The Flatshare: A Novel

I wake to the daylight, which is much less pleasant than people make it sound. We didn’t close the curtains last night. I turn my face away from the window instinctively, rolling over and realising the right-hand side of the bed is empty.

At first it feels totally normal: I wake up every day in Leon’s bed without him there, after all. My sleepy brain goes, oh, of course – no, hang on, wait . . .

There’s a note on his pillow.

Gone out in search of breakfast. Back soon, bearing pastries x

I smile, and roll back the other way to check the time on my phone on the bedside table.

Shit. Twenty-seven missed calls, all from an unknown number.

What the—

I scramble out of bed, heart thumping, then yelp with pain as I knock my ankle. Fuck. I dial voicemail, a bad feeling blooming in the base of my stomach. It’s like . . . yesterday was too good to be true. Something terrible has happened – I knew I shouldn’t have—

‘Tiffy, are you all right? I saw Rachel’s status on Facebook. Did you nearly drown?’

It’s Justin. I go very still as the message rolls on.

‘Look, I know you’re in a mood with me at the moment. But I need to know you’re OK. Call me back.’

There are more like this. Twelve more, to be precise. I’d deleted his number after a particularly girl-power-inducing counselling session, so that’d be why the calls came from an unknown number. I think I knew who it was going to be, though. Nobody else has ever called me that many times before, but Justin has – usually after a fight, or a break-up.

‘Tiffy. This is ridiculous. If I knew where you were I’d come out there. Call me, all right?’

I shiver. This feels . . . I feel awful. Like yesterday with Leon should never have happened. Imagine if Justin knew where I’d been, and what I’d been doing?

I shake myself. I can feel that that doesn’t make sense even as I think it. I’m scaring myself again.

I tap out a text.

I’m fine, I lightly sprained my ankle. Please don’t call me any more.

Within moments, he replies.

Oh, thank God! What are you like without me there to look after you, hey? You made me so worried. I’ll be good and stick to your rules, no contact until October. Just know I’ll be thinking of you xx

I stare at the message for a while. What are you like. As if I’m such a klutz. Yesterday Leon pulled me out of the sea, and yet this is the first time all weekend I’ve felt like the girl who needs rescuing.

Fuck this. I hit block and delete all the voicemails from my phone.

*

I hop to the bathroom. It’s not the most dignified method of travel – the chintzy lamps on the walls are vibrating a little as I go – but something about the general stompiness is quite therapeutic. Stomp, stomp, stomp. Stupid, bloody, Justin. I slam the bathroom door with satisfying force.

Thank God Leon went out for breakfast, both because he avoided witnessing this mess of a morning and because he will hopefully return with something highly calorific to make me feel better.

Once I’ve showered and redressed in yesterday’s clothes – which, because they’re covered in grainy, shingly grit, also ticks exfoliating off my to-do list – I hop back to the bed and launch myself on to it with a thud, burying my face in the pillow. Ugh. Yesterday was so lovely, and now I feel all horrible and mucky, like the voicemails left a taint on me. Still, I blocked him, something I would never have been able to bring myself to do a few months ago. Maybe I should be glad of all those voicemails for pushing me to do it.

I sit up on my elbows and reach for the note Leon wrote me. It’s on hotel stationery; The Bunny Hop Inn is traced in jaunty letters across the bottom of the paper. The handwriting is just the same as ever, though – Leon’s neat, tiny, rounded letters. In a moment of embarrassing sentimentality, I fold the paper in half and reach to slip it into my handbag.

There’s a quiet knock on the door.

‘Come in,’ I call.

He’s dressed in a giant T-shirt with a picture of three sticks of rock on the front, and BRIGHTON ROCKS in big letters underneath. My mood immediately improves about tenfold. There’s nothing like a man in a novelty T-shirt to brighten up your morning – especially when he’s holding a very promising paper bag with Patisserie Valerie written on the side.

‘One of Babs’s finest?’ I say, pointing at the T-shirt.

‘My new personal stylist,’ Leon says.

He passes me the bag of pastries and sits down on the end of the bed, smoothing his hair back. He’s nervous again. Why do I find his nervous fidgeting so adorable?

‘You made it to the shower OK?’ he asks eventually, nodding towards my wet hair. ‘With your foot, I mean?’

‘I showered flamingo style.’ I curl one knee up. He smiles. Getting one of those lopsided grins from him feels like winning at a game I wasn’t aware I was playing. ‘The door doesn’t lock, though. I thought you might walk in on me, but it seems Karma was busy elsewhere this morning.’

He makes a strangled sort of mmhmm sound and busies himself eating his croissant. I suppress a smile. An unfortunate side effect of finding his nervous fidgeting adorable is that I seem unable to resist saying things I know will make him fidget.

‘But anyway, you’ve basically seen me naked,’ I go on. ‘Twice. Already. So you wouldn’t have been in for any huge surprises.’

He looks up at me this time. ‘Basically,’ he says emphatically, ‘is not the same as actually. Some key differences, in fact.’

My stomach flips. Whatever that awkwardness was last night, I definitely wasn’t imagining the sexual tension. The air is heavy with it.

‘It should be me worrying about the lack of surprises,’ he says. ‘You’ve actually seen me naked.’

‘I did wonder . . . when I walked in on you in the shower, did you . . .’

He disappears in the direction of the bathroom so fast I barely hear the excuse he makes as he goes. As he closes the door behind him and turns the shower on, I smile. I guess there’s my answer. Rachel will be delighted.