‘They usually do weddings here,’ the host said, his pupils thickened by bad behaviour. He was dressed for the riviera. Jane had expected this young man would guide her through the evening. Instead, he’d kept his distance, even on her arrival, when they’d locked eyes and he’d turned away, as if she’d come by mistake.

Eventually, after she’d seen him piling her books at a corner table, Jane found some resolve and went over to make the introduction. His long, handsome face set itself on her, and he gushed about her writing, and made apologies about the venue.

‘We wanted to be East,’ he said, ‘or maybe Peckham.’

That was where his crowd usually assembled. For her launch, however, they’d had to make do with a sterile looking bar, in a courtyard tucked around the corner from the Coach Station.

‘I guess it works, for the book, because… you know.’

He was referring to a chapter where the main character boarded the Gatwick Express from Three Bridges to Victoria, alone on a daytrip after being abandoned by her husband. There, the protagonist tried to expend an afternoon by herself before seeing Hamilton. Jane wanted readers to sit in this ennui, as the woman walked toward Hyde Park, until the walls surrounding Buckingham Palace became oppressive, and so she trundled instead to Belgravia, whose spotless streets made her feel unworthy, leaving her no choice but to double back in the direction of Westminster, where every new development caught her gaze with a sneer. The chapter ended with Jane’s creation dawdling outside of Westminster Cathedral, certain that an unknown force would stop her from going inside.

‘My favourite bit,’ said the host, ‘because she’s frightened, like we all are.’

Jane struggled to imagine what he could possibly be afraid of.

‘There was a big fight,’ she told him, ‘With my editor, because she was worried that everyone would think I was talking about Westminster Abbey, so wouldn’t get why I said it was made of red brick.’

Jane could see his eyes were elsewhere, seeking a way out. Admin proved useful cover. He mumbled something about checking microphones, leaving Jane by her book display. The hour was fast approaching, and the upstairs space filled with the young and gorgeous, congregating in small gangs and spreading themselves across the wooden chairs. Like a dog with many masters, the host bounded along the front row, greeting his public with handshakes and hugs.

It was her night, but Jane was playing to strangers. She’d known a few other writers who had, after similar meetings with their publishers, decided to throw a book launch on their own steam. These had been uniformly timid affairs, in the side rooms of restaurants, or in bohemian venues with no insulation and terrible plumbing. Though it pained Jane to admit it, she didn’t want such a launch for her book, because those events had felt bereft of glamour. They were low-simmering occasions where people didn’t drink, where relatives patted authors like they’d been self-published. All perfectly wholesome, but where was the ceremony?

The host squinted at the room, then took the microphone.

‘We’ve got such a great night for you,’ he said, gesturing toward Jane, ‘because one of this country’s best writer’s is here, with her second novel, which you’re all going to love.’

A round of applause. Jane twisted her mouth into a smile. Nerves were already darting inside her, even though her part wasn’t coming for nearly two more hours. This was a mandatory feature in her deal with the event. They’d do the promotion, the ticketing, the bar, all the details, all the fine print, and, in turn, her name would bolster five or six young writers, who would perform short readings from their own works. Jane had been afforded some editorial power in this regard but shied away from exercising it. She’d DM’d the host, as he was finalising the billing, to say there were no emerging voices who she wanted to uplift. There were, however, a fair few she could put down.

Two or three of the programmed writers had reached out, offering their extracts for Jane’s perusal. The first up to the microphone hadn’t made an approach, and Jane resented him for it. She resented, too, the way that this writer emerged from the audience, as if it were his event, being whooped and cheered by his large group of friends. This, a printed sheet told her, was Jerome Owolade. He was attractive as anyone Jane had ever seen, wearing vintage preppy clothes that hung off his frame, somehow precluding any pretention.

He was slow to speak, once at the microphone, taking in his audience one face at a time. It had the effect of making everyone too aware of ambient noise. Jane felt herself shrinking. This young man had too much command. He produced some A4 pages, then took a deep breath. There was no introduction to his text, he just got straight to it.

‘It was the morning after, and we were at a café, and you were going to meet your brother later, and the girl serving us said that the kitchen had run out of eggs’.

Jane had the wonderful feeling of a panic unknotting itself. The initial authority Jerome carried simply vanished as he went on reading. It was as if he didn’t want the audience to hear him. Sentences fell into each other, words mumbled out without emphasis, and the recital crept by without anything to cling onto. The audience soon left him to it. His friends started exchanging sad glances. Clearly, Jane thought, Jerome was from that breed who only saw glamour in creation. His prose wasn’t helpless, but it smacked of someone who’d taken all the wrong lessons from Rachel Cusk. That was why he was so humble in performance; he had no idea what anything he’d written actually meant.

Tepid applause, then the host again, rallying his crowd for a woman called Isobel. She had been at the bar, when it was all starting up.

‘This is hell, isn’t it?’ she’d said, like she and Jane were equal partners. Isobel had won a fiction prize for one of her short stories but was best known for her reviews of sex parties for Dazed. As with Jerome, she managed to be quite beautiful, albeit with the frowning demeanour that suggested her glamour was an imposition. Beauty seemed a prerequisite amongst this ensemble. Not so long ago it was received wisdom that writers were the others, the bespectacled, the uncoordinated, the shambling, the ones who tread on the edges of a scene. Where were those hobgoblins now? How could anyone perceive beauty if they themselves possess it?

Isobel sounded frantic at first. That night, they would hear some new material, drawn from her first novel, coming hopefully next January.

‘You all need to come back when it launches, ok?’

This plea sat badly with Jane. It felt like a bridesmaid making too much of catching the bouquet. There are some occasions where the future shouldn’t be invoked.

As she read, Isobel found kinship with the mic. Her reading was gentle; she had a good voice for consonants. It was midway through the book: two university friends found themselves at a Wetherspoons, on the cusp of midnight, letting impulse guide them into each other’s arms. The chosen pub sounded an awful lot like the Willow Walk, Jane’s resting place when she was too early for a train at Victoria. On one solitary Thursday, Jane had sat at a booth, using the pub’s app to order a burger, a salad, and a diet coke, silently wondering whether such desperate ordinariness helped shape her voice, or prohibited her from having a voice at all.

Isobel’s writing was unobtrusive. It was in the bedroom with the two friends, enjoying reality’s little intrusions upon a passionate scene. It never dwelled on the explicit, but attention was taken to the tender aspects of the act, the sensual moments of touch where one discovers themselves in another’s exploration.

There was something smug, Jane thought, about choosing a sex scene as the novel’s sneak preview. Sex is what tripped up the old guard, with their appalling accounts of purring women and throbbing instruments. Then there was the sapphic element, as the two friends in Isobel’s extract were both women. This version was much too neat for literary observation, or so Jane assumed. Tension, which drives all prose, cannot arrive from a scene where two people genuinely want to satisfy each other. It would be like describing a tennis game where the players hope their competitors win. Queerness had the sheen of modernity, but heterosexuality held the putrid power games.

More obvious faults came in Isobel’s final paragraphs. They were littered with too much summation. In words so precise they could be called abrupt, the author stated exactly how both women felt about their night together. It was the preserve of an amateur to sweep up all ambiguity as a chapter ends. Jane felt assured that, even if her work had less swagger than Isobel’s, technically there was no comparison. She’d honed her craft; Jane could write that same piece with half the words without compromising any effect.

The crowd would find these flaws later. If or when the book emerged, Jane imagined mostly tepid reviews, perhaps noting Isobel’s skills at perception, yet dismissing the work as promising juvenilia. There wouldn’t be the addition of Isobel’s beauty to cloud her reader’s judgement.

No glamour camouflaged the next act. He appeared without any introduction, ducking under the microphone while Isobel was still on stage. With stooped gait and tufty, receding hair, the third writer declared he was a poet.

‘I’ll start with the one you all know,’ he said, his right hand proffering a stack of A4 paper. His shambling persona soaked into his verse. The poem was called: I Saw My Maths Teacher at an All Bar One.

‘I see my ghost in a paisley shirt,’ it began, ‘fat and pale and fading as I find the door.’

He followed that work up with some verses about flying Ryanair. As a showman, he was faultless. Comedy is gracious to underdogs. Still, Jane thought, he wasn’t flexing any kind of sincerity. His final reading, a work in progress, was an ode to ugliness, but it wasn’t really about being ugly, it was about balancing beer cans on his stomach. He filtered the reading with a few pronounced pauses, suggesting greater meaning could be found in the things he hadn’t said. Then he bowed to great applause, beaming like a champion.

Maybe modern poets took too much pleasure in being banal. It was no surprise that the form was claimed, now, by scruffy humourists. Larkin had let them all in. The crowd liked the balding man because he was eager and harmless, because he brought a kind of satirical pretence to being a poet. That wasn’t enough for Jane. Jokes, she knew, did not reflect good writing, they just posed as such through their easy rhythms.

Then came the interval. Everyone was ushered out, encouraged by the host to smoke or have a line. Two women bustled past Jane to her book table, trying to claim their copy. Each ticket offered the chance to pay for a hardback; at the end of the evening, Jane was supposed to sign at least two dozen. The host pleaded with the women to wait until after the second half, which he promised would be quicker. They considered this, then the women checked their watches and decided to leave empty handed.

Jane had invited friends and family. She’d spotted her cousin Marnie in the audience, sitting with her fiancé, a sullen man who barely said a word. They came over as the upstairs room emptied.

‘Wow,’ Marnie said, ‘this is different.’

Her fiancé nodded in agreement.

‘Thank you both so much for coming,’ Jane said, watching the fiancé as his glance found every corner of the room.

‘We didn’t eat before we came, and now we’re starving, aren’t we? So, we might have to run off and get food. But this has been so good, hadn’t it? We loved the poet, didn’t we?’

The fiancé nodded.

‘So funny,’ he said. Jane searched over his head and saw a smiling face at the bar. She was being beckoned elsewhere, she could make her excuses. In a pleasant surprise, her former boss, Carlos, had actually come along.

‘Janey! Reckon it’s time we got you pissed.’

His grey suit bulged around his stomach. Tequila shots were ordered, and they spoke about how long it had been.

‘Look at this,’ said Carlos, ‘and look at you!’

Then he apologised for prying her away, then ordered another drink, then told a story about the old days, about a dance they’d shared at a Christmas party, and, through reddening eyes, remembered how Jane lit up their little office.

‘I knew this would all happen,’ he said, ‘My Janey would always do great.’

More excuses were made, as Jane had to make several other hellos. Hello to the couple from the adjacent flat, hello to her friend from the creative writing course, hello to the quiet ones from the Facebook group for women who wanted company watching West End musicals. Jane had only joined the latter because of the book. She needed to live in the novel’s crucial scene, of a lonely person trying to seek joy in a crowded room. The risk was that Hamilton would do nothing for her, being naturally guarded against blunt offerings of pleasure. Isolation, too, was not such a wounding state for Jane, so her observations, at first, lacked clarity. Thankfully, a friend put it to her that the genuinely lonely had new means to connect. They congregated in hidden warrens of the internet, finding catharsis in their shared anxieties. A few of them wanted to see Hamilton. These women told Jane she was safe and valued in their company, and, in turn, she jotted down their every remark.

Only Carlos stayed for the second half. It was well past 9pm, the others were all worried about trains. They all made jokes, too, about being too old for the room.

‘Why does everyone,’ her course mate had said, ‘look like a model?’

‘I think it’s because they’re all rich.’

She had heard their voices as they drifted past, talking so lightly about the world, in the new posh accent shaped by trans-Atlantic inflections, and she saw her medium being led into the care of these happy few, becoming just another accessory for betterment to the people with money and time.

It was a surprise, having come to that conclusion, when the host brought on a working-class girl. Some were still shuffling into their seats as she began her time.

‘Hello, I’m Yasmine Attiah, thanks for having me, and, yeah, I just want to say, basically, like everyone that’s gone so far has been, like, I dunno, like some Richard Curtis character, you know, super confident, and God bless you, but, just to say, that’s not me.’

Finally, some grit from the roster.

‘This is from a new thing, which isn’t finished at all, and probably won’t ever be, but, like, anyway, this is it.’

Then came a scene of a young girl coming home from a party, trying to hide her drunkenness from her conservative father. It was a sad farce with menace lurking at the edges. Clearly Yasmine had something, a way of threading observation through action without sacrificing pace. She was, Jane thought, the kind of writer agents swarm around. The industry loves niche perspectives.

‘Her dad could go so quiet. He was doing it now, like he just wanted to hear the radio. It was tuned to one of those stations where angry white people call in. They were calling in about cycle lanes, and how farmer’s need their own pride parade, and that was all there was to listen to, in the car, on dark orange roads under streetlights, in that bit of London where there are suddenly hills.’

The industry loves authenticity. Yasmine read loudly but not confidently. Muffled by shyness, there was an antagonism to her, like she resented the people listening. Still, she had promise. It was hard to assess the depth of talent beneath her style, writing, as she was, in close proximity to a lonely teenager. This allowed her to be base; to say the things people think in the way they think them. Yasmine could benefit from letting a second, more florid voice occasionally poke through, just to show it wasn’t all cheap tricks. Then she could really be something.

Foreseeing a future act of kindness, Jane jotted down Yasmine’s name in her notebook. Maybe at a literary festival, or on a podcast recording, or some other awful promotional thing, Jane could tip people towards the younger writer, citing the importance of supporting women.

There was only one more left before her reading. Carlos was still lurching around at the back of the room. Cousin Marnie would be on the train by now, telling her fiancé about sad, quiet Jane, the one who always played by herself. She might well read the new book, and no doubt think it was strange and dull, because she only read romances.

‘It’s much too clever for me,’ she’d said in an email to Jane, after the first novel, ‘but I liked the friend who always wants to have wine, I hope that’s not based on me, haha!’

Too clever for Marnie, fine, no doubt a good thing, normal people don’t have the knowledge to spot talent. So long as the proper readers did. So long as, that night, Jane’s special night, her audience could see how her words had the flow of a mountain stream, yielding reality like a projector, in strident passages that found beauty in plainness. She never clustered adjectives either, in fact she basically just used verbs and nouns.

Her audience that night could surely see why Jane wasn’t like the others. Her work had meaning, unlike Jerome, sophistication, unlike Isobel, sincerity, unlike the poet, whose name escaped her, and, most certainly of all, her writing had beauty, unlike Yasmine’s. She had the best bowl for Goldilocks. Her kingdom was secure.

Yasmine concluded with a mumbled thanks. Maybe the room had heard too many words, as their applause sounded lethargic. They were yet to be granted a proper feast. It was unfair for these writers to ride along with Jane, whose work had been redrafted beyond tedium, then further snipped by her editor. One more author remained, then Jane could claim her dues.

There took to the stage a funny looking man in a black cap. His face was ageless, being so round as to be almost without features. The round face was both meek and solemn. He had the presence of someone who volunteered at a church.

‘Wow. So many of you,’ he said, making the microphone reverberate. Jane could recall his unsolicited email to her, a few weeks ago. It came through while she was dining with her agent.

‘Hello!’ it began, immediately hopeless, ‘I’m so flattered to be performing at your book launch.’

Then he’d called her a genius, amongst other overpraising sentences that made Jane disregard him.

‘Someone called Kevin has messaged me,’ she’d told her agent, ‘And he’s being obsequious.’

Before his reading began, he again referred to Jane’s genius.

‘I am writing,’ Kevin said, ‘because of her.’

An impossible claim. He can’t have been much younger, they were certainly born within the same decade. It was more pointless sycophancy. Kevin clearly didn’t understand that proper writers balked at idle sincerity. Praise could only be trusted when delivered through careful analysis.

Clutching to his status as an underdog, Kevin explained he’d only written two complete stories, neither of which could answer the work of those who’d come before.

‘You won’t have heard of them either,’ he said. His diffidence was undignified. The room would hear his frantic attempt at a lengthier work. He wasn’t even sure if it was a novel, maybe it was a short story, or just a novella, if anyone still wrote those.

‘It was the night,’ he read, ‘when someone broke the fishbowl, when we were told to stop asking Dad why he was home early from work, and when we realised no one was calling us down from our rooms for dinner. It was that night when rage first came to our house. It found a room for itself, then got to work. It started with our parents, but it found us too, me and my little sisters. It pocketed our happiness and left us shivering. I could feel it smiling, the day we finally packed up and moved away. Its work was done, then. It was nourished.’

Kevin’s recital sounded apologetic, like he was ashamed of what he’d brought. His shame shut the room out. Jane could count every bored face, checking how much of the event was left. No special access was granted to the undiscerning, but Jane was given the whole show. Humility couldn’t cover for his peacock feathers. This was a writer with jazz.

And as he went on, Jane could feel the air move, like when a good actor finds the jolt in an old tragedy, or if a jovial séance turns suddenly into terror. The fear was hers and hers alone, but that couldn’t save her. The problem with art is that it’s impossible to tell whether any chosen project is the right one, until, like a vintage wine, it is finally opened. It made Jane scowl, feeling like she was proffering a thing she was never fully happy with. Her story was published now, but then Kevin was writing something else, something less constrained, something more urgent, something that actively sought to keep people reading. Jane could have done that as well, but she’d foolishly believed her book was enough.

What was the book? A novel about a woman who despised her husband. How could she think that would do? It was from the bargain bin of middle-class insight. An unhappy marriage, an unhappy life. A lone woman travels to watch a musical. She sees London, she goes home. Paragraphs were wasted on her walk around Victoria, as if a lone person’s alienation were worthy of study. Nothing happened. It was her second book, and she’d submitted blank pages.

‘And finally,’ the host said, after Kevin fled the stage, ‘we have the real deal. She’s the writer’s writer, she’s what brought you here tonight, and we’re so happy to be supporting her book.’

The host beckoned Jane forward. She felt like a caged animal brought before a circus. Thank God Marnie had gone, and her mute partner, and all the others she had nothing to say to. Thank God it was only Carlos who would speak to her afterwards. He was too drunk to listen; he’d just want to speak about the past.

‘Thank you,’ Jane said into the mic, ‘for coming here for my silly book.’

At centre stage, she felt the full stream of the venue’s lights, which crowded her eyes and made her audience a shadow. Jane had printed the chapter in advance; the words were in her pocket. Holding them up, she could only see too many commas. Every sentence clamoured their meaning. She’d forgotten to write any jokes.

‘All you need to know,’ Jane said, ‘is that… actually, forget it. I’ll just read it.’

A woman disembarked a train from Victoria. She was alone but didn’t want to be. She was there for pleasure, but felt sure something would steal it from her grasp.

You should never have shown her the bear. Even though she basically made you show her. She was asking why you didn’t want her in your room. She looked like she was really upset. That’s what Nicole was always good at, switching her moods, she could do it so quickly, because when you let her in, she stopped being sad and started talking about how cool the bear was.

‘It was a Christmas present,’ you said.

‘I love Paddington,’ she said.

Then you must have gone off and played something else. The thing was, Nicole always talked about your house to other people. She told everyone in 5C that you lived on a road of castles, and that your house had a lift. It wasn’t actually a lift, and Daddy didn’t let you use it. She told everyone about the pool in the basement, but you weren’t allowed in there either. She told everyone that your dad had a secret room upstairs. It wasn’t actually secret, though, it was just where he kept his expensive posters. Sometimes, in the playground, people run up to you and say they’ve heard about your amazing house, and they ask if they can come round as well.

You don’t like being the girl with the big house. It’s just your house. You don’t like it when Nicole says things when you’re not there. She’s louder than you. She talks when the teacher is talking. She’s doing after school dance class with Georgia Lansing, who’s cousin is Matty, one of the gap year students, and Nicole and Georgia sit together sometimes in maths. It’s not just Nicole and Georgia, it’s Nelly, and it’s Malin, who’s American, and they all sit together and make jokes in maths. You used to sit with Nicole in maths, and now you sit with Dagmara, and she doesn’t talk to you.

Nicole runs away with Georgia at breaktime. You see them sitting with the others. Georgia has brought her phone in again, even though it’s against the rules and Mrs Sunbill says that she’ll give people after school detentions. After school detentions aren’t supposed to happen until Year 7. It’s fine to be by yourself at break because the clock moves very quickly. You find two Year 3s shouting at each other, and you help them make friends. They’d seen you in the school play, and they call you Dorothy.

Then it’s French and double P.E. You get given a golden slip by Miss Benjamin. She always makes you come up and repeat what she’s saying to the class. Today it was to eat, and you were the first person who could talk about eating a sandwich. You can see Nicole and Georgia laughing, but it’s always nice to get a slip. Daddy says he’s keeping them in a special folder and will switch them out for pocket money.

It’s Mr Culdaw for P.E. He also teaches IT and music. He’s old and fat and wears glasses. Everyone’s put into teams of seven to play football, but it’s by house, not form, so you’re put with Gladstone. No one you like from 5C is in Gladstone. Olivia is bossy and Seren always looks like she has jam round her mouth. They make Sophie Myers, from 5N, team captain. She makes you a defender. Mr Culdaw blows his whistle at you and tells you to watch the ball. Everyone knows the best team is Churchill, because they’ve got three girls who are really sporty and can run fast. Nicole is in Churchill, and she gets actually excited when they win, even though she’s not good at football either, and didn’t even touch the ball apart from when she took a corner.

They had run out of the pizza roles and the chocolate pudding at lunchtime. Georgia and her friends are at the middle table, and Nicole is with them. There are lots of empty chairs around Dagmara’s group. They don’t talk English outside lessons, and they don’t notice you when you sit down, but then Dagmara asks what you’re eating. It’s a strange green sauce that you’re having with rice. You say you don’t know, and they all laugh.

The clock is slow after lunch. You can’t go to the library because the Year 6’s have got a special lesson in there. The new Year 3 teacher catches you outside the toilets and tells you to go outside. On Wednesday’s there’s Chess Club and Lego Club, but you have to pay to do Lego, and you don’t like playing Chess. You go outside, and you see Nicole at the water fountain. She’s still with Georgia Lansing. It’s like they’re best friends now, like no one remembers how Georgia teased Nicole for being weird.

You go over and Nicole starts elbowing Georgia.

‘Are you still coming round on Sunday?’ you ask Nicole.

‘What?’

‘Do you remember? Your mum and my mum were on the phone…’

Nicole shrugs at you, but your mum and her mum had definitely been on the phone. You wanted Nicole to come round to play the cooking game, where you try to make puddings with things in your kitchen cupboards, and then you find Olga and make her eat them and judge which is the best one. Olga always does a funny voice when she judges the puddings, like she’s an old English granny.

Something is making Georgia Lansing smile at you. It is not a nice smile.

‘I want to ask you a question,’ she says. You never like talking to Georgia Lansing. She doesn’t speak like you do. She says rude things and always sounds really bored.

‘Ok,’ you say.

‘What’s your favourite film?’

And you tell her what it is. You tell her that it is Paddington 2, because you watched it with Olga, and it was that one time where she let you stay up past bedtime, until it got so late that you had to stop, and she promised that you could finish the film in the morning, and she woke you up two hours before school, and you watched the ending in sleeping bags, eating cereal. But you also have other favourite films, like the Captain Marvel film you watched on the plane, or the one that your cousins put on at their house, with the Barbie lady, which you weren’t actually allowed to watch because it’s a 15. You say your answer quickly to Georgia because everyone in your year likes Paddington 2. It’s the film the teachers put on at the end of term. They always give you a choice, it’s always Paddington, or it’s the really old film of Matilda, and no one puts their hand up for that.

They find your answer really funny.

‘I told you,’ Nicole keeps saying, pulling Georgia’s shoulder.

‘Paddington 2?’ Georgia says.

You nod.

‘I told you, she loves Paddington, she’s got a giant Paddington in her room and she cuddles him.’

‘I don’t cuddle him!’ you say.

‘I can’t believe that’s your favourite film. What about The Last Conjuring?’

‘What’s that?’

They laugh again.

‘You don’t know The Conjuring?’ says Georgia, ‘it’s the new one, I’ve seen all of them.’

‘I like all of them,’ Nicole says.

‘I don’t know them.’

‘Obviously you don’t. You only watch little children’s films.’

‘I get to watch scary films,’ you say, and you try and remember the name of the one that Mummy said she walked out of. It was a word that was close to hotel. Someone got their skin cut off, and that’s when Mummy left.

‘What’s The Conjuring about?’ says Georgia, and Nicole laughs and says the question again in exactly the same way.

You shake your head.

‘It’s about a ghost,’ says Georgia, ‘and it actually happened.’

‘Yeah,’ says Nicole, ‘my dad showed it to me, and he was like, this is all real.’

You’ve been round to Nicole’s house and met her dad. He is strict. He tells Nicole off for being too loud at teatime. He doesn’t like Nicole watching the TV at all, that’s why she likes coming to your house.

‘You haven’t seen The Consequence,’ you say to Nicole, but your voice does that thing where it starts cracking and going higher. It’s not fair how you quickly you cry at things.

‘WTF is the Consequence?’ says Georgia Lansing. They can see how red your eyes are. Nicole elbows Georgia again, and they make their faces look serious. You hear a grownup asking if you’re ok. Miss Benjamin is walking over. You’re not supposed to tell things to a teacher anymore. She asks if you’re sure, and you nod. Then she tells Nicole and Georgia to play somewhere else. Teachers don’t normally like it when you stand near them during playtime, but Miss Benjamin lets you stay there, until the bell goes, and then she gives you a little smile.

***

‘You have to know, about Nicole,’ Olga once said to you, in the car, outside the school gates, ‘that she’s always lying. All the time. Girls at my school lied. Boys at my school lied. And I know why. She’s not very happy, that’s why people lie, because they’re sad. Imagine if I was going around saying I’m the Queen of the Moon, and my head is twice the size of my bottom. Would you tell people that the Moon Queen takes you to school? Or would you think that something was wrong with Olga?’

***

Double art in the afternoon, which means lessons with Mr Silk, the funny teacher who always takes up half the lesson talking about his holidays. Mummy said Mr Silk used be a proper teacher at the big school, until something happened to him. When you’re older, she’s promised she’ll tell you what. He’s got lots of hair under his nose. Every week he passes round photos he’s brought from his house. Today it’s him by the Pyramids. He says we can’t really visit them anymore. Then he puts a funny red hat on the desk. It’s one of those tall cylinder hats with black string pointing out.

‘This,’ he says, in his old-fashioned voice, ‘is something I keep on my shelf. So your job today is to draw something you have in your room. Can be a picture, can be a toy, can be a lamp, can be anything. Can be your wallpaper.’

Then he sits in the blue wheely chair and puts his fingers together and whistles. You’re sitting with Hattie, and she’s drawing a special globe that’s made from puzzle pieces. You know that Nicole and Georgia are watching you. They think you’ll draw the bear. What else is in your room? Belinda from Doctor Who is on your wall, but everyone who sees the poster asks who she is. People say they’re doing Olivia Rodgrigo, so you copy them, and draw a pretty girl in a white dress holding a microphone.

Mr Silk asks people to hold theirs up. He gets bored of the Olivia drawings after the third one.

‘Has anyone not done the singing woman?’

Suzette cries because she hadn’t understood the instructions and drew a gun. Mr Silk starts to get cross. When Hattie shows her drawing, he says the globe looks like a potato. He goes to Nicole last. She’s the only one who makes him laugh. She smiles and says she’s drawn the best character from her favourite film. You know what’s on the paper before she’s even picked it up, but Mr Silk likes it so much that he makes her stand at the front, and he guesses who it’s a drawing of, and he maybe can’t hear the noises that Georgie Lansing is making.

‘I think we all know that bear,’ says Mr Silk. He gets everyone to shout the name at the same time. It isn’t even a very good drawing of Paddington, it’s only because she’s put a jar of marmalade in one of his paws. Nelly and Malin are asking Georgie what’s so funny. The final bell goes. Nicole goes back her new friends. They watch you pack up your bag.

It’s Mummy at the gates again.

‘Where’s Olga?’ you ask, and she rubs her eyes.

‘She’s still away, sweetie, but you’ve got me again. Isn’t that fun?’

The drive is always faster going home. You watch the other girls being walked to their cars, or getting onto their bikes, or walking with their brothers and sisters, or lining up by the ice cream van.

‘Ok moo,’ Mummy says, ‘what are three things you learned today?’

You tell her about the gold slip in French, and Mummy calls you her clever girl, then talks about when she lived in France for a year, with her friend, who you would have met, definitely, because she came round after the move, that night where Daddy broke the swan vase, she was there, and she was wearing quite a booby dress, and she was asking you if you did ballet, and you were very funny because you told her that girls don’t have to do that anymore, and, anyway, Mummy went with her to France, and actually got quite good at speaking the language, and, if Miss Benjamin is doing food now, there’s a fun phrase you could say to her. Then Mummy says something very quickly in her French voice.

‘Do you know what that means?’ she says, and you don’t, but she doesn’t wait for an answer anyway.

‘That means I’ll eat the soup, but not the bread.’

The car goes into your road. It’s all white houses, they’re all as big as each other, the only thing that’s different is the door colour. You got to pick what they painted the front door. You chose red. Daddy say’s it’s like a cherry tomato. Your neighbour’s houses don’t look like castles. You don’t live in a castle. These houses look like sharp white teeth. Your house doesn’t look like a castle, it looks like a dentist’s, or another school.

Homework is easy today. It’s just drawing coins in your maths’ book. Mummy sits near you with her magazine. She thinks you need help because you keep looking out the window. She hated maths at school, she only liked art and DT, and then she stopped doing well at them when she got boyfriends.

‘Are you already done?’

‘Yes,’ you say, ‘because in geography we could start on the homework sheet if we’d finished cutting and sticking.’

She makes you check your answers again, then says you can put on the TV, so you remind her about violin practice, but she doesn’t think you need to do that this evening. You want to go to your room instead.

‘Are you ok, Moo?’

‘Yes, I just want to read my book.’

‘You’re such a clever, well-behaved girl,’ Mummy says, and pats you on the shoulder, and so you run upstairs. As soon as you open your door, you see him on the bed. His stuffed arms are held up, and his little thread mouth is smiling. He has eyes like wet black stones. He is always in that spot, watching you come in. You turn around and slam the door and go upstairs again. It is strange how your house shrinks from floor to floor. There’s the door you run to after a bad dream. You know the room’s empty, but you still knock before going in. The curtains are shut. They’re old-fashioned, with flowers on them, and they turn the room a sad yellow colour in daylight.

Olga must have taken all her things on holiday. It smells like old people, or like old person’s houses where people don’t visit. There was that time where you hid up here, when you and Nicole played hide and seek, and it took her ages to come up, and you could tell that she was scared when she called out your name. She didn’t even check the wardrobe, where you’d been sitting and trying to breathe quietly, under the grey bags where they keep Grandad’s suits. Then you heard Nicole crying, and say that she didn’t like these rooms, and that she didn’t want to play anymore, so you found her, and you agreed that upstairs was out of bounds.

‘Sweetie? Where are you? It’s supper time, ok?’

Mummy likes eating with you now. It’s tomato pasta, and she’s made it because it’s supposed to be your favourite, so she doesn’t know why you’re not smiling.

‘Gosh,’ she says, ‘they really tire you out at that school, don’t they?’

She always asks you such silly questions, like if you like your school bag, or if you think tomorrow will be sunny. Now she’s asking what your favourite subject is, like she doesn’t know it’s history, because of how funny Mr Voxham is. It was the best day ever when he came in dressed like Queen Elizabeth I.

‘He is cool, isn’t he, Mr Voxham?’

‘Don’t say cool, Mummy.’

There’s that crinkly sound of keys in the door, as Daddy comes in.

‘Hello Moo,’ he says, and he presses his lips on your cheek, and it feels soft and smushy and you wish he would stop. He goes to the fridge and comes back with wine.

‘Good day at school?’

‘She’s very tired.’

‘Oh no! Are they working our girl too hard?’

He doesn’t want pasta, he wants to order something in. He turns on the TV, then Mummy hisses his name.

‘What? It’s late.’

‘What about our little surprise?’

‘Oh,’ he says, and gets up from the sofa, and goes on his phone, and tuts as he flicks through the screen, and does the squinty thing with his eyes.

‘We’ve got something very exciting for you,’ Mummy says, and then Daddy kneels down and shows you his phone, and it’s zoomed in on a bright bit of paper, and it’s got the name of a theatre in golden letters at the top.

‘We’re taking you,’ he says, ‘to Paddington.’

‘The musical!’ says Mummy.

‘Have you heard about it, Moo?’

You shake your head.

‘Yes you have,’ Mummy says, ‘I told you about it last week, they’ve got a proper bear on stage.’

‘Yes. Yes, I remember,’ you say. Mummy had told you to listen to something on the radio, where the man she likes was interviewing someone from the Paddington play. They had been making jokes about the bear, and how it could move on its own. It all sounded very strange. You’ve always thought the theatre was a silly place anyway, because they’re always pretending that films and TV shows are real.

‘We’ve got four tickets. So, you, me, Daddy, and, we thought-’

‘Olga?’

‘Nicole.’

‘That would be nice, wouldn’t it? We can go in the afternoon, and then we can take you to Franco Manca’s.’

‘Yes,’ you say, ‘that will be nice. I can’t wait to tell Nicole about it.’

Daddy says he wants to watch the grownup show with Mummy, because he’ll be out all the other nights this week. It’s fine, it’s close to bedtime. They both give you a kiss, and you lie on your bed in your pyjamas, waiting for the sun to set. You couldn’t tell them about Nicole, or the bear, or the drawing. Nicole and you are best friends, she just does these things.

She does these things to you because she can. Or because she’s right. Maybe you do like the things that little children like. You can’t have a phone like Georgia Lansing, not even outside of school. You can’t watch scary films because Mummy won’t let you, but you don’t want too anyway. You don’t like watching things with ghosts or zombies. You can’t be like Georgia Lansing.

If Mummy calls Nicole’s mum, then Georgia Lansing will know about the Paddington play. She likes Nicole because she’s silly, because she doesn’t mind being in trouble. But if you get in trouble, then you want to cry. It isn’t fair.

And it isn’t fair that, right before summer holidays in Year 4, the class watched Paddington 2 and everyone found it really funny. No one told you it’s wrong to like the film now. They must think all the jokes are stupid now. Maybe it’s stupid to laugh at the dancing man or the end, or the bit where Paddington gives a haircut. Or maybe it’s just that Paddington is always cheerful. It’s like when everyone was laughing at Andie when she went skipping through the playground. Sophie Lansing said something like, we don’t do that now, we’re too old for that now, it’s so weird she still likes doing it now.

They don’t do that now. They don’t do Paddington. He’s embarrassing. You sit up and look at the big teddy in your bed and feel around his stupid neck. You never noticed how his head doesn’t weigh anything. It would be so easy to rip his head off. If you dig in with your nails, it will come apart. He isn’t real. That’s why Georgia Lansing doesn’t like him. There is no friendly talking bear, and there aren’t smiling happy families to keep him. So you’re not doing anything, when you tear into his skin, and find the white layer underneath, which is what the bear has instead of bones.

You look at Paddington’s head. It looks like he was never really smiling, otherwise his eyes would be happy too.

For the first time, the land was his. The deal was done, Greg from Savill’s shook his hand and gifted a bottle of Cava. Rayyan’s first night there was spent on the balcony, with a takeaway Wagamama’s, watching human ants scatter around Lambeth. Issie came round soon after. They popped open the sparkling wine, she gave him some tips on cheap furniture places, and he nodded, pretending to note them down.

The building’s gym opened at 6am. He was the only one there. It was a long black room with black equipment, facing a wall of mirrors. Rayyan’s focus was always on upper body. Pulsing remixes played through an unending torrent of air conditioning. Cool down, protein shake, then off to work. The proper work. A short tube ride towards Holborn, then the fidgeting hours of his position as copy editor for Absolute Juice. Everyone in the office knew about his videos. They all thought he would leave soon. They were right. Besides, it was an open secret that the company was about to be bought by YouLift Proteins.

No time for office drinks that evening. He had to rush home, to rustle up dinner for Alvin ASMR. Alvin wasn’t his real name; he was actually called Toby Backman. Their friendship was new and exciting. Both made food content, although Alvin was less interested in cooking, more in the appealing sounds made by the process. There was the sizzle of bacon in a steel pan, or the light bubbling of a ragu as the flavours began consummation. Alvin’s most popular video was of him whispering while peeling leeks. That was before he put himself on camera, when he was just the absent, seductive voice. Since entering the frame, Alvin had dyed his hair and lost two stone. He refused Rayyan’s offer of wine and barely touched the Chicken Stroganoff.

The hope was that Alvin would consider a collaboration. It might satisfy both their audiences; Rayyan could assemble the meal, with Alvin as his lip-smacking sous chef. Alvin’s primary audience was insomniacs. The ideal time to make this proposition never came. From his arrival, Alvin was too frothed up about a rival creator to talk about anything else. The London Food Guide had set up a review podcast and hired a floppy-haired TikToker called Lance to front it. Lance had been in the ASMR game too, before transitioning to short form pledges about local chicken shops. This was a leap Alvin was desperate to make, but he feared he would have to re-build his viewing empire from scratch.

‘I’m so sick of fucking whispering,’ Alvin said, at a regular volume.

‘What if you uploaded something of you just, like, in your kitchen, you know, just being you?’

‘I would have to destroy Alvin ASMR first. That’s the only way. Honestly, Rayyan, the niches, they’re what saves you, and they’re what kills you.’

He emailed Issie the next day, saying the collab was a no go. They ended up FaceTiming; Rayyan was just out the shower, fresh from another workout. Issie was outside Fortnum’s, walking towards Picadilly. Her screen would pause midway through a sentence, and her voice rattled between his headphones. The channel needed new content soon, but the question was where they should film.

‘Your place is so nice,’ Issie said, ‘I think we could sell it as like a revamp.’

‘Yeah, but, think about the vibe of your kitchen. Like we’re doing peasant cooking. We can’t look too modern and shiny; it has to look a bit shit. Not shit. Just… you know… homely.’

Then there was the matter of what to cook. Rayyan usually left this to Issie. She came up with the concept for the channel, after all. “First Ever…”, as it was known, saw Rayyan prepare dishes from their earliest recorded recipes. Their concept swiftly hit gold with a video called “First Ever Pizza”, where Rayyan prepared a Mastunicola and did his best to stretch out their historical research. As they moved on to other popular foodstuffs, they discovered that many dishes had disputed origins. When something’s ancestry became too untraceable, they would just make something up. It was no surprise when many angry commenters took apart their one on the hamburger. It didn’t matter much. It still got nearly a million views.

Issie was confident she’d found the original recipe for an omelette. She tasked Rayyan with perfecting a Kuku Sabzi, which, she explained, was a sort of frittata, cooked with green herbs. They shot it on an overcast Saturday afternoon, at her place in Elephant and Castle. Kayyan wore a new white t-shirt from Cos. It was tighter on his arms. He liked the way it seemed to pinch his biceps. In general, Issie needed the weekend to edit. Tuesday was upload day. All their videos got decent momentum now. Soon a thousand viewers swarmed, posting happy words about their content being a midweek highlight. They even got a salute from Alvin ASMR, who shared it on his Instagram. His caption read: “Break. Those. EGGS.”

That night, Rayyan couldn’t sleep. He was stuck on the omelette video, searching for any comments that complemented his arms. All the good stuff about him praised his personality. His audience thought he’d make a great boyfriend. He found himself hurtling to the bottom of the swamp, to the hidden or downvoted comments he usually ignored. One account left five incomprehensible rants about Shariah Law. Another user, named TheRealMikeBungle, said simply: “you live in a hollow town.” Rayyan messaged Issie, asking if he lacked sex appeal. Thirty minutes later he sent two question marks. On that issue, she never offered a reply.

The money would come from sponsored videos. Issie started fishing around for partnerships with Gousto, HelloFresh, GoodMorningMouth and Happy-Hungy, promising to build a recipe from one of their ingredient’s boxes. She put feelers out, too, with homeware brands, and restaurant chains, and celebrity chefs with books to sell. Their first big money offer arrived from an unsought party. ‘We would like,’ their email read, ‘for Rayyan to taste one of our new mega-shakes and confirm that it’s every bit as delicious as “solid” foods.’

Rayyan was delighted by this proposal, given it had come from YouLift Proteins, which were still finalising their acquisition of Absolute Juice. He showed everyone the email at lunch, thinking his work friends would laugh.

‘You know, the founder of YouLift,’ said a colleague, ‘gave, like, a talk, recently, where he was like, the future of food isn’t oral.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Fuck knows? Like maybe up the bum?’

‘Rayyan can’t make videos about food going up the bum.’

They jeered him again when he ducked out of the pub invite. Socialising with colleagues felt like a distraction. On his way home, Rayyan got a call from Issie. Her excitement shook through the line.

‘Do you know The Electric Nine?’ she said.

‘No?’

‘Graphic novel, now film, about a royal chef who discovers a plot to kill the President of the Galaxy.’

‘Nah, don’t know it.’

‘It’s a film.’

‘Don’t know it.’

‘Amazon have done it. They want you to promote it.’

‘Me?,’ said Rayyan in disbelief, ‘Amazon want me?’

‘Yeah. Basically, they’re struggling with press stuff, because one of the actors won’t promote it, and the guy playing the chef just attacked his wife while dressed as a bear.’

‘Ah shit.’

‘Yeah. So, they want you to hype it up a bit, make some food from the film. They want you to say it’s like Star Wars meets Ratatouille meets Wong Kar-wai.’

The Electric Nine was screened at the cinema in Battersea Power Station. Issie was not allowed in. Afterwards, she filmed Rayyan on the turfed riverbank outside, as he raved about the propulsive narrative and the mind-blowing comedy, before promising some outer space food content arriving on the channel soon. The eventual video, where Rayyan trussed up homemade Moon Steak with Blue Beer, got a negative reaction. Several subscribers asked what relevance this recipe had to peasant cooking. After careful discussion, Rayyan and Issie put out a statement on their socials, assuring that future content would only focus on historic cooking, instead of dishes ‘yet to come’.

He was finding a new confidence. Their audience started noticing his physique, and Rayyan wondered if he was now a lust object. Issie helped him pick out some good photos for dating apps. To his surprise, the likes came tumbling in. Pretty women asked him questions about food. They thought his job sounded cool. He would take them to The Jolly Gardeners, or, if it was sunny, to the Thamesis Dock, and then, two drinks in, he’d blush to show them his latest upload. It helped that the lustful comments tended to be upvoted, so he could laughingly point his date’s attention to them.

‘It’s so weird,’ he’d say.

‘It is so weird,’ she’d always agree.

Invariably, this would be enough, enough to get them back to the flat, enough to get their clothes off. A day might come soon, he thought, when he wouldn’t need to do that pantomime at all. They’d just know who he was, and he could sit back and be seduced. He remembered Alvin ASMR, his first proper guest at the flat, complaining about Lance, the floppy haired man from the London Food Guide podcast.

‘He fucks,’ the other Youtuber had said, ‘like, every night, he fucks.’

Rayyan searched up on his rival creator. The supposed lothario was, in fact, facing a terrible backlash after his podcast had launched. It transpired Lance’s early listening stats were fabricated. Some marketing firm had help cook the books. Their feed now lay dormant. No new episode had come in three weeks. Rayyan found a Reddit post that surmised the whole saga. ‘No one,’ it began, ‘chose this guy, watched this guy’s videos, listened to his shit. He wanted to buy his way to an audience. And you can’t fucking do that.’

In early July, Rayyan saw a statement from Alvin ASMR, announcing the channel was on hiatus. The two friends met again at the flat, and he suggested a walk. Under grey skies along the Thames, Alvin laughed about the downfall of the London Food Guide podcast. The schadenfreude was delicious, but he still felt burnt out.

‘I’m out of ideas man,’

‘For the channel?’

‘I saw you,’ Alvin said, ‘at that Amazon thing, you know, the food film?’

‘Oh, yeah, so funny-’

‘Shoulda been me, man. But you can’t promote shit if you’re barely audible.’

He took no comfort from Rayyan, who tried shrugging it off, then harking back to the controversy that haunted his channel after, and, finally, his pointing out that the film had since been pulled from the streaming site altogether. The Electric Nine no longer existed. Alvin wasn’t hearing it. He walked moodily to the entrance of Nine Elms, mumbling that he’d return to his channel when the marketplace settled.

That July saw more record temperatures. It was too hot to film in Issie’s flat. They had to stuff the kitchen with tower fans from Wilco. Even Rayyan’s flat felt inhabitable. He started using the building’s pool. It was right at the top of the complex, with views of Vauxhall square. It was always scrupulously clean when he came in, but he always got to swim alone. One Saturday morning, as he was doing lengths, his hand brushed up against a foreign object. It felt, as all sodden things do, like death and effluence. Thankfully, it was only the former. A pigeon had drowned in the water. Rayyan scrambled out and dried himself, then sought the building manager to complain. The office was shut; there was a number to call but nobody answered, so he sent a firmly worded email instead. Two weeks later, a letter reached his flat. Kinder and Allies, the company that acted as his freeholder, had written to state his complaint was sadly rejected. After internal review, the firm concluded the building didn’t have a pool.

“First Ever…” was, by late summer, a sought-after commodity. They had to consider doing two videos a week. One would be the traditional rake through history, the other a contemporary version of the same dish, prepared with whatever the sponsor obliged. Fitting this new schedule in with work was daunting, so it was almost good luck when Rayyan learned that Absolute Juice were closing their London offices. YouLift announced they would run all future operations of their subsidiary company through the direct command of an AI executive named Susan Whitford-Brown. She was designed to reflect the wants of the average British consumer. Almost immediately, Susan shut down the production of all but two juice flavours, then devised an advertising campaign around feeling safe from buskers.

Rayyan’s colleagues added him to a disgruntled WhatsApp chat. He muted the messages. His savings were at a level where he could focus solely on food content. More leisure time meant more app dates. Like his video schedule, he would now book in two a week, on Monday and Friday. They no longer made him nervous. From initial greetings, he played his part with extreme precision. Even spontaneity could be rehearsed. It wasn’t so far removed from the spiels he now had to give at the start of each video, singing the praise of a new meat probe. I can’t believe I met a girl like you. I can’t believe how much this has changed my beef strategies.

Only once, in an August evening, when the dusk air hissed of the changing seasons, did Rayyan find himself losing composure. They’d kissed on the Thamesis, and the girl had followed him home. Then, on his balcony, she turned cruel.

‘I can’t believe you live here. Like, who lives here?’

‘It’s a nice place.’

‘Yeah, but, like… this is just not a place, is it?’

He felt a surge of panic. She was going off script.

‘I live here.’

‘I’m not knocking you, just… it’s a nice flat… but, like, what is this?’

It was apparent he’d brought a progressive one home. He let her needle him about his flat, and the emptiness of the surrounding area, and what it portrayed about his lack of taste. He laughed off every jab, even though the judgement pricked his skin. When they finally did have sex, it felt like revenge.

Issie always wanted to know the gory details. They would laugh about his exploits over drinks, then, when drunkenness set in, they could congratulate each other about the channel. There were mountains for them yet to conquer, but what mattered was they were winning.

‘I reckon we’ll do this forever,’ Rayyan said, the night they celebrated getting over 100,000 subscribers.

‘What if we run out of food?’

‘This’ll never run out. We’re too clever.’

Issie chuckled with him, then poured another drink. The following day, as Rayyan finished up with some bench presses, he checked in with Issie again. She’d forwarded another offer of sponsorship. Susan Whitford Brown, of Absolute Juice, wanted him to try out her company’s new Toast and Tea range. He would take a gulp, then raise the bottle and declare it to be: ‘Prosecco without the violence’. Rayyan thought about sharing this with his former colleagues but decided against it. He’d ignored them for nearly a month.

Post-shower, he checked his calendar and saw an empty day waiting. He could scour the apps; there was always someone he could lure round. The lift arrived at the basement floor. As the sole occupant, he got to enjoy pouting in the mirror. Beneath glaring lights, he looked like a corpse, but shadows cast found greater definition to his biceps. The doors slid shut. He watched the oval screen count each floor as he ascended. It could carry up to eight people, but he always rode it alone.

The screen read 14, then 15, then it blinked into a series of random punctuation marks, and the lift reached a sudden halt. The stark lights turned to blackness, then to a low, flickering red. He waited until his calm evaporated. It was the darkness he found oppressive. He pressed the alarm switch, and was relieved to hear a merry jingle play, before the repeated hum of a phone ringing. It rang, and rang, and rang.

‘Hello,’ he said. He heard a great pause.

‘Hello,’ he said, again, ‘hello, I’m stuck in the tower.’

And then he waited, confusing each of his panicked breaths for a voice down the line.

No one could tell him off on the bench outside. It had stopped raining, and he could watch all the people coming out of the station. They dabbed about like pigeons hearing footsteps. Children were coming out of school in bright blue jumpers, screeching towards home. A few older kids buzzed around on bikes. They would come past John, standing tall over the saddle, on a lap that started at the entrance to Sainsbury’s.

‘John-John,’ someone was saying, ‘hey, John-John!’

It was the dirty man with the big red carrier bag.

‘John-John, where are your manners, man?’

Everyone called the man Lorry. His clothes were worn-out and baggy, fading from black to grey after too much rain and sunlight.

‘Where’ve you been, John-John?’

Lorry sat next to him, with the carrier bag on his lap. Inside, John saw some Sterling Hand rolling tobacco and an open packet of supermarket ham.

‘Everyone’s asking about John-John.’

‘I’ve been at my brother’s. Very much that. Big apartment.’

‘Oh yeah? You’ve got a brother?’

‘Got a brother,’ John said proudly, ‘yes, older than me by two wars.’

‘I’ve got a brother.’

‘He’s got it all sorted my brother. So, I was with him. But he has a dog in his apartment.’

‘My brother,’ Lorry said excitedly, ‘also has-’

‘And it was me or the dog. The dog didn’t… stupid brother. Big, stupid dog.’

‘John-John’s got a brother! I’ve got a brother! With a big dog as well. Big dog. Didn’t want me there. Brother was like, I dunno man, guess he was scared of the dog.’

It all came back to John; his first meeting with Lorry, when the man ranted on about a council flat and a rottweiler.

‘Do you know something?’ said John, ‘we must be talking about a different dog.’

John followed the other man to Larkhall. The park was damp and bristling. No one was there, except for the people who always were. One of these was a friend of Lorry’s. He swayed towards them.

‘Who is this suit?’ he said, in a different kind of voice. John thought he must be Russian.

‘This is John-John. The last gentlemen.’

The stranger’s name contained a lot of consonants. It was Pawel, then several vs or ks. So the stranger became Paul. He and Lorry wanted to smoke. They made John smoke too. The fumes went straight to the back of his throat, filling his mouth with the taste of burnt plastic.

Between inhales, they talked about the rain. It had come down with tropical force after a few days of unrelenting sunshine. The switch felt like a reprimand. Streets that buzzed with life now looked abandoned. Larkhall mostly slumbered under clouds, but it was still a shock to see it look so ugly. An adolescent moodiness sat amongst the grass, and blossoming trees couldn’t disguise the grey, wrinkled bark beneath.

‘England,’ said Paul, ‘is flooded.’

‘England,’ said Lorry, ‘is angry.’

John sat still as the two men argued about their home country. He couldn’t trace where their disagreement began. The Russian man argued that the English had put their guns down for good, while Lorry was riled up about water and soil.

‘There’ll be a war,’ said Paul, ‘you will all eat the bullets.’

‘You’re not seeing it,’ said Lorry, waving his hands, ‘the English, the Germans, they’re the ones with the flooding. What’s flooding? Water. And that’s it.’

‘England’s stealing water?’

‘We and Germany, that’s our plan.’

‘We?’

‘We. Me. England.’

Then Paul started mocking his friend.

‘This guy,’ he said to John, ‘thinks he’s English.’

‘I am English.’ Lorry was twitching as he spoke. Every word sprung out like a convulsion.

‘Nah. John-John, he’s English. In his suit. That’s English. Black man, he’s not English,’

‘Black man?’

‘Not English,’ said Paul happily.

‘Then what am I?’

‘You’re your own thing.’

‘I don’t like this,’ said Lorry to John, charged with the energy of a storm cloud, ‘do you know what this guy’s saying? Cause I don’t like what he’s saying.’

But Paul was enjoying himself now.

‘It’s alright, black man,’ said Paul, ‘I can get out of here. John-John can get out of here. But the city will keep you here. Sorry, black man.’

Those were the final words, then the two friends were upon each other. They rolled onto the damp grass and into the mud, with Lorry’s thumbs clasping for Paul’s throat, then up towards his bulging eyes. John did all he could to get away. Age meant he couldn’t run. On the tarmacked path, under a row of green trees, he hobbled with all the urgency left in his blood.

His safe place was the big wide road. It was all cars and busses, and houses looking scared behind pointy metal gates. The school children had gone by then. Everyone else was going the other way, and they all wore light coloured shirts, or trench coats, or white headphones, and none of them had any time to say hello.

It was too cold for the pub drinkers to be outside. There were some smokers by the doors to the Royal Oak, but John didn’t go over. The bald man he’d tangled with last week might be there. He might come out with his friends again to ask all his angry questions. John changed direction, striding back past the station, past the café, past the Sainsbury’s, looking for a ring of houses that sat watching a small circle of grass. This was a walk he’d done a thousand times. Every housing block he passed, every peering window, every rusting metal fence, every architectural adhesion, and every strange diversion; the blue-doored flats of Binfield Road had watched all his reticent mornings, and each stumble and tread of his late journeys home.

In just a few seconds he was in a different world entirely. Houses of austere grey brick leered at him. He knew not to stay there long, on the circular pavement set around a tiny patch of grass and trees. This little place was undisturbed, as it always had been. It was perfect for courtship. Take the woman to a strip of nature and observe something about the shape of leaves. It worked for John, once. It only had to work once.

He shouldn’t stay long. Thoughts of absent friends began to bark like unfed dogs. The Cavendish Arms wasn’t far. He went there and smiled to see people sitting outside. First, he tried the group of girls, four in all, two smoking, two texting, but they just sat quietly and looked at the floor. An older woman with red hair offered cigarettes. She helped with a charity, not in that area, but in North London, which, she said, would help, but John didn’t want her help, so he moved on. Adult boys asked what he was doing to change things, but they wouldn’t listen to what John said back. Nobody could ever hear him.

Leaving the pub, he heard footsteps behind. Someone tapped him on the shoulder. It was one of the girls. She had sweet round cheeks and smelt richly of blossom and oak.

‘Here,’ she said, offering out a scrunched green note, as well as a weighty handful of copper and silver coins, ‘Good luck, ok?’

And then, after John smiled and told her how beautiful she was, she quietly but firmly said: ‘No drugs.’

He counted the money as he walked along Clapham Road. It was just over seven pounds. John’s blazer couldn’t keep out the sniping chill, coming quickly, as ever, as the sun fell away from the sky. He was against the traffic of people once more. Suited men staggered toward Brixton, holding each other and sharing loud affirmations. They were leaving their frivolities now and passed off license and kebab shop like postmen neglecting a certain home.

He saw a woman, sprinting his way and waving her arms as if she’d been kept waiting. John knew he’d never met her before. Her face wasn’t quite right. Her teeth were sharp and glinted in the moonlight, and her eyes were different sizes.

‘Help me,’ she said. But John could not.

Striding on, he found a pub sitting watch on the border to Kennington, which nestled under shiny white brick. Inside, a spotty man was wiping surfaces, while another, who was old, grey, and forgotten, sat alone, scowling.

‘What have you done with the others?’ said John to the spotty man, as he approached the bar.

‘Others?’

‘I’ve looked in here before. Everyone’s here. Where are they all, now?’

‘Oh,’ said the spotty man, ‘well, they’re all upstairs.’

Upstairs. Of course. A very nice way to put it. All drinkers end up upstairs.

‘You’re quite right. Up there. Very funny. The good ones go up there early, don’t they? And then they wait, don’t they?’

‘No, no’ said the spotty man, ‘They’re all at the theatre, upstairs. You’ve missed it now; it’s the second half.’

Funny sort of man. John asked him for a stout. He was charged eight pounds, and tried to count his change again, but there was nothing that could make the difference.

‘Sorry mate,’ the barman said, ‘nothing I can do.’

‘Nothing? How’s half?’

‘It’s poured, mate. You buy it, or that’s it.’

‘What can I buy for this?’ John said and pushed the whole pile of coins across the bar.

‘Nothing. Sorry mate. It’s done now. You sure you need it?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’

This explosion didn’t come from John. From the corner of the pub, the third man was scowling at them.

‘If he can’t pay for it, I will. For goodness’ sake. Just give him a drink.’

Whoever he was, this benefactor spoke with great authority, and the barman gave John his stout without another word. The lone drinker wore a pinstriped suit. His head was nearly bald, holding only a few strands of white hair, like feathers stuck to an egg at a farmer’s market.

‘Thank you, sir,’ John said, nearly bowing at the man, ‘I thought I was out of it.’

He wasn’t invited to sit but did so anyway.

‘Stupid, isn’t it? What eight pounds is, nowadays.’

‘I used to come here all the time,’ said John, ‘then all my friends went upstairs.’

‘To the play?’

‘What play?’

‘The play, upstairs. Have you seen it?’

‘No.’

‘Good. It’s rubbish.’

The lone drinker held a glass of near-empty scotch.

‘Theatre,’ said John, ‘that’s just for the ghosts, isn’t it?’

‘The ghosts?’

With this, the man laughed.

‘The writer is a ghost,’ he said.

‘How do you know?’

‘Because I bloody wrote it.’

He fumbled around in his pockets, then pulled out a flyer for John. There was a picture of two women, one blonde, one brunette, holding each other in the giddy affections of youth. John squinted at the words beneath. The flyer read Footprints in the Sand, by acclaimed playwright Ralph something or other. The print on the bottom of the flyer was too crumpled to make out.

‘It’s woke nonsense,’ said Ralph, ‘about lesbians who can time travel. That’s what they want, nowadays.’

‘Are you a man of language?’

‘What was that?’

John leant forward to repeat his question, and the playwright wrinkled his nose.

‘Look at me,’ said Ralph, ignoring John altogether, ‘at the White Bear, of all places. And the director’s a wet nothing.’

‘I’m a man of language.’

‘Are you?’

‘Poetry. That’s me. Ask me anything.’

Ralph smirked.

‘Have you won an award?’

‘What sort of award?’

‘My first play won an award. People still do that one. The French do it all the time. It’s about Auschwitz. Auschwitz and automatic cars. Those were the days.’

‘I teach poetry,’ John tried again, thinking of every moment Carol had wanted to tell him about her subject.

‘Which poets?’

‘That fellow. John. The Flea.’

‘John Donnes?’

‘Him and the rest. All sick men, of course. All upstairs, now. No money in poetry. Not that I made money, either. Isn’t that the problem? I used to hear about John, John Donnes, and the road he was on. Glad I’m not on it. Don’t you think?’

Ralph wrinkled his nose again. Then a buzzing noise went off, and the spotty man behind the bar held open a large wooden door, and a dozen chattering people came through.

‘You’re really not here, are you?’ said Ralph. The playwright reached into his pocket, finding a leather wallet. He plucked out three ten-pound notes, stuffing them into John’s hand.

‘Take this and try not to drown.’

Then Ralph got up from the table to meet his public. John queued for the bar again. The new arrivals where all whispering to each other about a bad actor who couldn’t project. He waited his turn, but the spotty man wouldn’t serve him.

‘We’re about to close, mate. It’s not that sort of place, mate.’

Back under the streetlights, between closed curtains and metal shutters, John watched a woman dancing outside of a Londis. She was wailing like a fox being defiled. Two figures in black coats jeered at her from the shop’s entrance. As John got closer, he saw it was the same woman who accosted him earlier. She was screaming for help. She tried to follow John as he went inside, but the black coats held her away.

His heart racing, John asked for a bottle of Glenfiddich. The man behind the counter rolled his eyes but made the sale. As John stepped away, he heard the hurried sound of something being sprayed, then the air thickened with cheap disinfectant. Outside, the black coats threw pebbles at the wailing woman’s feet.

A blonde lady sat alone at a bus stop. She was straining to find the source of the noise. John was certain he’d seen her before.

‘You’re her, aren’t you?’

She had to take her headphones out.

‘Sorry?’

‘From the wonderful play?’

‘Oh,’ said the blonde woman, ‘yes, sorry, did you see it?’

‘I know the writer.’

‘Do you?’

‘Yes. Richard.’

‘Ralph.’

‘Yes. Ralph.’

She was even prettier in real life. John told her he’d seen the play’s poster everywhere and thought the blonde girl would be a proper actor.

‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘that’s so nice.’

‘I act too.’

‘You do?’

‘Used too. Me, and Ralph. And Carol, do you know her? She’s upstairs, now. Most of them are. We made the plays together. She told me to be careful, because she was the only one who could do the adding up.’

The girl from the poster stood up. Her bus was coming.

‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘for coming to the play.’

He watched her bus leave. It carried so many forlorn faces, even though they were all going home.

There was a small park in front of the new-build flats; John could sit there and drink alone. They had built the place wanting to stop people sleeping there, but he could make do by leaning against a patch of tree trunk, idling in the grass by the sports area to provide a certain pastoral quality to the development.

He saw the man’s shadow bobbing across the green. It was just as he’d opened the whiskey, as if a signal had immediately been sent out, like dying wasps calling to their nest.

‘My friend,’ the shadow said, in a voice that could have been Russian. Paul was delighted to see him. In the dim light, John saw how the other man’s face had been kissed by violence. His right eye had the worst of it. It was swollen and purple. Paul kept one hand on his brow, above this wound, to soothe the pain.

‘Where did you go, John-John?’

‘I didn’t want to see the fight.’

‘Ah, it wasn’t so bad.’

‘Look at your eye.’

‘That wasn’t from the fight, John-John.’

‘Who did that to you, then?’

Paul chuckled and shook his head.

‘It was Lorry.’

He took the whiskey bottle from John’s hand.

‘But not at the park. Later.’

He smiled fondly, then took a big gulp.

‘He hit you later?’

‘Yeah. He didn’t like it when I called him my black friend.’

‘You shouldn’t call him that.’

‘But he is black. And he is my friend.’

Paul recounted the rest of his afternoon. After the tussle in the park, the friends made a truce, weeping over their beautiful bond, and then they walked to a bar where Paul used to work, as the owner would still give him food and drink. Lorry knew a woman with her own place, where he’d sometimes go and shoot up. They tried to find her, but she must have been out of town. Their next fight happened outside a pharmacy. It was a few minutes after the owner had turned them away. Lorry was fired up.

‘Then he busted these moves out,’ said Paul, ‘like Kung-Fu, like pow, pow, pow.’

He was in high spirits as he performed the beating.

‘John-John,’ he said, ‘you had to be there.’

Paul was laughing as if he were the victor in the fight. The sound of sirens split them apart. His friend had sprinted in the other direction. He reckoned that Lorry was back in the tube station. That was his patch.

They drank in silence, for a while. The sky blinked red with towers, planes and satellites. It must have been after midnight. A few of the newbuild flats still had their blinds up. They could see a young woman in pyjamas tidy up her kitchen, and, a few stories above, an older person scuttle about, tending to their plants.

‘I was at the theatre this evening,’ John said, weighing the whiskey bottle in his left hand.

‘The theatre?’

‘That’s right, Paul.’

The girl in her pyjamas looked out to the park below her window, then closed the curtains, leaving the faintest outline of her figure as she left the room and switched off the light.

‘It was a very funny play, Paul.’

‘Fucking theatre, man. This is why you’re the king, John-John.’

‘Shall I tell you about it?’

Paul slapped John on the shoulder.

‘Very well. It was very funny. All about these people. These two people. One of them’s upstairs. The other, left with all the sums. So, what does he do? I think the play was called She’s Upstairs. Carol’s Upstairs. The play’s in this big room. Everyone’s there. And there’s a man, with a hammer, and he’s in charge. He bangs the hammer; you get the house. Then… It’s all happy. Then someone comes in. The one who was left behind. He comes in and starts shouting. Starts shouting “that’s my house”. Everyone’s looking at him. He keeps saying that. Keeps saying “you can’t have it, it’s mine”. And it’s very funny. No one sees him. Very funny play. My friend wrote it. It’s about what happens when people go upstairs.’

John turned to Paul. He saw the other man was asleep. He was snoring lightly, his head against the tree trunk. It was a good place to rest. The residents wouldn’t appear until seven at the earliest. On other days, John had managed to sleep until the late morning, when teenagers started bouncing balls around on the nearby tarmac. With any luck he would be out of it for a good long while.

He took up the whiskey again. It was lukewarm and sickly. Each drink helped push the world away. The fuzziness was coming, and the pain and the nausea too, then sleep swung towards him like a punch in the face.

She was certain they didn’t hold hands until right at the very end, when they were sprinting for the bus, and the sun was rising behind them. It came through laughter. The other girl was a few steps ahead, in mock concern that they’d miss this one, or, worse still, that she’d catch it and leave her new friend behind. So, she spun round, stretched out her arm, made a show of how close a run thing it was. Then they boarded together, out of breath, holding each other, the bemusement of the other passengers only making them giddier. They sat down in this newfound intimacy, feeling like the world had chosen them. Then the bus pulled away.

It was nearing 6AM on a Friday morning, where two worlds collide on public transport, and night owls witness their professional counterparts doze towards the world of work. On Brixton Road, everything was slowly waking. Market traders began to set up stall, old women pushed tartan shopping bags, and a lone man outside a tube station stood poised with a karaoke system, ready to speak about God.

The two girls were at the back of the bus. They only had a few more minutes together; Lina needed to switch services to head East, while Claudia was going onwards, into Central London. She dared not ask Lina to stay on with her. The moment felt too wonderful, and too fragile. An explicit invitation risked shattering it completely. Better to hold on to this strange, exciting new person, and just smile at her, and just wait and see.

It was all such random good luck. They had met almost twelve hours earlier, at a mutual friend’s birthday, at a terrible bar on Coldharbour Lane. Claudia had only gone out of sympathy. Actually, that wasn’t entirely true, part of her always hoped, when new friends invited her to things, that she might meet the attractive stranger. But these sorts of invitations were few and far between, particularly on a Thursday night, and so she almost hadn’t gone. It took some effort to pick out an outfit and leave the flat. The host was not, in anyway, a close friend. In fact, it was exceedingly likely that she would have shown up and been exactly the wrong kind of guest; the half friend, half acquaintance, who knows no one and lacks any instinct for social preservation.

Claudia spent her life willing herself to leave that purgatory. Too many evenings had gone by when she was at the door upon entry, gazing at her phone, wanting to be asked questions then fudging the answers when they came. Somehow, the elements were telling her that this wouldn’t be tonight. She could be remade amongst strangers. So, she drank three glasses of wine, then dragged herself across London to the bar.

She had marked Lina as attractive on arrival, although not in any special, romantic sense. Lina was just obviously pretty. She had platinum blonde hair and green eyes, and looked interested by the world, and Claudia never knew whether to trust beautiful people when they also seemed kind. So, guided by low expectations, Claudia set up next to the host’s dour cousin, and spent the first half hour talking about Reading. She had never been to Reading, but she could fill enough gaps in the conversation with her knowledge of the Elizabeth Line.

The host was an old colleague, from Claudia’s days at a startup. She’d booked a standing space towards the back of the bar, by the toilets, and, printed on A4 in the middle of the reserved table, was a sign saying, ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY JEN’. A decent sized group was assembled. Enough to justify the booking. There were some of Jen’s University friends, and one or two from her new work, as well as an enthusiastic bunch from her community choir. She even managed to herd in a few people from school, who bought rounds of shots for the group. But, after introductions, Claudia remained loyal to the sullen face at the end of the table; the relative from Reading who was, actually, from Maidenhead, but used the more famous nearby town as a guiding reference.

Lina had not seemed like another hanger-on, but that was part of her charm. They met after the third round of shots, when the cousin excused herself to the bathroom, complaining of nausea. Claudia clocked eyes with Lina, and then she was by her side.

‘Have you been abandoned?’ she said, already so familiar.

‘Oh, yes, well.’

Claudia could not summon any interesting words, but hoped laughter would do the trick. But what enticed her immediately was that Lina did not read her initial fumbles as the final product and even let her try again.

‘I have been abandoned, yes, but then I know no one here anyway.’

‘Neither do I. Shall we team up?’

Lina said that, then put a hand on Claudia’s arm, in a way that might have been flirtatious or pitying. But she was pretty, so Claudia reasoned it must have been the latter. Such friendliness, whatever the motivation, was enough to peel back a layer in Claudia, and so, instead of asking about how Lina knew Jen, she went the other way, and spoke about how awful it is to be the least essential guest at parties, and what a burden it must be to the host to have to worry about the two rejects at the end, and Lina entreated these observations as if they were profound and new. That, Claudia realised, was the great skill of good conversationalists, which is not to wait for the arrival of a shared interest, but to simply be moved by any conversation happening at all.

The cousin eventually returned, and Claudia brought her into things, and they went back to the development of the city’s transport, and then Lina drifted away. Soon, the mood of the evening was drifting too. People began invoking their morning alarms, insisting that this next drink would be their last. It was just after 10PM, and there was now the augur of having to catch a certain train. The cousin was out first, bidding Jen a quick goodbye, then dashing past Claudia without another glance. Jen’s choir friends decided to split a cab. It was all in the downward momentum, and Claudia cursed herself for buying too many drinks.

From a group of fifteen, there were now five. Claudia would have left, too, were it not for the ill-timed gin and tonic she’d ordered, just before it all started winding down. That was the reason she was leading with in her head, the charade that kept her to the table. What really kept her from the door, if she was being completely honest, was that there were now fewer bodies between her and Lina, and, perhaps, she might be able to eke out ten more minutes of conversation before the night was at its end.

‘Fucking hell,’ said Jen, ‘everyone’s so… you know… like sensible… have you noticed? Like, can’t we just be a bit… I dunno… you know?’

Claudia could sense that Jen was hoping someone would suggest another round. What might have given Jen hope was that no one, in that moment, interceded with another goodbye. Everyone sighed and laughed, but Claudia could feel there was a gap being left, waiting for a ringleader to encourage a bad decision.

‘I could do one more,’ said the only remaining man. He was tall with blotchy skin and was holding a mostly full drink. This was enough affirmation to keep the others there, and enough to get Lina to the bar, which is all Claudia wanted. Some part of her, despite years of committing to introversion, felt there was another aspect to her character that might emerge. It came out so very often, and never when she wanted, at the moments when she stopped caring about the little things. She would catch herself, talking to strangers, and quite liking the things she was saying, and then she would wonder where this Claudia was kept within herself. But then, maybe that is the tragedy that faces all introverts; the constant question, at anything remotely social, of where the hell have I gone?

She was warming to the room though, warming to the four stragglers. Jen, placated by a handful staying on, started to find the next place. Their current bar only had twenty minutes left of service, and Lina returned when the lights went up. Even in that clinical exposure, she looked wonderful. She was next to Claudia, and they clinked glasses.

‘I think we’re locked in now,’ she said, and Claudia laughed gratefully, then took her gaze back to the floor.

The tall man took charge and led them on, to an old man boozer, or so he said, although the clientele still looked young, even though the exterior was ugly, and even though it was playing Match of the Day inside. Claudia went to the bathroom, then caught her reflection in the harsh light of the mirror. She looked old and dreary, so different from the free spirit who grinned at her when she left the flat. Why was she wearing light colours? That would only show how pallid she was. Why was her hair in that shape? She had thought it looked chic, now it just looked big.

Claudia returned to find their new table almost empty. They’d chosen to sit in the corner, away from the big TV screen. Somehow, every chair round the table was a different size and shape. The only person sitting there was Lina.

‘They’ve all gone to smoke,’ she said, her symmetrical features, after the glare of the mirror, now almost a mockery.

‘So, you’re in charge of the bags?’

‘Kenny’s going to get a baggy out in a second, trust me.’

‘Kenny?’

‘The tall guy. Weird face. He’s a massive coke fiend.’

She had wanted this moment, but it had come too early. There was no tedious third party to be a buffer. It happened to her all the time at pitch meetings at work; Claudia needed a colleague to pipe up and get it wrong first, and only then would her creativity kick into gear.

‘So,’ she began, trying not to look at Lina, ‘how do you know-’

‘Don’t you hate that question?’ the other woman said, with a conspiratorial smile, ‘everyone’s been asking me how I know Jen all evening, and I haven’t the first fucking idea, really.’

‘But you do know her, don’t you? Or do we need to get the bouncer to throw you out?’

‘Oh, I know Jen. I know her better than anyone. I would die for Jen.’

‘I would die for Jen,’ Claudia said, relieved to find the words resounding so confidently, ‘I would kill you, for Jen.’

‘If I thought you posed any threat to Jen, like any, at all, I would actually break your neck.’

‘Break my neck?’

‘I’m Special Opps, Claudia. You have been warned.’

The pretty girl remembered her name.

Lina knew Jen from a dance class, which they both joined after moving to London, needing friends in the city. The class met in Sydenham, and had far more women than men, so Lina was paired up with Jen in their salsa lessons, the forced intimacy of the dance thrusting a friendship upon them.

‘Do you dance?’ asked Lina. Claudia did not. She lacked the pride to be bad at things.

‘It’s so fun. It’s so freeing’.

Freeing. Such a punishing word, because, of course, Claudia was free. So was everyone at that pub. They were all free to take the world for granted. What kept Claudia from freedom was that last taboo of humiliation, which, even now, she felt certain was waiting for her. This is just how Lina is, she kept telling herself, this woman is bored and has no filter. She is only gifting niceties to the daft girl wearing too many bright colours.

The others returned. Kenny’s pupils had dilated, and Jen kept rubbing her nose. More shots were ordered, all bought and paid for by Jen’s flatmate, Nilay. They had come to live together through an app, and now they were the best of friends, despite initially finding each other awkward and rude. London, everyone agreed, was awful and impossible. Every area was too expensive, and no one had any friends.

‘Where are you nowadays, Claud? Still North?’

Claudia had a jolt of panic; this was the first time she had to address the whole group.

‘Oh, yes, well-’

‘More importantly,’ Lina interrupted, ‘why is your drink almost empty?’

It can’t have been more than fifteen minutes since Claudia had bought her last drink, but all her glass now held was lime and melted ice. A sober voice inside prodded her. Lina wants you to stay on, or why would she bring it up.

‘You’re right,’ Claudia said, ‘I’m letting everyone down.’

So she rose from the table, and beckoned Lina to follow, and thankfully the other woman did, and then they were queuing together, and making jokes about going to pubs to watch sports, and Claudia began a pretence that she went to Wetherspoons to watch the final of Crufts, and that made Lina hold her nose when she laughed, and then her other hand rested around Claudia’s elbow, and another warning voice within her sounded, this time wanting to relay that this gesture probably meant nothing, that social people think less of physical contact, that Lina is almost certainly doing this out of habit, not fondness, and certainly not attraction.

At the table, schemes were being made. One last drink had become three more, and now the night had become them. It was now too late to be sensible. Jen and the other two were making frequent trips to the bathroom, only to come back to nod furiously at each other.. This was all no bother to Claudia. Each absence became more exciting, it meant she could talk conspiratorially to Lina and even exchange cruel jokes about the others. Kenny got the worst of it. He had a nasal voice that was easy to imitate, so when he was away from the table they would both launch into their own versions, quoting back the things he’d said, or, as it crept towards midnight, imagining all the banal stuff he was likely holding back.

The good thing about Kenny was that he could rustle a plan together. There was a club nearby, with cheap entry, which played cheesy music. Drinks would be expensive, but that’s London, baby. The birthday girl was up for it, she wanted a dance, and she demanded Lina come with her, because she was always the best at dancing.

‘Her tits,’ Jen said to Claudia, ‘when she’s dancing, I mean, can you even imagine?’

And Claudia very much could, though she felt duty bound to pull a face that suggested otherwise. Signals were made to down drinks, and then Nilay yawned, then shook her head, then announced she was leaving. Appropriate noises were made to discourage her, but she was insistent. It was a Pilates class in Central at 10AM, non-refundable, and her boss was going too, so she couldn’t be a state for it. Claudia was grateful that Nilay had split at this precise moment. Any earlier might have led Jen to consider who was left behind; an old colleague, a friend from dance class, and a tall man who lacked an obvious appeal. But now, Jen had consumed enough drinks and snorted enough lines to start referring to herself in the third person. She squinted at the people left behind.

‘I’m only 32, bitches,’ she said, ‘or am I… am I 27? Am I 18? Am I… Am I?’

Without Nilay, Claudia’s status was elevated. She was now Jen’s cupbearer, and they strode to the club arm-in-arm.

‘You’re the only one that matters,’ Jen said, her breath thick with cigarettes and vodka, ‘and I never see you, why do I never see you?’

The bouncers still asked them all for ID. The lack of queue for entry should have been a warning side. Inside there were more staff than clientele. Disco lights bounced around an empty dancefloor; the DJ nodded toward absent dancers. Kenny received a mild reprimanding, but they had all paid a tenner to get in, so they decided to find it funny. Lina was at Claudia’s side again. She was delighted by how terrible the club was. It brought her back to the days she went interrailing, when she and her school friends, having no local nous, would end up in the most tragic places of a new city, where eighties music blasted and all drinks were three-for-one.

In truth, Claudia was grateful that this Brixton club was empty. Queues stressed her, crowds made her feel anonymous. It was in these haunted rooms where she thrived. She could never comfortably be where things were happening, or she’d have to interrogate why it wasn’t happening for her. Jen and Kenny went for another cigarette, and so she was alone with Lina again, sat on one of the club’s leather sofas. They couldn’t really hear each other above the music. Lina was asking questions, but Claudia couldn’t both listen and provide witty responses. She wondered if she should ask Kenny for some chemical assistance, but she knew herself too well. It would only spike her anxiety.

A song came on that Lina loved. She insisted the two of them get up and dance. They went into the blaring lights, and Claudia tried to follow the other woman’s lead, but realised the expectation was that she would bring her own ironic moves to the fore, and suddenly she was Irish dancing, full kicks and all, trying to keep time to the music of Boney M. It meant embracing all that was ungainly in her. She let her legs flail wildly, let her face fall into a goofy repose. All that mattered was it made Lina laugh. She laughed so much she clutched her knees. She put her hands on Claudia’s shoulders and told her she was amazing. And she clearly meant it, it wasn’t out of kindness, she must be fond of Claudia, must even be drawn to her, or else what was this, genuinely, unless it really was a hazing ritual, for an audience of none.

The high kicks wore Claudia out, she needed water. Jen and Kenny had done another trip to the smoking area, then to the bathroom, and now they had another scheme. There was a gig at the Windmill, and Kenny knew some people in the band, and apparently there was a secret after party, being held in someone’s basement off of Tooting Common. They were all welcome. Claudia thought it sounded like Hell. It would require either a bus or an Uber, but Kenny was impatient that they should leave soon. Jen was keen. She had seen the band before and thought the drummer was gorgeous.

‘That’s so far from me,’ Lina said.

‘Noooo,’ went Jen, ‘noo, not now, you can’t leave now, we’re just… nooo…’

She pleaded with Lina, while Claudia watched on. The decision was clearly final, Lina wouldn’t be moved.

‘Awwhh, oh, ok, ok,’ said Jen, ‘I mean, I think I will go to this, is that ok?’

Claudia realised it was her being asked permission. She nodded her ascent for Jen and Kenny to depart, and it would only dawn on her much later that her old colleague was quite consciously leaving her behind. Kenny found an Uber almost immediately. A few quick hugs, then he and Jen were gone.

‘And then there were two,’ said Lina, inscrutably, and Claudia was once more furious with herself for having no plan, nor any real instinct of any kind, to keep this beautiful stranger here, to make the night add up to something.

‘Do you want to know something funny?’

‘What’s that?’

Claudia braced herself to hear about how long Lina’s home commute would be. But, instead, the other woman cackled and said:

‘I stole Kenny’s coke.’

The theft happened when Kenny gave Lina his wallet, asking her to buy him a Daiquiri. She saw the little packet poking out, and it was so easy she had to take it. In the hazy logic of the early morning, both Lina and Claudia agreed that the other two deserved it. After all, they didn’t offer to share their social aphrodisiacs. For all they knew, Lina and Claudia might have hated each other.

‘Can you believe,’ said Claudia, ‘that Jen was like you’re the important one, like, she genuinely said that.’

‘But you are the important one.’

Such sweet lies took Claudia away from self-doubt, and towards the bathroom, where, in a cramped cubicle, she and Lina inhaled some of Kenny’s things, and giggled about how long it had been since they’d last done that, although Claudia herself had never done drugs, being certain that all illicit things would find some way to rebuke her.

She could only hope Lina knew what she was doing. It was like being in a foreign restaurant, and not knowing how to order, or, even worse, how to pay. Her insecurities had nothing to perch on now, the beautiful woman had stayed, and so, now what? How do human beings convincingly wrap things up? What Claudia was certain of was that she couldn’t be obvious about it. Hopefully the cocaine might hold some answers.

It was certainly making her speak more. She was on a roll now, back on the sofa, in a rant about everyone walking too slowly around Picadilly Circus, every word providing a certain delight in how very funny and articulate she was managing to be. Only she sensed Lina wasn’t listening. Her attention was back on the empty club.

‘They’re looking at us.’

‘Who are?’

‘Don’t look.’

She meant the two young men stood at the bar, who had clearly taken an interest. It was at this point Claudia remembered she’d never clarified if Lina was gay. Maybe she was just very modern.

‘Oh God. They’re coming over’

Their revery was indeed intruded, as the two men came over and the more attractive one offered to buy drinks. Witty and articulate Claudia vanished. This situation would have to be handled in full by Lina. Since her first forays into nights out in sixth form, Claudia had always left strangers to her more confident friends. To her surprise, Lina was obliging.

‘We want some spicey Marg’s.’

She turned to Claudia and shrugged gaily, as if to say why not. Which, again, made Claudia think of all the times she had spent talking to someone’s shy friend, knowing that he and her were both abetting a courtship that would not succeed, one between an overconfident young man and a girl who was happy to indulge in his spending. Why not, she wanted to say, well because he only wants to buy you a drink, and I’m the spare.

The two men went to the bar, but only the better looking one returned.

‘Where’s your friend?’ Lina asked.

‘Had to sort something at home.’

The intruder pulled up a chair. He’d bought himself a pint and insisted that they clink glasses. His questions came thick and fast, his confidence seemed false and over-practiced. He did what he could to portray equal interest, but Claudia saw the way he laughed more with Lina. Over the music, it was hard to hear his name. It was hard, too, to gage what Lina made of this man. He wasn’t unattractive physically, but he had the unfortunate air of a someone too keen to make a sale. Claudia was relieved when she felt Lina nudging at her.

‘We girls need to pee,’ she said.

In the bathroom, they did another bump, and Claudia wondered whether there was a casual way to ask if Lina was straight.

‘What do you make of Cedar?’

‘Is that his name?’

‘Yes,’ Lina laughed, ‘like the rapids.’

‘He fancies you, I think.’

‘No! Are you kidding? He fancies you.’

Claudia gave her a playful shove.

‘He’s only looking at you, Lina.’

‘That’s because he’s too scared to look at you.’

She was insistent that, while Cedar and his friend were at the bar, she’d seen them men whispering about “the brunette”. This made absolute sense to Claudia, but for the opposite reason. “The brunette” was the immediate obstacle, and the scheme was how to be rid of her. She sensed that Lina knew this too, and, uneasily, that she was being laughed at.

‘Do you like him?’ said Claudia, trying to shake off her paranoia.

‘What, Cedar?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Do you?’

As they returned to their seats, Cedar made his own excuses, and stroked Lina’s arm as he left for the bathroom. It would be futile, Claudia felt, to nudge the other woman, and make another display about how she was clearly being pursued. Her mind was racing, her body pulsing, but she couldn’t find a coherent thing to say that wasn’t couched in jealousy, and the alternative was to just be boring. The pairing of Lina and Cedar didn’t make sense; she was made of madness and glitter, and he was just another stray dog. He came back and sat between them, putting a hand on each of their knees, as if some strategist had found him at the urinal and encouraged him to seem bipartisan.

‘We’ve got a problem,’ he said, and Claudia noticed he had flecks of white powder around his nostrils.

‘I’m out of stuff,’ he continued, ‘all out.’

‘What stuff?’ asked Lina.

‘The good stuff. Do you guys have any?’

Was all of London on drugs now? Claudia and her friends were completely averse to these things, agreeing that they made people tedious and difficult.

‘We’ve got a bit. But it’s bad stuff.’

Apparently, Lina was a connoisseur in these matters. To her embarrassment, Claudia had not noticed the lack of quality in what they’d been snorting. It was giving her all the expected effects, although it was also making her impatient and making her stomach gurgle, so maybe it was bad stuff, and maybe she shouldn’t be on it, and maybe she shouldn’t be in an empty room with two strangers at entirely the wrong hour.

‘My mate went to pick up. Got some at the flat. He’s just messaged. We live like two minutes away if you want to join?’

This led to the low point of the whole affair, when the two others began conspiring together, and all Claudia could do was shuffle around and adjust her clothes. She started to resent her lack of agency, but at the same time felt like supplying any interjection would affect her chances of being brought along. And yet she stayed. She stayed and sat and waited for instruction.

The other two sprang up. Lina clasped Claudia’s hand and led her out of the club.

‘What are we doing?’ said Claudia, but no one replied. The bouncer warned them that there was no re-entry, like a soldier unaware the war had ended. Cedar was in charge, and as the three walked down the street, he clasped each woman’s arms and said they were exactly like the gang from Scooby-Doo. In the whispered negotiations, Lina must have agreed to follow the strange man for more drugs, which didn’t feel like an adequate reason to go to a stranger’s home. He started rubbing Claudia’s hand. She let it happen, feeling a sad enjoyment that she was still allowed to participate

They walked past other clubs and bars, with large groups of men spilling onto the street, and saw teenage girls crying at their phone screens, and saw a homeless person stooping towards these leftovers, pleading for help in a shy, strangled croak, before Cedar steered them right, onto a small road of red brick terraced houses with white plastic doors, toward a fenced off green, which formed the inner ring of a circle of Victorian buildings, some freshly painted, others scarred, cracking and cowering in their decaying colours, and the three strode on, to a modern palimpsest at the corner of the road, a bulging black square with large, ugly windows, and here Cedar stopped, then fumbled for his keys, then ushered them inside.

They followed Cedar into the lift. Its mirror frowned at Claudia. Her clothes were still too bright, but now her hair clung in odd streaks across her forehead, and her eyes looked manic. At the third floor Cedar stepped out first, allowing Lina to hold back, to squeeze Claudia’s arm and ask if she was ok. She nodded sagely in reply. It was done now, anyway. Cedar was struggling with the top lock, and in a moment, they’d be inside, and, just as when one is flying through an angry cloud, Claudia knew all she could do now was stare firmly ahead.

It all came back to how Lina looked at her. It went beyond plain care. There was deeper affection in it. For some reason, it was important to the other woman that Claudia stay. This was the riddle to solve, which meant withstanding whatever Cedar had planned. His friend was there too, in the half-furnished living room, scrawling into a notebook. They would learn later that he had gone home specifically to write poetry, although Cedar had also tasked him with picking up from their dealer on route.

The poet was called Jason. There was something sweet about him; he held himself like a young boy whose father never came to watch him football. Jason handed his flatmate the coke, then went back to his writings. Such quaint oddness began to put Claudia at ease. She saw Cedar then, not as the standard male apex predator, but as a badger sloping around, hoping to nibble on whatever remained. He clearly had no real sense of what to do, now two women had finally come home with him, and started offering them several bottles of red wine. Lina proposed they do shots instead, then demanded someone cut her a line.

Relaxing into this environment, Claudia started quizzing the two men about their lives. Cedar seemed offended by her inquiries, insisting that he’d told her about his whole life before, and she clearly hadn’t been listening. Their host laid out his life again. He wrote copy for a chain of gyms, so got to work out for free. Claudia squeezed his bicep and said it wasn’t up to snuff. The cattiness amused Lina. She rubbed Claudia’s knee, but her hand was slipping toward her thigh, lighting that internal fire which can only come from small, intimate gestures.

Then Lina turned to Jason, not believing the young man had fled the club just to write a poem

‘It’s true,’ he said, ‘that’s what I do.’

‘That’s what he does,’ affirmed Cedar.

‘Words just, like, happen.’

Jason took a line, then passed the plate to Claudia. He was cajoled to read his latest draft. It was an ode to South London, inspired by the music of Nick Cave. Before the recital began, he keenly stressed that he never wrote poetry that rhymed.

‘Red bus on a concrete road,’ he said, taking care with each syllable, ‘where are you travelling? Where are you travelling?’

‘If it’s the 35,’ Claudia interrupted, ‘it’s going to Shoreditch.’

This really amused Lina. She couldn’t get her breath back, and, after deep inhalations, shook Claudia by her shoulders, as if to say, you’re too funny, as if to say, God, you’re just the best. Jason, however, looked slightly cowed. He needed reassurance to carry on.

‘Red bus before red lights. Why are you frightened? What is it that scares you? Who is your master?’

The joke was too obvious not to make. Claudia looked to Lina and mouthed TFL, and they were cackling together, finding it even funnier as Jason quietly closed his notebook. It struck Claudia that she was free of one of her most elemental fears; that the joke was on her. The nascent poet was an unfortunate collateral.

‘Don’t listen to them, man, it’s fucking great, I love it, it’s like, it’s like so London,’ said Cedar, and then spoke warmly about his flatmate’s other poems, and of all the corners of the city that only Jason could see, but this was not enough to keep the shy man in the room, and he quietly made his excuses to go to bed, and a mood fell on Claudia, that was torn between deep sympathy, and a childish sense of being a little bit in trouble. She and Lina hung their heads in mock shame.

‘I feel so bad!’ Lina said.

‘He’ll get over it.’

Their infraction was not too great for Cedar to abandon his campaign. With Jason gone for the second time, he gained more vigour. His new gameplan involved frequent boasts about his abs. Claudia sensed he wanted someone to dare him to take his shirt off. If this was the bait, neither woman bit. There was a thrill in watching the man try and claim control. It was his flat, and, at least in terms of gender ratio, the maths was on his side. In spite of this, somehow, he couldn’t break through. Like a fearful magician, he kept showing his hand. It was such a needy display. He clearly felt ground could be gained through more lines, more shots, more talk about men and women and sex and orgasms, and all the times older women had objectified him in his volunteer work.

Claudia was now almost certain that Lina was on her side of it all, watching this little man sweat as he tried another advance. There was no denying, now, that he was only focused on Lina. Every suggestive question was put to her, and he bristled when Claudia joined in. This did not matter to her anymore. What mattered was putting Cedar in his place.

Lina went to the bathroom, and the man’s face hardened. He made a show of checking his watch.

‘How do you think you’ll get home?’ he said.

‘Umm, I’ve not checked-’

‘Cause I’m getting a bit tired, to be honest, I may need to call it.’

‘Ok, well Lina and I can head-’

‘Sure. If she’s going your way. Yeah. Let’s ask her.’

They heard the sound of the bathroom lock sliding open, and then Cedar sprung up, and walked quickly into the corridor, shutting the door behind him. She tried to eavesdrop, to no avail. She’d been here before, at university, on group holidays, before all that spontaneity dried up. She had sat, holding the coats, waiting to be told that her friend was staying over, that she could leave them to it. It was the memory of that sequence, of being dismissed by the lovers, that made her call time on youth while her light was still shining. And it could happen again, at that very moment. Lina could appear and pretend that she was going to stay to book an Uber in another direction, and everything in Claudia’s life would be reaffirmed. But she knew, tonight, that it couldn’t happen. The other side could happen. Just this once.

Then Lina put her head round the door. Her eyes were bright with a new secret.

‘We should go,’ she said quickly, smiling like an old friend.

They cackled t in the lift, as Lina told Claudia all. In his final attempt, Cedar had compared her to a Goddess, and, when that found no footing whatsoever, fell back on a plea that she might as well stay.

‘I love it,’ Lina said, ‘like, yeah, stay for two more hours, maybe then I’ll fuck you.’

‘I knew he was into you.’

‘God, what a creep-’

‘I said, didn’t I, at the club, that he was only after you.’

The lift doors opened, and they laughed again to see dawn emerging outside. Black sky was surrendering to deep blue light. Claudia’s eyes felt that strange nocturnal swelling, the mark of having seen too much, of future days demanding recompense for all this impulse.

‘I told you,’ Claudia said again, ‘he picked you, that was why he was talking to us, he never liked me.’

‘Who couldn’t like you?’

They were on the street, now, back by the green, and Lina was chuckling at the length of her route home. There were no bad decisions left to make. Time seems endless in the early hours, then, at sunrise, it lets reality strike. Claudia had inherited Cedar’s indecision, and without a foil she had nothing to hide behind. No bad ideas to inspire good ones.

‘I was scared you liked him,’ was all Claudia could say. The other woman stepped towards her, and put a hand on her right arm, and leaned in close.

‘You think I’d like a guy like that?’

‘I don’t know what you like.’

‘You really don’t, do you?’

With that, in a fashion so slow and gentle it made Claudia inhale deeply, Lina kissed her on the cheek. It was so delicate, so right, and wonderfully, the other woman did not move away, keeping her mouth so close, so close that all that Claudia needed to do was turn her face but an inch, and catch the moment in all its wonder, and so, with all her cynicism behind her, she did.

***

That was the only time they kissed that night, before Lina started fretting about the next bus, and they realised they needed to get the same one, and the sprint home began. Claudia wanted to lean in again, once on the bus, but made do with Lina’s head resting on her shoulder. The other woman was zapped of all energy. Once or twice, Claudia gave her a small kiss, just above her forehead, in a way that she hoped seemed reassuring.

The bus was slowly filling with other stories. Sad looking people in suits sat rubbing their eyes, and a woman in grey uniform took a phone call loudly, complaining about the aggression of her eldest son. They were trundling towards Lina’s stop, and she roused on the approach, joking about Jason’s poetry, and Kenny’s nasal intonations, seeming just ever so slightly further away. Claudia had completely forgotten about Jen’s party. She imagined the birthday girl and her lanky friend, clinging on to whatever plan they could find, and the thought gave her great satisfaction.

‘One more to go,’ said Lina, and they hugged tightly. Numbers had been exchanged, it would all happen again, they kept insisting, as soon as they could, they would do it all again. Lina stood, yawning, ready to depart, but the bus was held at traffic lights. At first, she looked at her phone, until the stationary traffic sent her gaze back to Claudia.

‘Red bus on a concrete road, where are you travelling?’

‘Roads aren’t made of concrete,’ Claudia said, laughing, feeling a slight twinge of shame that those were her parting words.

Alone, again, and tired, and proud and regretful that she hadn’t tried her luck any further, Claudia slumped into her seat, watching the last of Brixton fade into Oval’s redbrick poise. Despite her exhaustion, she felt awake to the world. She had seen a life that felt out of reach, and now, with the buzz of the newly promoted, she needed to tell someone. It wasn’t just Lina, it was every aspect of what had come before, every rogue twist and turn. Her phone, still holding on at 10% charge, offered her several stern faces she couldn’t appraoch. Most of her WhatsApp was devoted to work stuff. The last message she’d send her flatmate was about whether they had milk. This was not a close friendship, but they sometimes shared gossip, and she’d been there when Claudia had picked out her clothes for the evening. She was also online.

Your girls coming home, Claudia wrote frantically, thrilled as the black ticks became blue. Then the typing dots. Hahaha. Where the hell have you been? That was hard to answer. There was so much to include. It felt safer to voicenote.

‘So basically,’ she went, keeping her volume to a merry whisper, ‘I went to the thing, and there was this really hot girl, and, anyway, we like, sort of connected, and then we just went to this really shitty club, and this creepy guy was like, come back to mine, I’ve got drugs, and, like, we did, like, anyway, and I didn’t know whether she was interested… anyway, she wasn’t, but also, like, his flatmate, right… was so funny… he’d written this poem about like, I dunno… like, transport… like went home to write it… anyway, we stayed at this guy’s flat until about 5AM, and then he basically kicked us out, and I’m on the bus home, and… yeah… yeah.’

She paused. Somehow, she’d left out the kiss.

‘Then, like, anyway, we left, and yeah, I hope I see the girl again.’

It struck her that adults don’t boast about kisses. The voicenote sent. Then blue ticks. Then typing dots.

Wait what girl?

Ohhhh… yeah, oh that’s fun

Anyway. Get some sleep.

You idiot.

The morning brought light rain. Claudia found Lina’s Instagram, and as her phone drained of charge, she took a screenshot of a particularly flattering photo of the blonde stranger in a leotard, wearing that same smile that glinted with the sunrise. Lina, the beautiful surprise. Claudia would keep this photo saved, ready to present as she repeated the story, which she did with relish for several weeks, until she ran out of ears to listen, and felt the weight of the question so what happened next with Lina, and knew it was time she shifted the memory out of the whirl of the present, to the cramped holdings of the past.

The attraction was kept underground, in a holding pen the architect had envisioned as a splintered gothic chapel, where the thing could be half glimpsed through shards of light, as it ached and wheezed and stumbled across the floor.

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