‘When?’
‘At a party recently. That night when I was with Clara, we went to a gig together and he was there.’
‘And he didn’t talk to you?’
‘Not really, no.’
‘Have you been in touch since?’
‘A little.’
‘Do you have his number?’
‘No.’
‘Cunt.’
After work, Rose tried to get the Tube from Oxford Circus but the station had been barricaded. This happened often. They’d close the Tubes in fear of overcrowding, which would ironically only create further overcrowding, often on the steps into the station. Sardines shuffling together trying to get home safely. The UK threat level had been ‘severe’ since the London Bridge attack, which, according to the BBC, meant that another terror attack was highly likely. Rose decided to wait it out in Zara.
Despite it still being 25 degrees outside, the shops were already getting their winter collections in. Halter-necks and denim mini skirts had been relegated to the back rooms. Up front it was all smocks, pinafores and brogues. Rose sighed. Summer was her season for clothes. Something about wrapping up and hiding yourself in layers pulled her deeper into her own head, as if she was hiding something. Dressing for summer was the opposite. She could just slip into a lightweight dress and move freely.
Rose walked straight past the rails of tunics to the back corner for the sale items. Here were the short skirts that grazed the thighs she wished didn’t rub together. The flimsy threadbare vests that hung off her collarbones, revealing her shapeless upper body. It was the kind of thing Luna would look effortlessly gorgeous in. Rose hadn’t planned on buying anything. But then she saw the flash of crimson peeking out from a mass of less interesting colours. It was a long, backless, and ever so slightly sheer, dress. The straps were delicate, like you’d barely be able to touch them without causing the whole dress to fall right off. Rose immediately took it to the changing room.
She unzipped it slowly, marvelling at the ease with which the flimsy fabric instantly dropped to either side. Rose hastily shuffled out of her jeans and unbuttoned her shirt, trying not to look at herself in the mirror. She was, as usual, wearing mismatched underwear: a black cotton bralette that was five years old, and pink knickers with ‘Tuesday’ written on them. She stepped into the dress and pulled it over her body. It felt snug over her hips, but looser as she reached her waist. The zip fastened all the way up – that was always reassuring.
Rose took a deep breath and turned to look at herself in the mirror. The dress did not fit properly. Because of the way it hugged her hips, she could see the exact outline of her thighs trying to burst out. Meanwhile, the straps were too tight and made her arms look like they, too, needed to burst free. Yet it was too loose on her waist. The crimson, which had once been seductive now appeared garish and uncouth. Rose looked like a rectangle.
She took the dress off as quickly as she could, wriggling her hips so that it collapsed onto the floor. It was then that she accidentally caught a view of herself. Her arms and thighs were a little red where the dress had tugged at them to try to make them smaller. The rest of her body was the same colour: pallid, sallow. Not quite white enough to be an English rose – her cheeks didn’t flush in that way. A sort of muted milky, olive tone that was hard to pin down. Dimples scattered across her thighs, striped by stretch marks all the way up to her arse.
On the journey home, Rose drafted apology messages to Luce. She continued writing all the way up to the station until she’d realised there were now pages and pages of text in her Notes app. She had somehow charted their entire friendship, bringing in men, money, jealousy, privilege and everything in between. Rose stared at her magnum opus for a few seconds and then deleted all of it. I miss you, Rose wrote in WhatsApp, tapping ‘Send’ before she could hesitate. Luce read it immediately. Rose watched her screen intently until the ‘Online’ written beneath Luce’s name disappeared, and no new message appeared.
Rose was prepared for a night at home alone. But when she walked through the front door, there was her housemate, sitting on the sofa, scrolling furiously through something on her phone with one hand, while the other was picking its way through a giant bag of sea salt Kettle chips.
‘Hey,’ Rose said, gently.
‘Hi,’ Luce replied, eyes still fixed on her screen.
‘Can we talk?’
Luce continued to scroll.
‘Luce?’
‘You know he’s seeing someone?’
‘What?’
‘Milo. There are photos of him on a yacht with Alice Miller.’
‘That doesn’t mean they’re seeing each other,’ Rose countered, surprised at her defensiveness.
‘Look.’ Luce turned the phone screen to face Rose. There were photographs of Milo reclining on the back of a very expensive-looking boat somewhere near Barcelona, where he’d just played a gig, his arms wrapped around a lithe, tanned body that could have belonged to a teenager.
Alice was a Swedish model with long blonde hair and 2.6 million Instagram followers.
‘I don’t know why you’re showing this to me,’ said Rose.
‘She’s an actor too,’ Luce continued. ‘In some new film directed by Scorsese. Think it’s on Amazon Prime.’ Neither Rose nor Luce had ever owned a streaming membership but had managed to gain access to every single one available courtesy of Luce’s roster of exes, who were blissfully unaware of the streaming ring they’d both been running from south London.
‘Okay, I’m going to go upstairs then. Let me know when you’re ready to talk.’
‘Talk about what?’ Luce replied, just as Rose reached the bottom of the staircase.
‘Well, I feel like we need to have a conversation about the rent and our friendship and—’
But before she could continue, Luce interrupted her: ‘The rent is going up from next month. And I really don’t care about the famous pop star you shagged, Rose. And, frankly, the guy probably fucks three different women every weekend. Maybe even every night. I’ll bet there are at least four Alice Millers.’
Rose felt her breath quicken, becoming harder to draw. ‘You’re being … Luce, I can’t …’ She paused, eyes on the floor as she tried to collect herself. But by the time she looked up, Luce had already plugged her headphones in and was scrolling on her phone again.
The second Rose got back into her bedroom she closed the door behind her. She could have sworn the room was rotating, so she steadied herself against her bed’s wooden frame until she allowed herself to slip down onto the floor, knees hunched to her chest, rubbing against damp cheeks. She gave herself some long, shaky breaths before opening her laptop, which lay beside her under a pile of unwashed clothes, and googling ‘Scorsese Alice Miller’.
Alice Miller’s film was not, in fact, showing on Amazon Prime but a new streaming service Rose had not heard of. As far as she was aware, no one Luce had slept with subscribed to it. Rose signed up to a seven-day free trial, entering her card details and setting a reminder in her phone to cancel it in six days’ time.
God, Alice was pretty. The film opened with a sex scene – Rose watched as she wrapped her legs around a man’s muscular torso, throwing her head back in pleasure as her fingers gripped his shoulders. She moaned like a porn star and Rose wondered if this was how she moaned when she was having sex with Milo. Just as the man was about to start going down on her, Rose’s phone rang.
She paused the film.
‘Clara, hey. I was wondering how you were. I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch. Things have been so busy with the—’
