The Flatshare: A Novel

The smell of lilies is suffocating. Mo’s holding the bouquet beside me as we huddle there in the darkness, the blooms pressing close to my dress, staining the fabric with pollen. As I look down at the marks on the silk I notice I’m shaking so much the full skirt of my dress is quivering.

I don’t remember exactly what Justin said as he left. In fact, I already feel like I don’t remember a lot of the conversation that just happened. Perhaps it was all a surreal daydream, and I’m actually still standing out there in the crowd, wondering if Katherin will mention me in her thank-you speech, and whether those little roll things on that canapé tray are duck or chicken.

‘What . . . what if he’s still right there?’ I whisper to Rachel, pointing towards the black curtains Justin left through.

‘Mo, hold this,’ Rachel says. I think ‘this’ is referring to me. She disappears through to the backstage area, while onstage Katherin says goodbye to the audience to resounding applause.

Mo dutifully holds my elbow. ‘You’re OK,’ he whispers. He doesn’t say anything else, he just does one of those hug-like sort of silences that I love so much. In the world on the other side of these dark curtains the crowd is still clapping; muffled, here, the sound is like heavy rain on tarmac.

‘You really can’t be back here,’ the sound guy insists in exasperation as Rachel re-enters. He takes a step backwards when she turns to look at him. I don’t blame him. Rachel has her battle face on, and she looks bloody terrifying.

Rachel sweeps past him without answering, lifting her skirts to step over the cables. ‘No crazy ex in sight,’ she tells me, returning to my side.

Katherin bundles in suddenly from the stage; she almost walks into Mo.

‘Gosh,’ she says, ‘that was all rather dramatic, wasn’t it?’ She pats me in a motherly sort of way. ‘Are you all right? I’m assuming that fellow was . . .’

‘Tiffy’s stalker ex-boyfriend,’ Rachel supplies. ‘And speaking of stalking – I think we need to have a few words with Martin . . .’

‘Not now,’ I beg, grabbing hold of Rachel’s arm. ‘Just stay with me for a minute, all right?’

Her face softens. ‘Fine. Permission to hang him by the testicles at some later time?’

‘Granted. Also, eww.’

‘I can’t believe he’s been telling that . . . that scumbag where you are all the time. You should press charges, Tiffy.’

‘You should certainly file for a restraining order,’ Mo says quietly.

‘Against Martin? Might make work awkward,’ I say weakly.

Mo just looks at me. ‘You know who I meant.’

‘Can we leave this . . . dark . . . curtain-room now?’ I ask.

‘Good idea,’ says Katherin. Discreetly, out of Rachel’s sight, the sound guy nods and rolls his eyes. ‘I’d better go and mingle, but why don’t you lot take my limo?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Rachel says, staring at her.

Katherin looks sheepish. ‘It wasn’t my idea. The Butterfingers PR team got it for me. It’s just sitting outside. You can take it, I can’t be seen dead getting driven around in one of those, they’d never let me back into the Old Socialists’ Club.’

‘Thanks,’ Mo says, and I briefly surface from the fog of panic to marvel at the thought that the head of PR voluntarily shelled out for a limousine. She is infamously tight on budget.

‘So now we just need to get out. Through the crowd,’ Rachel says, her mouth set in a grim line.

‘First, though, you need to call the police and report Justin for harassment,’ Mo tells me. ‘And you need to tell them everything. All the other times, the flowers, Martin . . .’

I let out a half groan, half whimper. Mo rubs my back.

‘Tiffy, do it,’ Rachel says, handing me her phone.

*

I move through the throng as though I’m somebody else. People keep patting me on the back and smiling and calling to me. At first I try to tell everyone in turn – ‘I didn’t say yes, I’m not getting married, he’s not my boyfriend’ – but either they can’t or they don’t want to hear me, so as we get closer to the door I stop trying.

Katherin’s limo is parked around the corner. It’s not just a limo – it’s a stretch limo. This is ridiculous. The head of PR must be about to ask Katherin to do something very important for very little money.

‘Hi, excuse me?’ Rachel says to the limo driver through the window, in her best sweet-talking-the-barman voice. ‘Katherin said we can have this limo.’

A lengthy conversation ensues. As probably should be the case, the limo driver is not about to just take our word for it that Katherin has let us take the car. After a brief phone call to Katherin herself, and the return of Rachel’s battle face, we’re in – thank God. I’m shivering like crazy, even with Mo’s jacket over my shoulders.

Inside is even more ridiculous than outside. There are long sofas, a small bar, two television screens, and a sound system.

‘Fucking hell,’ Rachel says. ‘This is absurd. You’d think they could pay me more than minimum wage, wouldn’t you?’

We sit in silence for a while as the driver pulls away.

‘Well,’ Rachel goes on, ‘I think we can all agree today has taken an unexpected turn.’

For some reason that tips me over the edge. I cry into my hands, leaning my head back on to the plush grey upholstery and letting the sobs rack my body like I’m a little kid. Mo gives my arm a compassionate squeeze.

There’s a buzzing noise.

‘Everyone all right back there?’ calls the driver. ‘Sounds like someone’s having an asthma attack!’

‘Everything’s fine!’ Rachel calls, as I wail and wheeze, struggling to breathe through the tears. ‘My friend has just been cornered by her crazy ex-boyfriend in front of a crowd of a thousand people and manipulated into looking like she would marry him, and now she is having a perfectly natural reaction.’

There’s a pause. ‘Crikey,’ says the driver. ‘Tissues are under the bar.’

*

When I get home I call Leon, but he doesn’t pick up. Beneath all the roaring blinding craziness of the day, I’m desperate to know more than he gave me in the last text: Things going well at court. How well? Is it over? When will Richie get a verdict?

I so badly want to speak to him. Specifically, I want to cuddle up against his shoulder and breathe in his gorgeous Leon smell and let him stroke the small of my back the way he does and then speak to him.

I can’t believe this. I can’t believe Justin. The fact that he put me in that position, in front of all those people . . . What did he think, that I’d just go along with it because it was what he wanted me to do?

Maybe I would have once, actually. God, that’s sickening.

The fact that he reached out to Martin to keep track of me takes the whole thing to a new level of disturbing – all those strange meetings that he made me feel crazy for thinking were anything other than coincidental. All carefully planned and calculated. But what was the point? If he wanted me, he had me. I was his – I would have done anything for him. Why did he push me so far, then keep trying to get me to come back? It’s just . . . so bizarre. So unnecessarily painful.

Rachel couldn’t come back to my flat with us – she’s babysitting her niece tonight, going from looking after one crying snotty mess to another – but Mo has promised me he’ll stay with me, which is so lovely of him. I feel a bit guilty, because the truth is, right now it’s Leon I want.

It almost surprises me how clear that thought is. I want Leon. I need him here with me, nervously fidgeting and lopsidedly smiling and effortlessly making everything feel brighter. After the madness of today, it strikes me with new force that if nice-scary is sometimes scary-scary as I learn to do this whole relationship thing again, so bloody what? If I give in to that fear, if I let it hold me back with Leon, then Justin really does win.

And Leon is so worth a bit of fear. He’s so worth it. I reach for my phone and call him again.