‘Right, I need to get back into the kitchen and put the chicken in the oven for dinner. Unless you’d like to have us over to your place?’ Mum asked with a theatrical wink.
‘Perhaps I should try not to set it on fire the first night,’ I joked weakly as Dad returned with my bags.
Or maybe I should, I thought, eyeing the toaster across the room.
Closing the door behind the horny pod people who had replaced my parents, I cast an eye over my domain – all three hundred square feet of it – before dropping down on my bed. The uncertain, ancient frame complained at my weight but the protest wasn’t loud enough to get me back up on my feet.
‘You have so much to be grateful for,’ I told myself, staring up at the ceiling. ‘You have your health, your parents, your friends and a highly flammable roof over your head. It’s more than a lot of people have. It’s not as nice as what you had before but it’ll be OK. You’ll get a job, you’ll get a flat, you’ll burn that poster of Tom Cruise and you’ll be fine. Everything will be fine.’
The more times I said it, the closer it felt to being true.
A smile found its way onto my face. I’d have loved this place when I was a teenager, I thought. A bolthole at the bottom of the garden, all to myself? Maybe it was actually amazing and I was just too tired to realize. The smile disappeared as a single drop of water fell from the roof and landed right in the middle of my forehead. I rolled over onto my side and watched as it began to rain, a summer storm tap, tap, tapping on the corrugated roof of my new home.
‘It’s all going to be fine,’ I said again, more determined this time.
I only hoped I was right. I hadn’t always been that reliable in the past.
One of the most wonderful things about London was, no matter how much it changed, at its heart, it always stayed the same. They could open as many coffee shops and co-working spaces and Brewdog after Brewdog after Brewdog but the bones of the city stood strong, happy to slip on a new skin from time to time but always knowing its true self, underneath it all. As I emerged from the tube station at London Bridge, I took a deep, familiar breath of murky city air and smiled. I’d missed home so much.
After university, I’d lived nearby with my best friend, Sumi, and our friend, Lucy, the three of us crammed into a tiny two-bedroomed terraced affair with no functioning kitchen to speak of, a living room that doubled as Sumi’s bedroom and a bathroom that didn’t have a bath. Since we only had a fridge-freezer in the hallway and nowhere to sit that wasn’t someone’s bed, we met at The Lexington Arms almost every evening after work to eat and drink and catch each other up on every last little thing that had happened during our day. It was a wonderful, crappy old pub round the corner, beloved by us for its fish finger sandwiches, cheap white wine and the landlord’s willingness to let us upstairs when he had a band on without paying for a ticket. Sumi was in law school, Lucy was training at beauty college and I was making tea for whichever local radio station or desperate DJ would have me. It sounded hideous but they were happy times, really, they were the happiest.
As I waited for the green man, I gazed across the cobbled street at Borough Market. It was all together too cool for us back then but Sumi insisted I meet her here tonight. It was closer to her office, she said. This new bar she’d started going to was far nicer than The Lex, she said. A complete and utter betrayal, I said. And there had been no word on whether or not they served fish finger sandwiches.
Dodging the tourists with their giant backpacks and the locals with their bulging shopping bags, I walked around in circles, searching for the bar but only succeeding in getting lost in a sea of artisan food stalls.
‘You can’t afford fancy cheese,’ I reminded myself as I stared longingly at a wheel of brie in the window of the cheesemonger’s. Besides, who needed a baked camembert and a fresh-from-the-oven baguette when they could buy a Dairylea Dunker from Tesco Metro on the way home? Christ, I groaned inwardly, it had been a long time since I’d had been this broke. I had to find a job sooner rather than later.
Eventually, I spotted it, nestled between a boulangerie and a cheese shop, a tiny sign stencilled on a huge plate-glass window in antique gold lettering. Good Luck Bar was about as far away from The Lex as it was possible to be, figuratively speaking. Instead of a dark, dank, old man’s boozer, this place was one of those café-pub hybrids with too many mirrors and not enough dry-roast peanuts. One side of the room was taken up by oversized sofas in the perfect shade of pink for faux lounging while you took a thousand Instagram photos. The other side was filled with communal tables and a dulled metal bar that ran halfway down the room, lined with tall barstools and Edison lights hanging down overhead. It looked like a steampunk hairdressers, if a giant strawberry yoghurt had exploded inside. Not that it mattered what I thought, the place was absolutely packed, the sofas were swarmed and the communal tables full of people nursing an almost empty coffee cup while they abused the free WiFi.
With no other options, I hopped up onto an empty stool, resting my bag on the bar. A woman appeared on the other side and gave me a big smile. Her hair was woven into a long, elaborate braid you couldn’t help but respect and a heavy leather work apron covered her white shirt and blue jeans.
‘What can I get you?’ she asked.
‘A white wine please?’ I replied with a quick glance at the happy hour menu. ‘A large white wine?’
I might not be able to afford expensive cheese but there was always room on my credit card for a drink.
‘One of those days?’ The bartender pushed an enormous glass of Sauvignon Blanc towards me.
‘Something like that,’ I agreed, tucking my own long hair behind my ears and taking a grateful sip. I liked her already.
The day had been a challenge. Between my jetlag and a pair of randy rutting foxes that had seemingly chosen the back of my shed as their love nest I’d barely slept a wink. Which meant I didn’t cope very well when my dad apologetically explained he’d moved all my clothes from the washer to the dryer without asking me and accidentally shrunk more than half of them. And that was before I’d got to the freezing-cold water in the shed shower or the utter horror of the compostable toilet. My parents might be happy to have me home but home did not seem happy to have me.
‘Oh my god, it’s you, it’s you, you’re really back!’
Without warning, a black leather tote bag, filled to overflowing, thumped down beside me at the bar with a short South Asian woman attached.
‘I am so happy to see you,’ I told her, squeezing my friend so tightly she squealed in protest.
‘I’m happy to see you too,’ Sumi replied, delight all over her face. She’d always hated being short and lived in four-inch heels but she loved that she was, in her own words, ‘a thicc bitch’, all confident curves and zero-fucks attitude. Her hair was long and dark and her face was a masterpiece, glowing skin, huge eyes and a mouth that always seemed to be smiling.
‘I’m gagging for a drink,’ she said, waving to the bartender and pointing at my glass before giving her a thumbs up. The woman threw her a wink and went to work. ‘So, tell me everything. How does it feel to be back?’
‘Weird,’ I admitted as we fell right back into our rhythm. I hadn’t physically laid eyes on Sumi since she came out to visit a year ago but one way or another, we’d spoken every single day without fail. We didn’t miss a beat. ‘I’m happy though, I’ve missed everything about home so much.’
‘You picked the right three years to be gone,’ she replied. ‘I’d have gone with you if I could have. How’s the flat-hunt going?’
‘Can’t get a flat without a job,’ I pointed out. ‘I’m totally broke. If I’d known I’d be leaving so suddenly, I’d have tried to save more.’
I shuddered