‘I’ve got money,’ he wrote. ‘I’ll pay for your taxi.’ I decided to ignore the Pretty Woman subtext of this offer, put on some mascara and a pair of heels and stood in the rain to find a passing cab. As I hailed one, a combination of torrential rain and torrential drunkenness caused my phone to slip out of my hand. The screen smashed into a hundred fragments, the rain drops seeped into the cracks and the screen faded to black.
When I arrived at the address he’d given me he was, thankfully, standing outside. He paid for the cab and he opened the door to let me out.
‘Thanks for coming,’ he said, pulling my face towards him for a kiss. For a brief moment, the attention of this complete stranger filled me with a light fizz of excitement and the heaviness of my deep-rooted despondency felt like it had exited the building. Then I realized how pathetic and telling this was; and I felt instantly sadder. I needed another drink.
Jean was nice enough. We had nothing in common, but conversation flowed, thanks to the beer he gave me and the packet of Lucky Strike we chain-smoked on his sofa. I got the feeling he did this a lot. After an hour of chatting and snogging, he took me to his bedroom. A stark white box with strange neon lights and a mattress on the floor in lieu of a bed. I tried to ignore the setting as we undressed each other.
‘Wait, wait,’ he said as I unzipped his jeans. ‘I only have group sex.’
‘What? What does that mean?’ I slurred.
‘I can only have sex if someone watches,’ he replied as if it were plain logic. ‘Or if someone joins us.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Well, that’s not going to happen now, so –’
‘My flatmate is next door,’ he said. ‘He wants to come in. I’ll tell him it’s OK?’
‘No, it’s not OK,’ I said, suddenly aware of this not being a big adventure at all. I was in a bedroom with a man who could very well be Patrick Bateman. ‘I don’t want to do that,’ I said, panicked, hearing the fast and heavy beat of my heart in my eardrums and looking for the nearest window.
‘Come on, it will be fun,’ he said, trying to kiss me. ‘You seemed like a party girl.’
‘No, I’m not, I don’t want to do that.’
‘OK, so we don’t do that.’ He shrugged and rolled over.
I realized just how stupid this was; how irresponsible I had been in the search for a distraction from myself. I was alone in a city I didn’t know and I was drunk; no one knew where I was; I had no money and no phone.
‘I think I’m going to walk home,’ I said, getting out of his bed.
‘OK,’ he replied. ‘It’s raining, though. You can stay here if you like.’
I looked at his clock – four a.m. I could sleep until the storm had passed and it was light, then try to navigate my way back to Alex’s apartment. I fell asleep as far away from him as I could, my face pressed up against his white wall.
The next morning, I woke at half seven, got dressed and went into the living room to collect my bag. Sitting on the sofa was a very, very angry-looking man in a navy dressing gown. Four electric fans had appeared that hadn’t been there the night before and all the windows were open. There were pieces of paper stuck to the wall, all with FUMER TUE scrawled on them in red pen, SMOKING KILLS written underneath.
‘Good morning!’ I said nervously.
‘Get. Ze ferk. Out of my apartment,’ he said in a French accent heavier than Jean’s.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I have asthma. You know that? I have severe asthma. So why ze ferk are you in my apartment chain-smoking your disgusting cigarettes at three in ze morning?’
‘I’m so sorry, Jean said it was fi–’
‘Jean can go ferk ’imself,’ he spat.
I went back into Jean’s bedroom.
‘Hey,’ I said, shaking him to wake up. ‘Hey – your flatmate is in there and he’s going quite nuts.’
Jean opened his eyes and looked at his clock.
‘I’m late for work!’ he said accusatorially.
‘He’s going pretty crazy in there,’ I said. ‘He’s angry because we were smoking last night. He’s got all these fans on and he’s written all these signs. It feels a bit … Rain Man.’
‘He’s not angry because we were smoking, he’s angry because you wouldn’t have sex with him.’
‘OK, I’m going,’ I said. ‘Have a good life.’ I walked out of the flat, meekly nodding at the angry French flatmate as I went.
‘GET OUT. GET OUT. GET ZE FERK OUT, YOU LITTLE BEETCH!’ he shouted after me.
I teetered into the bright SoHo sunshine and felt like I was going to retch. I went to withdraw ten dollars from the nearest ATM but was informed I had insufficient funds. A wave of sickness rippled through me and I remembered that I hadn’t eaten in two days.
As I tried to find my way home, I went into Starbucks, hoping that they left jugs of milk by the sugar sachets. I asked the man behind the counter for a paper cup and filled it with milk, sipping it slowly as I sat at a table.
‘Are you OK, honey?’ a middle-aged woman asked. ‘You look like a …’ She surveyed my outfit, my eyes ringed with last night’s mascara dust, the cup of milk in my hand. ‘Like a stray kitten.’
‘I’m OK,’ I replied. Feeling less OK than ever before.
I walked around in circles for a couple of hours until I finally saw a block of flats that I recognized. I got into Alex’s apartment, put my phone in rice and curled up under her duvet with her cats, longing to pull the duvet up over the trip too. But I couldn’t afford a sandwich, let alone an early flight home. And I don’t think I even wanted to go home – I was trapped between two cities I didn’t want to be in. I couldn’t ring Farly and ask for help, because she needed my support far more than I needed hers. I couldn’t ring my parents, because I couldn’t bear to worry them and I was ten years past an appropriate age for being bailed out of anything. Eventually, I rang Octavia, who showed me extraordinary kindness. She took me out for dim sum, held my hand as I talked, gave me a hug and lent me some money.
The next day, I took the three-hour coach trip to a small town in the Catskills in upstate New York. Farly and I had already paid for the cabin, so I thought I might as well use it, and I was grateful for the opportunity for some space and quiet and some open skies.
I arrived mid-morning, dropped my bags and went for a long hike to clear my head. By the time I’d returned to my cabin in the afternoon, having marvelled at the enormity of the mountains and thought of the possibility of starting again when I returned home, I was already feeling calmer.
In the evening, I walked into the town and ate cheese fries in a local diner. I delighted in the sound of crickets and the warmth and chit-chat of the locals. There was a campfire burning behind my cabin when I got back and I took one of the blankets from my room and sat next to it, looking up at the stars. For what felt like the first time since I had arrived in New York, I breathed.
When I got back to my room, I had a new message on Tinder – a late reply from the ‘come one, come all’ blanket message I had drunkenly sent two nights before. His name was Adam. He was twenty-six with a perfect, all-American smile complete with Brooklyn beard and man bun.
‘Hello, lady,’ he messaged. ‘So sorry I didn’t reply to this sooner – how are you?’
‘I wish you had replied sooner,’ I said. ‘I could have ended up on a date with you and not being strong-armed into a threesome with two Frenchmen.’
‘Oh boy,’ he wrote. ‘New York can be tough. How are you doing?’
‘I’m hating it,’ I replied. ‘I am in the Catskills for a night, and it’s a welcome break.’
‘How long have you got back in the city before you go home?’
‘Three long days. I come back early tomorrow evening.’
‘Come hang out with me when you’re back,’ he said. ‘I won’t try to have a threesome with you, I promise. I’ll just be your friend if you like.’
A friend. Maybe I needed a new friend.
The next day, aft
er another long hike and a swim, I got a late-afternoon coach back to Manhattan, took the subway to Brooklyn and went to Adam’s doorstep.
‘Hey,’ he said, emerging from the front door, his blue eyes sparkling behind horn-rimmed glasses, outstretching his arms for a hug. ‘It’s so good to meet you. Welcome back to this city you hate.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, falling into his hug and inhaling the clean, soapy smell of his flannel shirt.
‘I’ll make you love it.’
Adam showed me round his apartment and we opened a bottle of wine. We talked for hours; told each other all our stories – about our favourite music, our favourite films, about our respective friends and families, about our jobs. He was earnest and bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and curious; he was exactly what I needed.
By mid-evening, we were kissing. By midnight, I was lying in his bed with my face pressed up close against his. It was the soft touch of this man, his generous heart, the tenderness he showed me that was enough to make me open up. So I told him everything; I gave it all away for nothing. I told him about the heartbreak of my early twenties. I told him about the years I had spent starving myself in an attempt to gain some control. I told him about the one time I had been in love; the intimacy that I couldn’t bear, the dependence I feared. I told him how my friends, one by one, had fallen in love and left me behind. I told him how my anxiety had crept up on me in catatonic flare-ups since I was a child; how I couldn’t stand near windows because I always felt I was moments away from falling to my death. I told him about my best friend’s little sister who I had grown up with, who was lying in a hospital bed with cancer. I told him that I felt I was in over my head with adulthood and about my total inability to ring anyone and ask for help. I told him about the ease with which I buried problems in a chaotic rubble of distractions. I only had the right language for my sadness with a stranger; I could only tell these stories in an ephemeral realm of fantasy in which I had no accountability.
‘You’re so sad,’ he said, stroking my cheek. I closed my eyes to stop the tears.
‘I’m so lost,’ I replied.
‘You’re not lost now,’ he said, pulling me closer to him. And I wanted to believe him, so for that moment, I did.
‘I want to say something but it makes no sense,’ he said, kissing my head.
‘What?’
‘I love you,’ he sighed. ‘And I don’t want you to think I’m, like, dangerous or crazy like that insane French guy, and I know I can’t really, because I’ve known you for –’ he glanced at his watch – ‘six hours. But I feel like I could love you. Fuck it, I already love you.’
‘I love you too,’ I heard myself say. The second the words escaped my mouth, I knew how absurd they were. But I knew I wasn’t saying them to him; I was saying them to something else. To the belief in hope and kindness.
Adam took the next day off work, the first sick day in his life, and he took me round the bits of the city I’d never been before. We walked, we talked, we ate, we drank, we kissed. We had a typical holiday romance in two days – we couldn’t remember what life was like without each other, but we knew we would never live life with each other. I stayed with him the following night.
The next day, I tore myself away from Adam for three whole hours to meet Octavia, who couldn’t believe everything that had happened since I had last seen her. We went to the top of 30 Rock and looked out on the beautiful, relentless, unforgiving city.
‘I think I want to go home,’ I said, staring out at the lights dancing off the Hudson River.
Adam took me to JFK on my last day. After a long goodbye kiss, he held me by the shoulders and looked at me.
‘OK, I have this idea,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Don’t think I’m nuts.’
‘OK.’
‘Stay,’ he said.
‘I can’t stay.’
‘Why not? You’re miserable at home. You hate London. You don’t have a job. You don’t know what you want to do next. Stay here and start again.’
‘Where would I live?’ I asked.
‘With me,’ he said.
‘How would I pay rent?’
‘We’ll figure it out,’ he said. ‘You’ll be able to find some work and you can write all the things you’ve ever wanted to write. I’ll give you your own space and your own time. Think about how much freer you’ll feel here.’
‘What about when your iron-clad immigration system tries to send me home?’
‘Then I’ll fucking marry you,’ he said. ‘Is that what you want to hear? Because I’ll do it. I’ll take you down to City Hall first thing tomorrow morning and I’ll marry the hell out of you. And then you can stay for as long as you want.’
‘I can’t do that,’ I said. ‘It’s completely insane.’
‘Why won’t you stay?’ he said, gently pressing his head against mine. ‘You were the one who said you’ve got nothing waiting for you at home.’
I thought for a while.
‘Because I’m the problem,’ I replied. ‘Not the city. Not any of the circumstances are the problem. I’m the thing that needs changing.’ There was quiet between us. And then we kissed for the last time.
‘Call me when you land,’ he said. ‘And don’t get drunk on the flight, the plane’s not going to crash.’
On the flight home, I daydreamed of Tottenham Court Road and ordering shit off Amazon. I thought of Farly’s laugh and the sound of my flatmates getting ready for work in the morning and the smell of my mum’s perfume in her hair when I hug her. I thought of the blissful mundanity of life; of what a privilege it was to live it.
It was the day before my twenty-sixth birthday. Belle and AJ were at work when I got home, but there was a wonky home-made cake and a banner wishing me happy birthday. The next evening, we all went out dancing in Camden to celebrate, and I told them about my strange two weeks away. Lauren and I stayed up drinking and playing guitar until the early hours of the next morning, at which point a huge bunch of red roses arrived from Adam.
After I came home, things got easier for a while. The heavy coat of sadness I had been wearing for so long began to lift. I made a proper plan for what I wanted to do next. I fell back in love with my city, wildly. I read Bill Bryson books about England and ate Toffee Crisps. I remembered how lucky I was to live in a place I had grown up in, a place filled with my friends.
Two months into my return, I left my job and went freelance. A month after that, I was given a column in The Sunday Times. Lauren and I made a short film about a directionless twenty-five-year-old who has no idea who she is, and reaches for everything other than into herself to fix the problem. AJ moved out; one of our other brilliant university friends, India, moved in. We left the dilapidated yellow palace of Camden and moved two miles north into a flat with no mice, a working loo and central heating.
Octavia, my saviour, returned to London and became a close friend. Adam and I have always kept in touch and we always will; he sees me when he comes to London and I always have lunch with him when I’m in New York. He reminds me of a tumultuous time in my life, the stories of which I like to remember but never want to recreate. That time when I was twenty-five and so rootless and lost, I nearly moved country for a man I didn’t know. He’s got his half of the story and I’ve got mine; we carry them round like those naff teenage necklaces of a heart split in two.
12th December
Dear All,
Happy Christmas from all of us (just me – I live on my own now) here at SE20’s overpriced and under-maintained 32 Bracken Street!
What a year it’s been. It all kicked off with a flying start when I was given a promotion at the organic juice start-up (Pressed For Lime) I’ve been working at for the last four years as Social Media Manager. I was upgraded to the rather authoritative and yet nebulous role of Social Media Campaigns Overseer, which basically means I send out four videos on Instagram Stories every day of pieces of fruit with faces drawn on them, wearing miniature knitted hats, on
top of all my other responsibilities, for no extra money.
(Dad – if you’re reading – no, I’m not going to explain what my job is for the one hundredth time! And, yes, I know my education cost a lot of money. I know I could’ve ‘done anything’! Just pretend I really am a lawyer to your friends at the golf club. It’s not like they’re going to google me to check, and even if they do they won’t find my name on anything other than an old Bebo page because no one has even heard of the company I work for! Ha ha!)
As I mentioned at the top of this email, I moved out of my cosy flat-share in Kentish Town with my best friend Katya earlier this year because she and her boyfriend said they were ‘ready for some privacy’ and they could cover the mortgage without me now (they both have real jobs). So I set up home all by myself in London’s trendy Penge. The area is leafyish – maybe more branchy, actually – and is VERY ‘up and coming’ (Metro, 2016). Which is probably why it’s costing me £1,200 to rent a large studio with a mezzanine bedroom above the cooker. Lucky I’m such a foodie – what a treat it is to go to sleep with my whole bedroom smelling of baked salmon!
After a long and happy seven years together, Jordan and I broke up amicably this year. We were both a bit jealous of our friends having tons of casual sex with strangers from Tinder and our shared death anxiety and choking FOMO meant we were increasingly aware that, when the end comes, we didn’t want to have had a total of three sexual partners between us. We read a few books on polyamory and gave that a good go, but what with our respective work schedules, we couldn’t synchronize our diaries to make time for each other as well as all the others, so we thought it would be less time-consuming if we just parted ways. He took the cat.
So now I am being shown the delights of online dating! The men won’t commit, all the sex is pornographic and my phone never has any storage because of all the photos of fully shaven penises I’m sent on WhatsApp. I’m Penge’s very own Carrie Bradshaw!
Everything I Know About Love Page 14
