6 #2
Essie can’t believe it herself. Money had always been tight growing up; she had been so excited to find she actually had some.
She had needed new clothes and of course there were the minibreaks with Connor, who assumed her family was well-off, more or less, because she had a nice accent; the nights out at trendy George Street nightspots, the Ubers. ..
And the rent on her beautiful, if tiny apartment, the little raised colony house down by the Water of Leith – where, if you ignore how tiny it is and just focus on the views, she can imagine herself living the dream.
Her mother had always been much more make-do-and-mend, and Essie has just been so keen not to have to do that any more that she hasn’t put aside enough for a rainy day. She hasn’t put aside a red cent.
Connor heads off to rugby training, kissing her on the head and giving her shoulder an ‘it’ll be alright’ squeeze – which is, she has already ascertained, not at all the same thing as a ‘move in with us for a bit’ squeeze.
They are only in their mid-twenties; it’s a bit soon for all that.
Plus it’s Tris’s flat and he has a strict bros code.
Essie opens her laptop, takes a deep breath, and once again starts searching for a cheaper place to live.
At first, she had thought it would be easy. She had started two weeks ago, and at first, as she pushed the button, loads of properties had popped up all over the map, right in town.
Then she looked closer. These were ‘flats to rent’, alright – but they were only for a night. Or a week, at most. They were all on Airbnb or other rental sites, all short-term, all completely unsustainable. Some are as expensive as hotels.
That couldn’t be right, she’d thought, looking closer.
It couldn’t possibly be . . . there were flats she could see that she had known were once rentals; had had friends staying in them, long term.
But now, they were all there for one-night visitors; people coming into town for fun or a stag night or a brief trip, who didn’t mind paying a bit more.
Of course, she and Connor had . . . loads of times – gone on minibreaks and stayed in other people’s places, in Paris, or Prague; they were often lovely and they’d congratulated themselves on getting to stay somewhere so cool when travelling, cheaper than a hotel .
. . but that had been then. She’d never really thought what it meant back in the place she actually wanted to live.
She had shut down that window; started again, looking for long-term rentals.
There was almost nothing in the city. Nothing at all.
It was as if an entire sector had disappeared.
Everything available was miles away. And so incredibly expensive, so much so that she’d realised she was practically getting a bargain in the lovely colonies place in Stockbridge.
All the flatshares she looked at – she started off looking at studios, but ruled that out very quickly – were hundreds and hundreds of pounds, and every time she called one that had just come on, it was gone already.
The couple she did manage to get to see were in scary old tumbledown buildings, miles from anywhere, filthy dirty and with creepy older men already ensconced there.
And even then, they still cost a fortune. And, whoops, they’re gone.
Her college friends have scattered far and wide, many to much cheaper areas of the country where they have mortgages and, in some cases, babies on the way, and were mildly surprised to hear from her, which made Essie blush.
Her new colleagues and work chums are acquaintances, either out of work themselves now or not in need of a flatmate.
Plus, the whole thing is horrendously embarrassing.
Two weeks later, by the time she’s been turned down by both a temp agency and an utterly nondescript apartment in Bruntsfield where she would have had to share a bathroom with three posh nineteen-year-old student girls who on the evidence of the bathroom floor left their hair extensions everywhere, she is deeply and seriously worried.
Essie sits in the lovely Stockbridge back bedroom, watching the evening light die over the water of Leith, which is thronged with couples walking, happy dogs, and small children on ethically produced wooden scooters.
She can’t believe everything is crumbling so fast. She was meant to be going out to dinner with Connor, Tris and that lot tonight, but she already knew it would be a very expensive affair, and almost certainly end up with the rugby boys attempting to debag one another on the street or make themselves drink something that was already on fire, and it wasn’t quite as much fun as it had seemed a while ago.
And her landlady, now she is at home all the time looking at job ads and heating up tinned soup, has started to make loud sighs and ‘oh, you’re here again’ remarks whenever she is in the kitchen or the bathroom and reminding her that the rent is due and basically pass-agging the hell out of her.
The phone rings. It’s her mother – of course it is. She looks at it for a while. Then she answers. What choice does she have?