The Flatshare: A Novel

It’s first thing on Friday. The Day.

Leon is at his mum’s place – they’re going to court together. Rachel and Mo are at mine. Mo’s tagging along to the book launch – given everything I’ve done for this book, even Martin could not deny me a plus one.

Gerty pops in with Mo when he arrives, for a quick, cursory hug and a very hurried chat about Richie’s case. She is already dressed in her ridiculous lawyer wig, as if she’s doing an impression of an eighteenth-century painting.

Mo is in his tux, looking adorable. I love it when Mo dresses up smartly. It’s like when you see photos of puppies dressed up as humans. He is visibly uncomfortable, and I can tell he’s itching to at least take off his shoes, but if he so much as reaches for his shoelaces then Gerty snarls at him and he withdraws, whimpering. When Gerty leaves, he looks visibly relieved.

‘Just so you know, Mo and Gerty are totally shagging,’ Rachel tells me, passing me my hairbrush.

I stare at her in the mirror. (There are nowhere near enough mirrors in this flat. We should have got ready at Rachel’s, which has an entire wall of mirrored cupboards in the bedroom for what I suspect to be sexual reasons, but she refuses to let Gerty in her flat since she made a comment about how messy it was at Rachel’s birthday party.)

‘Mo and Gerty are not shagging,’ I say, coming to my senses and snatching the hairbrush. I’m attempting to tame my mane into a sleek up-do from one of our DIY hairstyling books. The author promised me that it was easy, but I’ve been on step two for fifteen minutes. There are twenty-two steps in total and half an hour left on the clock.

‘They are,’ Rachel says matter-of-factly. ‘You know I can always tell.’

I just about refrain from informing Rachel that Gerty also thinks she can ‘always tell’ when a friend is sleeping with someone. I don’t want this to become a competition, especially as I’ve still not had sex with Leon.

‘They live together,’ I say, through a mouthful of hairpins. ‘They’re more comfortable with each other than they used to be.’

‘You only get that comfortable if you get naked together,’ Rachel insists.

‘That’s weird and gross. Anyway, I’m pretty sure Mo is asexual.’

Belatedly, I check that the bathroom door is closed. Mo is in the living room. He has spent the last hour looking either patient or bored, depending on whether he thinks we’re looking.

‘You want to think that, because of the whole he’s-like-a-brother-to-you thing. But he’s definitely not asexual. He came on to my friend Kelly at a party last summer.’

‘I cannot handle these sorts of revelations right now!’ I say, spitting out the hairpins. I put them between my teeth way too early. They’re for step four, and step three still has me flummoxed.

‘Come here,’ Rachel says, and I breathe out. Thank God.

‘You really left me hanging there,’ I tell her, as she takes the hairbrush, smooths out the damage I have done so far, and flicks through the up-do instructions with one hand.

‘How else will you ever learn?’ she says.

*

It’s 10 a.m. It’s weird being in formal dress this early in the morning. For some reason I am incredibly paranoid about dripping tea down the front of my fancy new dress, though I’m pretty sure if I were drinking a martini I wouldn’t have the same anxieties. It’s just weird drinking from a mug while wearing silk.

Rachel has outdone herself – my hair is all smooth and shiny, knotted at the nape of my neck in a series of mysterious swirls just like in the picture. The side-effect, though, is that a copious amount of my chest is on show. When I tried this dress on I had my hair down – I didn’t really notice quite how much skin the off-the-shoulder sleeves and structured sweetheart neckline leave exposed. Oh well. This is my night, too – I’m the acquiring editor. I’m perfectly entitled to dress inappropriately.

My alarm beeps to remind me to check in on Katherin. I call her, trying not to notice that she’s higher up my most-called list than my own mother.

‘Are you ready?’ I ask as soon as she picks up.

‘Almost!’ she trills. ‘Just made a quick adjustment to the outfit, and—’

‘What quick adjustment?’ I ask, suspicious.

‘Oh, well when I tried it on again I realised how dour and boring this dress that your PR people picked makes me look under the bright lights of the day,’ she says, ‘so I’ve tweaked the hemline and the neckline.’

I open my mouth to tell her off, and then close it again. Firstly, the damage is clearly already done – if she’s re-hemmed, the dress is unsaveable. And secondly, my risqué dress choice will look much better next to someone else who has also decided to show an unprofessional amount of skin.

‘Fine. We’ll pick you up at half past.’

‘Toodles!’ she says, hopefully ironically, though I’m not sure.

I check the time as I hang up. Ten minutes spare. (I had to factor in time for Rachel to get ready, which always takes at least fifty per cent longer than you think it will. She’ll blame it on me for making her do my hair, obviously, but it’s really because she is the self-proclaimed queen of contouring, and spends at least forty minutes subtly altering the shape of her face before she even gets started on eyes and lips.)

I’m just about to text Leon and see how he is when the flat phone rings.

‘What the fuck is that?’ shouts Rachel from the bathroom.

‘It’s our landline!’ I yell, already making a dash for the sound (it seems to be coming from the vicinity of the fridge). Dashing is not easy in this outfit – there’s a lot of billowing in the skirt region, and at least two risky moments where my bare foot catches in the tulle as I go. I wince as it yanks at my bad ankle. I can walk on it now, but it’s not enjoying this running thing. Not that my good ankle likes running either.

‘It’s your what?’ Mo asks, sounding amused.

‘Our landline,’ I repeat, fumbling around with the unbelievably large quantity of things on our kitchen surfaces.

‘I’m sorry, you didn’t tell me this was the 1990s,’ calls Rachel, just as I find the phone.

‘Hello?’

‘Tiffy?’

I frown. ‘Richie? Are you all right?’

‘I’ll be honest with you, Tiffy,’ he says, ‘I’m shitting myself. Not literally. Though it might be a matter of time.’

‘Whoever it is, I hope they’re enjoying the latest Blur CD,’ Rachel calls.

‘Hang on.’ I head for the bedroom and close the door firmly behind me. With difficulty, I rearrange my skirt so that I can perch on the edge of the bed without anything ripping. ‘Shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, in a van or something? How are you calling me? They have remembered your court date, right?’

I’ve heard enough horror stories from Gerty and Leon now to know that prisoners don’t always make it to court when they should, thanks to the various prison-related bureaucracies that are required to overlap in this situation. They moved Richie down to a (even grimmer) London prison a few days ago so he’d be in the area for the trial, but there’s still the journey from the prison to the courthouse. I feel physically sick at the thought of all this preparation going to waste because someone forgot to call someone else about transportation.

‘No, no, I’ve done the van bit,’ Richie says. ‘Barrel of laughs, let me tell you. Somehow spent five hours in there, though I could have sworn we weren’t moving for half of it. No, I’m at the courthouse now, in a holding cell. I’m not really allowed a phone call, but the guard is an Irish lady, and she says I remind her of her son. And that I look terrible. She told me to call my girlfriend, but I don’t have one, so I thought I’d call you, since you’re Leon’s girlfriend and that’s close enough. It was that or Rita from school, who I don’t think I ever technically broke up with.’

‘You’re rambling, Richie,’ I tell him. ‘What’s the matter? Is it nerves?’

‘“Nerves” makes me sound like I’m an old lady. It’s terror.’

‘That does sound better. More horror movie. Less fainting because your corset is too tight.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Is Gerty there?’

‘I can’t see her yet. She’s busy doing whatever lawyers do, anyway. I’m on my own now.’ His tone is light and self-deprecating, as always, but you don’t have to listen hard to hear the tremor in his voice.

‘You are not on your own,’ I tell him firmly. ‘You have all of us. And remember – when we first spoke you told me you’re coming to terms with being in prison. Well, that’s the worst-case scenario here. More of what you have already coped with.’

‘What if I vomit in the courtroom?’

‘Then someone will clear the room and call a cleaner, and you’ll pick up where you left off. It’s not exactly going to make the judges think you’re an armed robber, is it?’

He gives a strangled version of a chuckle. For a moment there is silence.

‘I don’t want to let Leon down,’ he says. ‘He’s got his hopes up so high. I don’t want— I can’t bear to let him down again. Last time was the worst thing. Honestly, it was the worst. Seeing his face.’

‘You have never let him down,’ I say. My heart is thumping. This is important. ‘He knows you didn’t do it. The . . . the system let you both down.’

‘I should have just taken it. Served my sentence and got out, and let him get on with his life in the meantime. All this – it’s only going to make everything worse for him.’

‘Leon was going to fight no matter what you did,’ I say. ‘He was never just going to let his little brother get picked on. If you’d given up, that would have hurt him.’

He takes a big, juddering breath, and lets it out again.

‘That’s good,’ I say. ‘Breathing. I hear that’s a good one for those with delicate nerves. Have you got any smelling salts?’

That gets another chuckle, a little less strangled this time.

‘Are you calling me a pussy?’ Richie asks.

‘I fully believe that you’re a very brave man,’ I tell him. ‘But yes. I’m calling you a pussy. In case that helps you remember how brave you are.’

‘Ah, you’re a good girl, Tiffy,’ Richie says.

‘I’m not a dog, Richie. And – now that you’re hopefully less green . . . Can we go back to how you just said “Leon’s girlfriend”?’

There’s a pause.

‘Not Leon’s girlfriend?’ he says.

‘Not yet,’ I tell him. ‘Well, I mean, we’ve not discussed that. We’ve only been on a few dates, technically.’

‘He’s mad about you,’ Richie says. ‘He might not say it out loud, but . . .’

I feel a twinge of anxiety. I’m crazy about Leon, too. I spend most of my waking hours thinking about him, and a few of the sleeping ones too. But . . . I don’t know. The idea of him wanting to be my boyfriend makes me feel so trapped.

I adjust my dress, wondering if I’m the one having the problem with corsets and nerves. I really like Leon. This is ridiculous. Objectively, I would like to call him my boyfriend, and introduce him to people as such. That’s what you always want when you’re crazy about someone. But . . .

What would Lucie say?

Well, she’d probably say nothing, to be honest. She’d just leave me to stew on the fact that this weird fear of getting trapped is almost certainly to do with the fact that I was in a relationship with a man who never really let me go.

‘Tiffy?’ Richie says. ‘I should probably get going.’

‘Oh, God, yes,’ I say, coming to my senses. I don’t know what I’m doing worrying about relationship labels when Richie is about to walk into court. ‘Good luck, Richie. I wish I could be there.’

‘Maybe see you on the other side,’ he says, voice trembling again. ‘And if not – look after Leon.’

This time, the request doesn’t sound strange. ‘I will,’ I tell him. ‘I promise.’