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No matter where she lived, Ada loved the feeling of walking up her own street. She didn’t know her neighbours at this place – why would you know your neighbours in London, there’s so many of them and a lot of them suck – but she felt like the corner she turned and the pedestrian crossing that a lot of drivers ignored and the foxes joyfully fucking in the bushes outside the Anglican church were the neighbours that she needed. The footpath was covered in scattered crisp packets and dog shit and sometimes human shit too. But it was her street, this was her spot and she had earned it.
Ada got off the bus and walked, wrapping her jacket tightly around her as she dragged her bag. The seasons had started to change in her absence but she was still warm enough, just, when she was in a hurry and two light layers. Some people loved this time of the year when the edges of the evenings got crisp and Ada firmly believed they were experiencing mass delusion. The same people who claimed to come into their own when their cardigans came out would be depressed out of their mind come February but every year they celebrated the onset of autumn like a kind of amnesia.
Ada was no amnesiac and she resisted their propaganda at every turn. She had never encountered the Autumn Girl in Australia because in Sydney at least autumn had very little shape to it. She might get away with skipping sunscreen some days but otherwise the heat ebbed out gradually and the light remained. It was only in true winter that the sky went from almost painfully bright to simply golden, a slightly softer blue. Whereas autumn in London meant moving drinks inside to the corners of pubs, dark ales that made everyone drunk in a way Ada found unpleasant. Dark corners and dark ales and dark leather chairs belonged to men and she thought they could have it, though Mel said she shouldn’t cede that ground. It meant rain and sludge and two days of vibrant leaves before they became brown slipping hazards as she got on and off the bus.
Mel had struck a ‘neutral about autumn’ position in the flat, partly to stave off Ada’s seasonal madness but Ada sensed this year she would have an ally in Sadie. Sadie, who was choosing the get-the-fuck-out-of-winter dodge, to go back to radiance. A double-up on summer, gorging on the sun. Ada found she couldn’t imagine Sadie in winter but she was sure she would wear a very cool, structured coat, the kind that Ada couldn’t pull off. And she would probably be sad too. But Ada knew she wouldn’t be sticking around long enough for that.
Ada passed her most important neighbours, the Turkish guys who ran their local 24-hour shop who she had seen almost daily for two years and who would never acknowledge that they knew each other. She remembered the night of the Brexit vote when she had gone in there to buy overpriced gin and five kinds of chocolate at 11 p.m. and they gave no sign that they knew anything of significance was happening. Or when she went in at 3:30 a.m. the night Trump was elected to buy another bottle of wine because there were three friends staying over and they were running out.
The friends had come over for an all-night election party to celebrate the first woman president – they would have voted for Bernie over her but hey, a woman, that’s something – and the party had become a wake around 1 a.m. but they couldn’t make themselves sleep. So she went down the road in pyjama bottoms and a coat and grabbed a cheap and familiar Rioja, and when she went to pay for it with the card slipped into her pocket, the man at the store asked her for ID. She was clearly over eighteen and she didn’t think many teenagers were out for a bottle of red in the middle of the night and most importantly, this same man had sold her hundreds, possibly, best not to think about it, but possibly thousands – of bottles of wine. And here they were, engaged in a strange stand-off as the world collapsed around them. So Ada called Mel, who came to the shop in her own pyjamas and waved Ada’s ID, and they paid for the wine and as they walked home Mel said, ‘Good to know some things won’t change,’ and they laughed and then when they got back everyone cried a little more.
Ada waved through the shop window and was ignored and it felt great. Anonymity! What a drug! She reached their building and headed inside and when she opened the door to the flat she heard Sadie saying ‘gigantes’ and Mel said ‘gigant ass’ and Sadie laughing. Ada left her Cons at the door and headed into the kitchen and the clock on the wall said 10:17 p.m., but here were these two friends of hers, waiting up.
Ada hugged Mel who said, ‘I missed you! Sadie is making us giant ass beans,’ and Sadie said ‘gigantes’ and laughed again. Then Ada turned to Sadie expecting a smile and Sadie put down the wooden spoon and came to her, hugged her with both arms and kissed the corner of her head. It would have thrown Ada off but it was so warm in the kitchen and Mel had poured her a glass of cava while explaining that, sorry, most of it was gone and instead of resisting Ada melted into the night ahead.
They didn’t set the table but ate in the kitchen, around the stove, Ada and Mel sitting on the bench and Sadie perched on a stool. They had the beans and the messily rolled dolmades – Sadie said she wasn’t a very delicate cook but Ada said they were as delicious as they were ugly. There was halloumi-stuffed mushrooms and lemony potatoes and when the cava was gone there was the kind of sharply acidic Sauvignon Blanc that supermarkets favoured and Ada associated with this flat.
They asked question after question about Florida and Sadie was so interested in St Petersburg and jealous of the pure white sandy beach. And Mel wanted more diner stories, of the pumpkin pancakes that tasted of pure sugar and the gruff men at the next table who Ada overheard union organising. Ada said she’d assumed they were Trumpy before she heard the union stuff and Sadie said, ‘Union guys can definitely be Trumpy,’ and Mel said, ‘See, that’s so confusing to me, I don’t understand anything any more,’ and the others agreed that none of them did.
Sadie wanted to know about Orion, how his feeding was going, had his weird belly-button nub fallen off yet – it had and it was a horror show, Ada said. Mel asked about Hank and Ada struggled to explain him.
‘He’s like … every stereotype of like a too clean American that I could have come up with but he’s also kind of cool? He’s really funny and he … I mean, he’s a good dad obviously. And hot!’ And Sadie touched her arm and said, ‘A word of advice? Don’t fuck your brother-in-law,’ and Ada said, ‘Well, they’re not married so he’s technically not my brother-in-law,’ and Sadie said, ‘Ah well, in that case go with god!’
Then Mel asked about Gabby and whether they had got along OK and Ada said yes, mostly, ‘although as I’m sure you can imagine, when the family’s most precious girl has a baby, she will milk the attention for all she can get.’ And Sadie said, ‘Doesn’t everyone do that when they have a baby?’ So Ada told a few mildly exaggerated stories about her cooking and her cleaning and Gabby’s day in bed but she couldn’t strike the right tone, she sensed, so she pivoted back to Hank. And Mel said she needed to go to bed. Ada said, ‘But I haven’t caught up on Will news!’ and Mel said, ‘Tomorrow!’ and slid off the bench. Ada called after her, ‘Why won’t you tell me stuff! I need gossip to live! Oh god he’s not—’ and Mel called back, ‘No, he’s not a Tory. Good night!’
Ada turned to Sadie and said, ‘So what’s happening with this guy? Are they, like, a couple?’ and Sadie said, ‘I don’t know much more than you! He seems nice. Hard to know if they’re casual or relationshippy.’ Ada said, ‘I’ve never known Mel in a relationship, could be kind of weird. But nice, right?’ and Sadie shrugged, which Ada took to mean that it wasn’t for her to say.
Ada had a quick shower while Sadie cleaned up, though Mel had offered to do it in the morning. Then she dragged her bag into their room and emptied the contents into the leopard-print laundry basket from Sadie. She sat on the bed in her towel and considered whether she should be naked if she was going to talk to Sadie and then she considered if she needed to talk to Sadie at all and she had come to no good conclusions when Sadie came in with two glasses and a brand-new bottle of bourbon.
Ada decided that staying in a towel was a midpoint between naked and not and meant she could put the conversation off a little longer or maybe forever. Sadie poured them both something like a double and pulled her own clothes off down to her underwear and pale grey crop-top bra. She sat beside Ada on the bed and said, ‘I know it’s late but I want to talk to you about something,’ and Ada wondered what she knew or what she suspected.
Ada sat up and crossed her legs and faced Sadie and Sadie mirrored her and they sipped their drinks and Sadie began.
‘Mel probably told you that … I was gone a couple of nights while you were away. I’m guessing. Maybe she didn’t?’ and Ada said, ‘She did,’ and thought, Oh, this isn’t going to be the conversation I thought it was, and observed that fact with some control.
Sadie said, ‘I went to this talk at the Barbican, it was being recorded for Radio 4, Mel is the one who got me tickets actually, but she didn’t come, I think she was with Will. Anyway, afterwards everyone had some drinks and I started talking to someone. She’s a journalist. I don’t know how much of this you want to know.’
Ada said, ‘It’s OK, keep going,’ so Sadie did.
She and this journalist had chatted until they were thrown out of the Barbican and then Sadie had got home and found her on Twitter. She’d DMed her and learned she lived in Ealing and Sadie had said she’d never really been to west London so the next night she went over that way for a drink.
Ada interrupted to say, ‘You went to Ealing?’ and Sadie said, ‘I did, it is far,’ and Ada told her to continue. Sadie faltered a little, then said they had spent two nights together and had been messaging ever since and this woman knew about Ada but Sadie didn’t want to go any further without talking to Ada so here they were.
Ada considered the story, though the details she picked over were not, she suspected, the ones Sadie was anxious about. A journalist, the kind who went to talks at the Barbican. In her thirties, it sounded like, based on the fact that she lived in her own flat in Ealing (in Ealing!). But the main thing that Ada rolled around was that after they met, Sadie found her on Twitter. The DM slide had been Sadie’s and Ada considered, once again, that in every story Sadie told, she was the pursuer and yet if she ever told the story of Ada it would be the reverse. But maybe she wouldn’t tell their story very much. Maybe neither of them looked good in it.
Ada waited but Sadie was evidently done and so she said, ‘I guess I have a few questions. The main one is … What do you want me to say about this? You haven’t done anything wrong. We didn’t say we were anything apart from friends, and the sex complicates that I guess, but also it doesn’t have to. Do you want to date this woman?’
Sadie paused like she hadn’t thought about this when Ada was sure this was all she had been thinking about, otherwise why the special dinner and the new bourbon and the careful little chat.
Sadie said, ‘I mean … she lives in London and I’m going back to Perth soon. There would be no point in pursuing anything serious with her. But I guess I would like to see her again.’
Ada thought about this very serious woman on the other side of London and said, ‘Does she want to see you given that … you’re seeing me? Or living with me. Fucking me, whatever,’ and Sadie said, ‘She thinks it’s kind of a weird arrangement but she doesn’t seem particularly bothered by it. I wasn’t … specific about us though. I said that we’re friends and we’re sleeping together and I’m staying with you and then we kind of decided to hold off on anything else until you got back.’
‘That’s pretty specific,’ Ada said and Sadie shrugged and said, ‘As specific as I can get, I guess.’
Sadie put her empty glass on the bed and took Ada’s hand then and Ada was so put off by the unfamiliar gesture that she sort of shook it in return. But Sadie held it there and said, ‘But Ada, if you would prefer we were … monogamous, I guess … until I go, that’s OK. You’re allowed to ask for that. It wouldn’t be unreasonable. And if you want me to go stay with this woman instead, if you’re angry at me, that’s OK too.’
Ada said, ‘Thank you so much for that permission to feel things,’ and Sadie looked sad and Ada realised they had to have the other conversation after all.
