Nothing can crush my mood as I head home that evening. Not even the rain, which began halfway through the afternoon and has got steadily heavier. Not even a bus driving through a puddle and drenching me. Not even a gang of boys sniggering at me as I wring out my skirt.
As I open the door to my flat, I’m practically singing to myself. I’m going on a date! I’m going to the group meeting! It’s all good—
“Ow!” I come to as my shin barks against something. There’s a row of brown cardboard boxes lining one side of our hall. I can barely squeeze past them. It looks like an Amazon warehouse. What is all this? I lean down, read a label addressed to Alan Rossiter, and heave a sigh. Typical.
Alan is one of my flatmates. He’s a website designer/fitness vlogger, and he’s always telling me “fascinating” facts I don’t want to know about muscle definition and bone density and once even bowel function. I mean, urkk.
“Alan!” I rap on his door. “What’s all this in the hall?”
A moment later Alan’s door swings open and he gazes down at me. (He’s quite tall, Alan. But he also has a very big head, so somehow he doesn’t look very tall. He actually looks weird.) He’s wearing a black singlet and shorts and has an earpiece in, which will be some inspirational app like Master Your Body, Master the World, which he once tried to get me into.
“What?” he says blankly.
“These boxes!” I gesture at the crammed hall. “Are they yours? This is a fire hazard!”
“It’s my way,” he says, and I peer back, confused. His way? His way is to fill our flat with boxes?
“What do you mean, your way?”
“My way.” He reaches into an open box and thrusts a plastic pouch at me, which has ORGANIC WHEY: VANILLA printed on it.
“Oh, whey. Right.” I squint at the cardboard boxes. “But why do you need so much of it?”
“Business model. Gotta buy in bulk. Profit margins. It’s a fierce business.” He pounds a fist into his hand, and I flinch. Alan has this aggressive way of talking which I think he reckons is “motivational.” I sometimes hear him exclaiming to himself while he’s doing weights, saying, “Fucking do it, Alan. Fucking do it, you knobhead.”
I mean, really? Knobhead? Is that motivational?
“What business?” I inquire. “You’re a web designer.”
“And whey distributor. It’s my sideline right now, but it’s going to be big.”
It’s going to be big. How many times have I heard my dad say that? His cider business was going to be big, for about six months. Then there were the hand-carved walking sticks—but they took so long to make, he was never going to turn a profit. Then he was going to make a fortune from selling a job lot of some new kind of mousetrap, which he’d got cheap off his friend Dave Yarnett. (They were gross. I’ll take cider over mousetraps anytime.)
By now I have an instinct about these things. And my instinct about Alan’s whey is not good.
“So, are you moving these boxes somewhere else?” I press Alan. “Like, soon?”
Maybe I shouldn’t be so cynical, I tell myself. Maybe he has lots of buyers lined up and all this will be gone by tomorrow.
“I’ll be selling them.” He gives me a shifty look. “Making contacts.”
I knew it.
“Alan, you can’t keep it all here!” I wave my arms at the boxes.
“No space in my room,” he says with a shrug. “I’ve got my weight bench. See you.”
And before I can say anything else, he’s disappeared back into his room. I want to scream. But, instead, I head to Anita’s room and knock cautiously on the door.
Anita is quite an über-person. She’s slim, composed, and works very hard at an investment bank. She’s exactly my age, and when I moved into the flat, I got quite excited. I thought: Yes! My new best friend! This will be so cool! That first night, I hung around in the little kitchen, reorganizing my packets of food and glancing at the door, waiting for her to come in so we could start bonding.
Only when she did come in, to make some mint tea, she fixed me with a cool gaze and said, “No offense, but I’ve decided I’m not really doing friends till I’m thirty, OK?”
I was so flummoxed, I didn’t know what to reply. And, sure enough, I’ve never really had a proper conversation with her since. All she does is work or talk on the phone to her family in Coventry. She’s polite, and she sometimes sends Alan and me emails about rubbish collection—but nothing more. I once asked her why she lived in such a cheap place when she could surely afford something better, and she just shrugged and said, “I’m getting my deposit together. I’m on thirty-one grand,” as though it was obvious.
Now she opens the door and I see she’s on the phone.
“Oh, hi!” I say. “Sorry to disturb you, only…have you seen all these boxes? Have you said anything to Alan?”
Anita puts her hand over the phone and says, in that impassive way of hers: “I’m being sent to Paris for three months.”
“Oh.”
“So.”
There’s silence, and I belatedly realize that what she means is: I don’t give a shit about the boxes. I’m off to Paris.
“Right,” I say after a pause. “OK. Well, have fun.”
She nods and closes the door, and I look at it silently for a moment. London flat life hasn’t been what I expected. I thought it would be all riotous laughter and quirky friends and hilarious stories involving pubs and iconic London landmarks and costume parties or traffic cones. But it hasn’t panned out like that. I can’t even imagine Anita in a costume.
To be fair, I did have some good nights out with the girls at my previous job. But all we really did was drink prosecco and bitch, and after then I had such a scare with my overdraft, I swore off going out for a bit. And at Cooper Clemmow, no one seems to socialize at all. Unless you count working late as “socializing.”
Anyway, I think as I turn away, who cares? Because I’m having lunch with Alex Astalis! Already my spirits are lifting again. It’s all good. I’ll have some supper and then go on Instagram—
What?
I’m standing, aghast, at the door to the kitchen. It’s a sea of boxes. The whole floor is covered, two deep. Boxes are blocking the bottom cupboards. And the freezer. And the oven.
“Alan!” I yell furiously, head back to his door, and pound on it. “What’s going on in the kitchen!”
“What?” As Alan opens the door, he has a belligerent look. “I couldn’t fit it all in the hall. It’s only temporary, till I sell it.”
“But—”
“This is my business, OK? Could you try supporting it?” He shuts the door, and I glare at it. But there’s no point trying again. And I’m starving.
I return to the kitchen and cautiously step onto the top layer of boxes. They’re so high, my head is nearly brushing the ceiling. I feel like Alice in bloody Wonderland. Surely this is a fire hazard? An everything hazard?
Perilously teetering on the cardboard, I just about manage to open the fridge, get out two eggs, and put them on the hob, which is around the level of my knees. At that moment, I get an Instagram private message from Fi, my best friend from uni. I only talk to Fi on Instagram these days; I think she’s forgotten there’s any other way to communicate.
Hi! How’s it going? Sun’s shining in Washington Sq Park, God, I love this place. It’s great even in winter. Having soy lattes with Dane and Jonah, I told you about them? They are HILARIOUS! You have to come visit!
She’s attached a selfie in what I assume is Washington Square Park (I’ve never been to New York). The sky is vivid blue and her nose is pink, and she’s laughing at something out of shot. And I can’t help feeling a small wrench inside.
Living in New York was always Fi’s aim, just like mine was to live in London. It became a running joke between us at uni—trying to persuade each other to switch allegiance. One Christmas I bought her a Big Ben snow globe and Fi got me an inflatable Statue of Liberty. It was a game.
But now it’s real. After graduation, I headed toward London in my roundabout way, while Fi moved to New York to do an internship. And she’s never come back. She’s totally in love with the city, and she really has got a crew of quirky friends, who live in the West Village and rollerblade and go antiquing at flea markets every weekend. She posts pictures all the time and she’s even started writing in American spelling.
I mean, I’m glad for her. Really, I am. But sometimes I imagine how it would have been if she’d come to London instead. We could have shared a flat…everything would have felt different…anyway. There’s no point feeling wistful. I quickly message back:
All good here! Was just hanging out with Alan and Anita, we have such a laugh!!! London life is crazy fun!!!
I bend down to stir my eggs, nearly cricking my back. And I’m about to add some cayenne pepper when—
“Aaargh!”
I hear myself cry out before I realize what’s happened. The box beneath me has given way. I’m knee-deep in pouches of whey. And some of them must have burst, because white powder is floating up in the most revolting vanilla fug.
“What’s happened?” Alan must have heard my scream, because he’s already at the door of the kitchen, glowering. “Are you damaging my whey?”
“No, your whey’s damaging me!” I yell.
One of my ankles does actually feel a bit twisted. And the cloud of whey powder is coating my eggs, I suddenly notice. Which is vile. But I can’t make anything else—all my other food is trapped in the freezer. And I’m so hungry.
I try to scrabble out of the box, but I feel my shoe heel catching on another pouch and bursting it. (Oops. Maybe won’t mention that to Alan.) More powder is floating up from the box, but this isn’t white, it’s beige. And it smells different. More savory.
“Alan,” I say. “Is all this stuff supposed to be vanilla whey?”
“It is vanilla whey.”
“Well, this isn’t.” I reach into the box and haul out the pouch I’ve just broken. “This is…” I consult the label. “Powdered chicken stock.”
“What?” I pass the pouch over to him, and Alan stares at it in disbelief. “Nooo. What the fuck?” With sudden animation he rips open another box and delves inside. He pulls out two plastic pouches and surveys them in consternation. “Chicken stock?” And now, in a frenzy, he’s pulling pouches out of the boxes and reading the labels. “Whey…stock…more stock…Jesus.” He covers his face with his hands. “No!” He sounds like a gorilla in torment. “Nooooo!”
Honestly. It’s only whey. Or not-whey. Whatever.
“They must have had a mix-up,” I say. “Just get them to come and exchange the wrong ones.”
“It’s not as simple as that!” he practically bellows. “I got them from—from—”
He stops mid-sentence, and I keep very quiet. I’m not going to pursue this, because: 1. Clearly it’s something a bit dodgy. 2. This is not my problem. And 3. I don’t want it to be my problem.
Again, Alan’s reminding me of my dad—and I know my dad. He brings you into his problems. He makes you feel like you can’t walk away. And next thing you know, you’re on the phone trying to sell pouches of unwanted chicken stock.
“Well, I hope you can sort it,” I say. “Excuse me.”
Somehow I manage to retrieve my foot and crawl cautiously back over the boxes to the kitchen door, with my plate of eggs balanced in one hand. I feel like I’m in some stupid endurance game show and, next minute, spiders will be descending from the ceiling.
“D’you want some chicken stock?” says Alan abruptly. “I’ll sell it to you. It’s top stuff, excellent quality….”
Is he serious?
“No, thanks. I don’t use that much chicken stock.”
“Right.” Alan subsides. He rips open another box, looks inside, and groans. He looks so distraught that I pat his shoulder.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “You’ll work it out.”
“Hey.” He looks up, his face glimmering with hope. “Cat.”
“Yes?”
“What about a pity shag?”
“What?” I peer at him in total incomprehension. “What do you mean?”
Alan gestures down at himself, as though it’s obvious. “You feel sorry for me right now, yes?”
“Er…a bit,” I say cautiously.
“So you should want to shag me.”
OK, am I missing something here?
“Alan…” I can’t believe I’m asking this question out loud. “Why should I want to shag you?”
“Because that’s what a pity shag is. That’s what it is.” He reaches toward my bum and I move away. (OK, I leap away.)
“No!”
“No what?”
“Just…no! To everything! No pity shag. Nada. Never. Sorry,” I add as an afterthought.
Alan gives me a reproachful look and slumps onto one of the boxes. “So basically you’re heartless.”
“I’m not heartless because I don’t want to shag you!” I say furiously. “Just…shut up!”
I head to my room, shut the door, and plonk myself on my single bed. My room is so small, there isn’t any room for a closet, so I keep all my stuff in a kind of hammock thing slung above my bed. (That’s why I wear a lot of non-iron clothes. Plus they’re cheap.) I sit cross-legged on the bed, put a forkful of scrambled eggs in my mouth, and shudder at the hideous synthetic vanilla flavor. I need to stop seething. I need to calm down and be Zen. I will therefore distract myself.
I find my Instagram account, consider for a moment, then post a picture of the Shard, with the caption: Another amazing day, balancing work, play, and not much rest!! Then I find a gorgeous photo of a hot chocolate with marshmallows, which I took the other day. It wasn’t actually my hot chocolate, it was on an outside table at a café in Marylebone. The girl had gone to the ladies’ and I swooped in for a picture.
OK, full disclosure: I stalk expensive cafés for Instagrammable pictures. Is there anything wrong with that? I’m not saying I drank the hot chocolate. I’m saying, Look: hot chocolate! If people assume it was mine…well, that’s up to them.
I post it up with a simple caption: Yum!!! and a few moments later, a new message comes in from Fi:
Life in London sounds a blast!
I shoot back a reply:
It totally is!!!
Then, for good measure, I add:
Guess what, I have a date tomorrow…!
I know that’ll get her attention, and sure enough her reply comes ten seconds later:
A DATE?? Spill!!!
Simply seeing her reaction makes me glow. Meeting Alex today—laughing with him up on that roof—I felt like a door was opening. A door to something different. Some sort of…I don’t know. A new existence, maybe. And I know it’s just lunch. But still. Every relationship starts off with just something, doesn’t it? Like, Romeo and Juliet started off with just falling madly in love with each other at first sight.
OK. Bad example.
Nothing to spill yet, I’ll keep you posted.
I add emojis of a cocktail glass and a smiley face and then—just for fun—I add a love heart.
I send the message, sit back, and take another bite of the horrible eggs. Then, on impulse, I scroll back through my previous Instagram posts, looking at the photos of London cafés, sights, drinks, and smiling faces (mostly strangers). The whole thing is like a feel-good movie, and what’s wrong with that? Loads of people use colored filters or whatever on Instagram. Well, my filter is the “this is how I’d like it to be” filter.
It’s not that I lie. I was in those places, even if I couldn’t afford a hot chocolate. It’s just I don’t dwell on any of the not-so-great stuff in my life, like the commute or the prices or having to keep all my stuff in a hammock. Let alone vanilla-whey-coated eggs and obnoxious lechy flatmates. And the point is, it’s something to aspire to, something to hope for. One day my life will match my Instagram posts. One day.