional note on the fridge that starts polite and ends with three question marks.
The conversation you only have at that hour
Afters talk is different. Club talk is noise. Afters talk is the stuff people have been sitting on since midnight.
Somebody admitted they had snogged a pal’s brother last month and had not mentioned it. Somebody else said they were still on the apps but only for the attention, which is the most honest sentence I have heard all year. Tom or Dom told a story about a date that ended in a Wetherspoons in Zone 4 and I nearly felt sorry for him. Then he asked if we had any snacks that were not frozen and the sympathy dried up.
I told them about the last time we tried this. Different crowd. Same kitchen. A girl cried in the bathroom because a text had not come through and I lent her concealer and a hair clip and then wrote about it the next day. They laughed. I did not tell them I still have the clip. Some details you keep.
Sophie tried to do the responsible bit around four. Glasses of water. Windows open. That little speech about work in the morning, even though it was already morning and none of us were going. I love her, I do. She is the reason this flat still has a plunger and a working iron. She is also the reason half the fun stories get a warning look first.
I ignored the look. Not out of spite. Out of principle. If you invite the night in, you do not start ushering it out because the sky has gone that weird pre dawn colour.
The neighbours
Ah yes.
Downstairs is a couple who own a very small dog and a very large opinion about noise. We have had the notes. We have had the knock. We have had the passive aggressive “morning” on the stairs when nobody has slept.
Last night they got the speaker through the floor at a volume I will describe as optimistic. For a while nothing happened, which is how you get brave. Then there was the knock. Not angry exactly. Tired. The kind of knock that says I have a meeting at nine and you are testing me.
Sophie answered. Of course she did. She does apology better than the rest of us. I stayed in the kitchen and turned it down two notches, which is not the same as turning it off, and I will not pretend it is.
They will survive. They have survived Mia’s birthday, a Sunday roast that became a singalong, and that week in March when I had someone over and the headboard made a sound I still think about when I pass them with my shopping. We are not monsters. We are just not quiet. There is a difference, even if they do not see it.
The dog barked once and then gave up. Respect.
What afters are actually for
People think the club is the point. It is not. The club is the advert. Afters are the product.
In a club you are performing a version of yourself that photographs well and talks less sense than it thinks it does. In a kitchen you are just there. Makeup sliding. Feet sore. Telling the truth because you are too tired to dress it up. That is why I like it. That is why I keep saying come back to ours even when the sensible part of my brain, the Maths part, is doing the cost of Ubers and the state of the bathroom in the morning.
I did not pull last night, before you ask. I could have. Tom or Dom was circling in that obvious way. Silver Skirt had a little flicker of something when we were both at the freezer. I let both of them hang in the air and then I let them drop. Sometimes you want the story more than the body. Sometimes you already have enough on your plate and the plate is a mug of vodka with freezer burn on the rim.
I wanted the room. I wanted the noise. I wanted to look around and think, this is mine. Not the men. The night. The fact that it kept going because I decided it should.
Fame, if we are being honest, is just a bigger kitchen. More people. Better speaker. Same hunger. I know how that sounds. I still mean it.
Morning, sort of
It broke apart the way these things always do. Not all at once. One person looking at their phone and making that face. Then two people putting on coats they cannot find the sleeves of. Then the awkward hug at the door that lasts a second too long because nobody wants to be the first in the cold.
By the time the last of them left, the kitchen looked like a crime scene if the crime was fun. Orange pizza box. Sticky rings on the table. A heel under the chair that was not mine. The speaker still connected to Mia’s phone, playing something quiet now, like it had finally got the hint.
Sophie went straight to bed with a glass of water and the air of a woman who would bring this up later. Mia fell asleep on the sofa with her makeup still on, which I will give her grief for at noon and then borrow her foundation anyway. I sat on the worktop for a bit. Just sat. London outside going pale. Buses starting. That particular quiet you only get when a night has finally run out of argument.
I wiped the side. Not well. Just enough that future me would not hate present me quite as much. Then I took a photo of the mess because of course I did. Not to post yet. To have. Proof. The official night ended at two. Ours did not. That is the whole point.
If the neighbours want to have a word, they know where we are. I will make tea. I will be charming. I will not promise it will not happen again, because it will. This flat is many things. Boring is not one of them.
Anyway. I need a shower, a full English, and about four hours I am not going to get. If you were one of the ten, you know who you are. If you were downstairs, sorry about the speaker. Sort of. And if you were on the night bus home at two telling yourself that was enough, that is fine. Some of us just were not done.
