Chapter 1
JESS
‘How was your date?’ Debs calls, when she hears me close her yellow front door behind me.
‘Total disaster,’ I call back, removing my coat then hunting for a space amongst all the kids’ jackets in the hall.
I find Debs in the kitchen.
‘Was it really that bad?’ she asks, cooking the dinner with one hand while holding eighteen-month Eli on her hip, the sweet smell of caramelised sausages hanging in the air.
‘Cricket-obsessed. Bad teeth. Said “yah” a lot. Enough said?’
She laughs at my misfortune and kisses Eli on his plump cheek, an acknowledgement that she’s thankful she met Mike at college, and never really had to do the dating thing.
‘I’m done with Tinder. There has to be another way of finding someone.’ I collapse on to the red chair at the kitchen table and immediately find myself with Toby the cat on my lap, his black hairs clinging to the mustard wool of my jumper.
‘Maybe it’s not Tinder, maybe you’re just not ready yet,’ she suggests, reaching into the blue painted cupboard for a tin of beans, Eli simultaneously reaching for her swishing ponytail.
Beans found, she hoists Eli further up her hip then tucks her batwing sweater into the front of her maternity jeans, which she’s customised by embroidering daisies on to the back pockets.
Just then Mike arrives through the door from the garage. He kisses Debs on the top of her head and places a hand on her bump, takes a moment to feel for any movement, until Debs bats him away playfully with a spoon.
‘Still here?’ he asks me, jostling my copper curls as he passes.
‘I’m working on it,’ I cringe, knowing full well I’ve long outstayed my welcome, even if I have been paying rent, but also knowing nothing vaguely affordable ever comes up on SpareRoom.
Only the very best of friends can tolerate a houseguest for a week, and I’ve been here almost a year, holed up in their box room alongside the growing collection of nursery paraphernalia.
‘Not a problem,’ he calls, going to the utility room where Debs insists on him taking off his dusty joiners’ dungarees and changing into his house clothes, which he does diligently each evening, even putting the dirty items in the laundry basket.
Mike is a man-god: handy, compassionate, strong, funny, and he’s a great dad; I can only hope that he’s lousy in bed, though Debs assures me he’s not.
‘Jess’s date was a disaster,’ Debs tells him, when he returns to the kitchen in his joggers and T-shirt, carrying four-year old Ash in a Superman pose.
‘Bummer,’ he says, and he tosses the local rag, the Notting Hill News, on to the table before hurling Ash round the room, divebombing Debs and Eli, causing Eli to shriek with laughter.
‘Can’t you think of anyone to set her up with, someone we trust, who isn’t a total tool?’ asks Debs, as she dishes up three plates of food for the kids and calls Jude, their eldest, to come through from the living room.
‘Everyone I know is either already shackled or a man-boy,’ he answers, taking a seat at the table.
‘It’s true,’ sighs Debs, exchanging a tablet for a dinner plate with Jude, then directing him to wash his hands while putting Eli into his vintage highchair.
Watching Debs manage the kids is like observing a master of chess: tiny, seemingly inconsequential moves, all forming part of a master strategy.
Debs was born to be a mum, even if we do joke that the only reason she keeps having more kids is so she doesn’t have to work; the real reason being that she’s desperate for a girl. ‘Guess you’re stuck with Tinder then.’
‘Guess so,’ I mumble, Tinder and I having a love-hate relationship.
I was sworn off the app after my ex, Liam, did a runner with my life’s savings.
Six months later I found the courage to start searching again, more a habit than anything else, and then another three months passed, and I met a handful of guys.
But whoever I met, no matter how nice they were, all I could wonder was, what scam have you got planned, what signals aren’t I reading, how long will it be before you take advantage of me too?
A year on and I’m still wary, but still looking.
And even though I’m certain I’ll never trust anyone again, I still can’t help hoping for my own real life ‘meet-cute’.
And whilst I’ll never be a Hollywood actress in a travel bookshop, or a graduate sharing a car ride from Chicago to New York, or even a bookshop owner unknowingly meeting the man who will eventually break and make her, I’m still hopeful that the day will come, when I’ll meet that perfect someone, who makes me feel that one can’t exist without the other.
Habitually I pick up my phone and start swiping.
‘No screens at the dinner table,’ says Jude, sounding just like his mother and looking exactly like his father – carrot-red hair, dark eyes, freckled skin.
‘Sorry,’ I say brightly, passing Debs my phone when she reaches out her hand, though I really don’t want to.
Being without it makes me feel twitchy, as if part of me has been disconnected and I might malfunction.
Debs puts it on mute and places it behind her on the counter, completely unaware of how I’m feeling, offering me a look that says both ‘sorry’ and ‘thank you for tolerating my children’.
It’s only now as she sits down to join her family that I notice she’s looking a little peaky; her usual plump, ruddy cheeks have lost their colour and she has heavy shadows beneath her chestnut eyes.
‘You all right?’ I ask, the kids too distracted by making mush out of their beans and mash to pay any attention to the adult conversation.
‘Just a headache. Nothing a good night’s sleep won’t fix,’ she tells me, rubbing her belly, which is already obvious, even though she’s not yet five months gone. ‘How was your afternoon shift?’
‘Not bad, though Mariko was going on about how she thinks the cinema might be sold.’
‘How would she know that?’ she asks sceptically. Given the cinema is celebrating its centenary this year, she’s probably right to be doubtful about its demise.
‘Her boyfriend, Jamal, has a job at I-work. Apparently, they’re after new sites, and they’re looking to buy out the cinema.’
‘Is it for sale?’ asks Mike, scanning through the news-paper ads.
‘Not that I know of,’ I reply, wondering how it is that newspapers are allowed at the table when screens are not.
‘Sounds like a lot of old boll . . .’ Mike catches himself, ‘balderdash.’
‘Still, it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if it happened,’ says Debs, scraping mashed potato from the side of Eli’s mouth. ‘You could go back to university or film school. Get out of the cinema and into producing, like you always wanted to.’
Debs is right; I have always wanted to be a film producer.
But Mum losing her mobility during my first year at uni meant I didn’t get my degree, that I had to work full-time at the cinema instead of part-time, and the bigger dream of my own home meant that the moment was never right to go back.
There was always the hope that I could return once I was settled and had a little nest egg set aside.
But then Liam did what he did and that was that – game over.
‘I suppose,’ I say, not really sure that going back to uni is on the cards right now, not when my savings pot is still empty.
‘It’s not as if you meant to end up managing a cinema. And I’m sure your management experience and film knowledge would make you a shoo-in for training.’
‘Maybe,’ I say, my job being the only thing that’s giving me a sense of stability at the moment.
It’s been the one constant in my life for almost two decades, and a lifeline since Mum died four years ago, that and Debs, who’s like the sister I never had.
And for all it doesn’t really stretch me, and I’m only there because of what happened with Mum, I do enjoy it: the films and the people.
‘I’d just like to find somewhere to live, somewhere I can call home before I can think about what comes next.
God knows I’ve outstayed my welcome here, and in four months my room needs to be ready as the nursery.
’ I keep to myself the anxiety of possibly losing my job and home with nothing in the bank to fall back on.
‘How about this then?’ asks Mike and he begins reading from the paper. ‘Roommate wanted for professional Shoreditch flat. One thousand two hundred pounds pcm. Call Zane.’
I look to Debs with an expression that asks if her husband has gone mad. ‘Who puts an ad in the paper?’
‘Weirdos and psychos,’ Debs says casually.
‘Mike, it’s the twenty-first century,the digital era. Nobody responds to adverts in newspapers.’
‘Somebody must, or else why would they print them?’
‘Aaah, so the paper can make money,’ I say, in a ‘duh’ sort of voice.
‘Jess, not everyone is as addicted to technology as you are. Hold on to your pants but . . .’ he pauses for effect, ‘some people aren’t even online.’
I cock my head to one side and cast him a ‘get real’ face. As if anyone out there could possibly survive offline.
‘I’m serious,’ he says.
‘Mike, everyone has to have an email address – without one you can’t do anything.’
‘Not true.’
I look to Debs for back-up.
‘Can’t help,’ she shrugs. ‘For once, he’s right. Not everyone is online.’
‘Bullsh—’ I begin, but stop myself when Jude gives me the side-eye. ‘That can’t be right. How can you do anything without an email address? Utilities – you have to be online for billing.’
‘There is such a thing as the post,’ says Mike.
‘Fine, what about setting up a bank account?’
‘You can go into a branch.’
‘TV licence,’ I almost shout, convinced I’ve outsmarted them.
‘PayPoint,’ Mike retaliates.
I sit, stroking the cat’s silky coat, desperately trying to think of something, but when I come up with nothing Mike says, ‘Some people still rely on newspapers to advertise and, believe it or not, there are people out there who answer them.’
‘Well, I’m not one of them,’ I say fervidly.
‘Jess, it’s not a big deal,’ says Debs. ‘When you think about it, someone probably had to speak to someone else in person to place the ad. I reckon you’re more likely to meet creeps online, where it’s completely anonymous, than you are via the paper.’
‘You’ve probably met at least one percent of London’s weirdos and criminals already through Tinder,’ laughs Mike.
‘Mike!’ shouts Debs, causing the kids to look up from their food.
‘It’s fine, he has a point,’ I say, knowing Mike didn’t mean to make light of what happened with Liam, not knowing the scar he left me with when he scammed me out of every penny I had, then disappeared, and I was forced to give up buying my first flat.
It wasn’t much – only a big room really, at the top of the block across the way from my mum’s old place on the estate where Debs and I grew up.
The estate is nothing special, three nineteen-sixties four-storey blocks that surrounds a small park where flowers grow, children play and neighbours know each other.
And, most importantly, where people still remember my mother.
But the flat had a balcony overlooking the grass where Debs and I played when we were little and hung out in when we were teenagers, and was just a stone’s throw away from where she now lives on the estate; the moment I stepped through the front door, it felt like home.
I’d been saving towards a place of my own since I was thirteen, tearing ticket stubs and sweeping up popcorn on a Saturday afternoon at the cinema.
From as far back as I can remember, Mum drilled into me the importance of owning my own home.
She never managed it for herself, having become pregnant at twenty-one.
She had to give up training as a dancer and work minimum wage jobs to look after me instead, and rent from the council.
This time last year, I was days away from completing the purchase of the flat and moving into it with Liam, imagining how proud of me Mum would be, when he snatched everything away from me: my money, my dream, my trust. In one fell swoop he put my entire life on reset.
‘Read the advert again.’
Mike repeats the information for me.
‘Four things,’ I say. ‘One, roommate not flatmate means sharing a room. Two, Shoreditch isn’t my thing, and it’s too far from work.
Three, I already know that Zane isn’t my thing, and four, where am I going to get one thousand two hundred pounds a month to spend on rent?
’ I ask, wondering if it’s even possible these days to find a room in the city for under a grand a month.
Debs shakes her head despairingly at Mike.
‘OK, how about this,’ he says, scanning the ROOMS TO LET column. ‘Shepherd’s Bush.’ He looks up to confirm this is acceptable. I nod, given its proximity to the cinema and Debs’ maisonette in Latimer Road. ‘House share. Shift worker preferred.’
‘I’m sensing ten low-income workers squeezed into three rooms, with one under the stairs, half a shelf each in the fridge with labelled milk cartons, and a bathroom that should come with a public health warning.’
‘It doesn’t sound great, hun. Pass it here.’
Debs scans the ads, making little tutting sounds as she eliminates them one by one, ‘Ooh, how about this one,’ she says excitedly, pushing the paper in my direction and tapping the little advert.