The Flatshare: A Novel

So, here I am. On the freezing cold dock. In ‘neutral clothing I can work with’ according to Katherin, who is beaming cheekily at me, the wind whipping her straw-blonde hair against her cheeks as we wait for the cruise ship to batten down the hatch, or turn three sails to the wind, or whatever it is these ships do in order to let people on board.

‘You have the perfect proportions for this sort of thing,’ Katherin is telling me. ‘You’re my favourite model, Tiffy. Really. This is going to be an absolute scream.’

I raise an eyebrow, looking out to sea. I don’t see a vast selection of other models for Katherin to choose from. I have also, over the years, got a bit tired of people lauding my ‘proportions’. The thing is, I’m like Gerty and Mo’s flat in reverse – just about twenty per cent bigger than the average woman, in all directions. My mother likes to declare that I am ‘big-boned’ because my father was a lumberjack in his youth (was he? I know he’s old, but didn’t lumberjacks only exist in fairy tales?). I can barely walk into a room without someone helpfully informing me that I am very tall for a woman.

Sometimes it annoys people, like I’m purposefully taking up more room than I’m allowed, and sometimes it intimidates them, especially when they’re used to looking down at women they’re talking to, but mostly it just makes them compliment me on my ‘proportions’ a lot. I think what they’re really saying is, ‘Gosh, you’re big, but without being particularly fat!’ or, ‘Well done on being tall but not lanky!’ Or perhaps, ‘You are confusing my gender norms by being very woman-shaped despite the fact that you are the height and width of an average male!’

‘You’re the sort of woman the Soviets liked,’ Katherin goes on, oblivious to my raised eyebrow. ‘You know, on their posters about women working the land while the men were out fighting, that sort of thing.’

‘Wear a lot of crochet, did they, the Soviet women?’ I ask rather tetchily. It’s drizzling, and the sea looks very different from a busy dock like this – it’s a lot less glamorous than when you’re on the beach. It’s basically just a big cold salty bath, really. I wonder how warm the rights director is now, in her meeting about the international reach of our spring season titles.

‘Possibly, possibly,’ Katherin muses. ‘Good idea, Tiffy! What do you think – a chapter on the history of crochet in the next book?’

‘No,’ I tell her firmly. ‘That won’t be popular with your readers.’

You have to nip ideas in the bud fast with Katherin. And I’m def­initely right on this one. Nobody wants history – they just want an idea for a new crochet item they can give their grandson to drool on.

‘But—’

‘I’m just conveying the brutality of the market to you, Katherin,’ I say. That’s one of my favourite lines. Good old market, always there to be blamed. ‘The people don’t want history in their crochet books. They want cute pictures and easy instructions.’

Once all our documents have been checked, we file on board. You can’t really tell where the dock ends and the boat begins – it’s just like walking into a building and developing very slight light-headedness, as though the floor is shifting a little beneath you. I thought we might get a different, more exciting welcome for being special guests who’ve been invited here, but we’re just traipsing on with the rest of the riff-raff. All of whom are at least twenty times richer than me, obviously, and much better dressed.

It’s actually pretty small for a cruise ship – so only the size of, say, Portsmouth, rather than London. We’re shuffled politely into a corner of the ‘entertainment area’ to wait for our cue. We’re to set up after the guests have had lunch.

Nobody brings us lunch. Katherin, of course, has brought her own sandwiches. They’re sardine. She cheerfully offers me half, which is actually very sweet of her, and eventually my stomach-rumbling gets so bad that I concede defeat and accept one. I’m twitchy. The last time I was on a cruise it was through the Greek islands with Justin, and I was positively glowing with love and post-sex hormones. Now, huddled in a corner with three Aldi bags of knitting needles, crochet hooks and wool, accompanied by an ex-hippy and a sardine sandwich, I can no longer deny the fact that my life has taken a turn for the worse.

‘So what’s the plan, then?’ I ask Katherin, nibbling the crusts off the sandwich. The fishiness isn’t so bad at the edges. ‘What do I need to do?’

‘I’ll demonstrate how to take measurements from you first,’ Katherin says. ‘Then I’ll talk through the basic stitches for any beginners, then I’ll use my pre-prepared bits to show them the tricks of compiling yourself a perfectly fitted outfit! And of course, I’ll show them my five top tips for measuring as you go.’

‘Measuring as you go’ is one of Katherin’s catchphrases. It has yet to catch on.

In the end, when it’s finally time for us to kick off, we gather quite a crowd. Katherin knows how to do that – she probably practised at rallies and things, back in days of yore. It’s largely a crowd of old ladies and their husbands, but there are a few younger women in their twenties and thirties, and even a couple of guys. I’m quite encouraged. Maybe Katherin’s right that crochet is on the up.

‘A big hand for my glamorous assistant!’ Katherin is saying, as though we’re putting on a magic show. Actually, the magician in the other corner of the entertainment area is looking pretty miffed.

Everyone claps me dutifully. I try to look cheerful and crochet-ish, but I’m still chilly, and I feel drab in my neutral clothing – white jeans, pale grey T-shirt, and a lovely warm pink cardigan that I thought I’d sold sometime last year but rediscovered in my wardrobe this morning. It’s the only colourful element to this outfit, and I can tell Katherin is about to . . .

‘Cardigan off!’ she says, already undressing me. This is so undignified. And cold. ‘Are you all paying close attention? Phones away, please! We managed without checking Facebook every five minutes in the Cold War, didn’t we? Hmm? That’s right, a bit of perspective for you all! Phones away, that’s it!’

I try not to laugh. That’s trademark Katherin – she always says bringing up the Cold War startles people into submission.

She starts measuring me – neck, shoulders, bust, waist, hips – and it occurs to me that my measurements are now being read out to a really quite large group of people, which makes my urge to laugh even more powerful. It’s the classic, isn’t it – you’re not allowed to laugh, and suddenly that’s what you want to do more than anything.

Katherin shoots me a warning look as she measures my hips, chatting away about pleating to create sufficient ‘room for the buttocks’, and no doubt feeling how my body is beginning to shake with supressed laughter. I know I need to be professional. I know I can’t just burst out laughing right now – it’ll totally undermine her. But . . . Look at me. That old lady over there just wrote down my inner thigh measurement in her notebook. And that guy at the back looks—

That guy at the back . . . That . . .

That’s Justin.

He moves away when I clock it’s him, slipping off into the crowd. But first, before he goes, he holds my gaze. It sends a shock right through me, because it’s not your ordinary eye contact. It’s a very distinct sort of eye contact. The sort you get locked into in the moment just before you toss a twenty on the table and scramble out of the pub to make out in a cab home, or in the moment when you put down the wine glass and head upstairs to bed.

It’s sex eye contact. His eyes say, I’m undressing you in my head. The man who left me months ago, who hasn’t picked up one of my calls since, whose fiancée is probably on this very cruise with him . . . He’s giving me that look. And in that moment I am more exposed than any number of elderly ladies with notebooks could make me feel. I feel completely naked.