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Melanie Baker
21:30
I’ll see you when you get home
FORTY-FIVE
The bar was divey and mostly full of students. The wall was covered in old gig posters so Ada looked for a stage but couldn’t see one. Maybe they didn’t have gigs here any more and all the locals would be very sad about that, no one likes to lose a music venue, including people too old to go to them any more. At least, no one said they liked losing a music venue, but music venues kept disappearing and the things that popped up in their places were always busy. So what, Ada wondered, was the truth.
She stood in the crowd for the bar, being bustled around by girls younger and drunker than her and pressed on either side by two young men laughing and talking over her head. This was a place Ada felt safe. In a wedge of people with their own motivations which may but likely would not intersect with hers before they all went home to their beds or someone else’s and tomorrow to the lives that weren’t quite satisfying until they went out again.
Ada’s high school had given them all the usual lectures on drugs and sex and had also invited a police officer to talk to them about drink-spiking and upskirting and all the reasons it was better, in all, to stay at home. And if you did have to go out you should never be separated from your girlfriends – the police officer was clearly using the term platonically – because around every corner in every bar lurked the drink or the drug or the man who would kill you.
But Ada felt that what that education, such as it was, missed, was everything. Everything about the beauty and the community that came with being out in a place where you didn’t know how long you’d be there and no one could see your face clearly. Taking a pill from a stranger and then spending half an hour sitting on a toilet, clenching and unclenching your fists and your jaw until you were level enough to rejoin the crowd and when you did everyone was so happy to see you, even the people you didn’t know. Holding the hand of another stranger as they recounted the time their grandmother died and then came to them in a dream but she was a dog and you are only a little bit sure that’s what they’re saying because the music is so loud. Everyone becomes lip-readers or gets to know you through touch and every second of caught eye contact is a high.
There was a dance floor at this pub but Ada could see that it wouldn’t be there if you arrived in the afternoon. The tables had been pushed together enough to leave a space for moving and laughing but nothing felt permanent. Ada ordered a vodka and cranberry juice, make it a double, and took it to the dance floor with a long straw. She sipped and moved to Drake and Robyn, singing along with a girl she would never see again who had been unsuccessful in getting her friends to join them.
When her drink was done and the girl rejoined her table, Ada went into the bathroom. The cubicles were bathed in blue light which her mother had told her years ago was to stop people finding a vein and Ada hadn’t known what she meant but eventually figured it out, some time around the policeman’s visit to her school. But Ada loved the accidental aesthetic of the blue-light bathrooms, which had come to feel like a spiky kind of home. She sat on the toilet and saw a mirror directly across from her above the narrow sink. She watched herself peeing and grinned, looking like an alien, like something terrifying and loveable.
When Ada came out of the toilet, she ordered another double vodka cranberry and drank it leaning against the wall, watching the crowd. She felt she’d taken what she needed from them for the night so pulled Rob’s jacket out from under the chair where she’d stashed it and walked outside into the cold air. She took the long way home so she could walk along the waterfront, passing cozy couples and stoned teenagers and a few harried-looking parents with sleeping babies under covered prams.
Walking home drunk was one of Ada’s great pleasures in life. After days like this, when the road was slick with fresh rain and the lights were golden yellow, she felt like a creature of the night, flying towards her destination with her feet dragging on the ground like the hot, crazy one from The Craft (she heard Hank in her head: ‘I’m a Neve man myself’). She realised she’d overshot her turn-off and had to go back but she didn’t mind. She walked and stretched her arms above her, reaching for the ceiling that always felt just above her head in England. But it wasn’t there and she nodded goodbye to the black ocean and turned left up to Rob’s street.
Ada got in, creeping up the stairs quietly so she didn’t disturb any of Rob’s neighbours and reflecting that if she hadn’t been alone she might not have thought to do that. Maybe she was nicer alone, when the only impulse she followed was her own, or maybe that was an excuse. She came into the flat, stripped off all her clothes and checked Rob’s jacket for marks before carefully rehanging it. She checked her phone, saw messages from Mel and some from Ben and then as she was looking, she got one from Rob asking how she was getting on. She replied to him, full of gratitude, and he said he was glad he could help and would she pop the key under the neighbour’s door when she left.
Ada sniffed her dresses and chose the least soiled one, the one she’d been wearing in the morning, which was still damp but didn’t smell of grease or sweat or booze. She put it aside and packed everything else into her bag, not bothering with folding. She opened the final beer in the fridge and drank it as she wiped down every surface, surfaces she’d wiped earlier but she wiped them again. She tipped the last bits of eggplant into the bin, there were only scraps left, then tied up the bag and took it to the door so she’d remember to take it out in the morning. She left the bottle of red on the bench and grabbed an unopened letter from the pile near the door and a pen from her bag.
She wrote on the envelope, ‘Thanks for letting me crash, you’re a hero and a gentleman. There are dumplings in the freezer, veggie I’m afraid but a fancy-looking brand so enjoy! Also your kitchen is so kitted out! Secret master chef Rob? Let’s talk cooking sometime. Thanks again, I can’t thank you enough really. Lots of love, Ada.’ She leaned the envelope against the bottle and finished her beer. She slept heavily that night and woke up still full, rubbing her stomach as she stretched herself alive. And then she had to go back.
The first week back in London with no Stuart and no Sadie and a shadow of Mel was made easier by Clem’s demands. Evidently this deal with the owners was even less done than Ada had thought. After the Tuesday night gig, Clem had sat her down and asked her for figures – how much could they charge and how much did the acts need and this wouldn’t cost them anything in new equipment, would it? These amps were still fine? And Ada said, ‘Clem, I don’t know anything about amps, Steven handles all that,’ and Steven was there and said, ‘The equipment is all fine. I’d be happy to do tech for nights I’m not performing,’ and Ada was grateful to her quiet friend. Clem asked Ada to send a list of potential shows by the end of the week and Ada asked if that meant she had the job and Clem said no, this was the job to get the job and Ada sniffed and said, ‘I demand to see my union!’ And she realised she might need this thing which she did not want because Mel was leaving her and Steven could only look after her so much.
Her period started when she got home that night and as she lay pressed over her heat pack she heard Mel and Will’s voices in the next room. She wanted help, she wanted to be held, but the pain overwhelmed her self-pity and so there wasn’t room for crying. She was up and down all night, turning on the shower at 4 a.m. and running the hot water over her back until she couldn’t stand up any more. She went back to bed wrapped in her towel and when Mel’s alarm went off in the morning she texted ‘sorry, period’ and Mel made her own tea and sent her a kiss in return.
Mel was out the next few nights and on the weekend, Ada went to birthday drinks for the director of Ben’s show who she had never met but Ben assured her was a great contact to have. She wasn’t sure about that but she was sure that she couldn’t stay at home another night, sending Facebook messages to comedians and musicians asking for their appearance fees. She had sent a speculative programme and budget to Clem and then texted her because Clem seemed the kind to not check her email and Clem had just replied, ‘Thanks.’
Ada knew it was coming up to the time, or probably past the time, that she should contact her temp agency or message friends with bar jobs to see if they needed an extra hand. But she held on to this offer from Clem, this near offer maybe, though she already feared she would grow bored with it. She loved receiving messages asking her to perform but it turned out she enjoyed sending them a lot less. But it was close enough to what she wanted and if she was going to stay in this flat close enough was necessary.
Ada was getting ready to go out on Saturday night when Mel messaged to say she’d be home later and did Ada want to order in? Ada was pleased to be able to say no, sorry, she had a party to go to, and then she asked Mel if she wanted to come with her, knowing Mel would say no because Ben and that whole acting crowd made Mel feel inadequate. Ada always told her she was more creative than any of them, any idiot could be an actor, look at her, and Mel would say, ‘Oh, I don’t care about that, they’re just all so self-obsessed, it’s boring.’ She was right but Ada fit seamlessly with them and Mel didn’t seem to mind her self-obsession, until recently.
Ada looked around her room. She had rehung her dresses so the coat hangers that had been Sadie’s were reclaimed. Sadie had clearly taken all her clothes to Newcastle and Ada knew that would make things cleaner but she craved more mess from Sadie. They had sent a couple of messages back and forth, Sadie asking Ada if she would be looking for a flatmate because she had a friend who might be looking, Ada saying she wasn’t sure then asking about Sadie’s trip. Sadie sent some selfies with her friend, saying they were having a great time reconnecting and then she followed up saying she loved his boyfriend and Ada wondered if she was trying to tell Ada that this wasn’t a romantic trip. Which Ada had already assumed. She didn’t ask about the woman in Ealing and Sadie didn’t ask about the man in Liverpool and they were very, very polite to each other. It was dull, in the aching sense of the word.
Ada didn’t know if she wanted a new flatmate or if she needed to get out of this flat that might not feel like home any more. She could handle a new place that didn’t feel like home, she thought, but to lose intimacy with a home you had loved was too acute. And going into winter she needed things to be either soft or thrilling. Nostalgia and loneliness wouldn’t get her to April any faster.
Ada met Ben for Turkish food before the birthday drinks, sharing the mixed mezze platter like they’d done so often over the summer they met, doing the theatre workshop together. Ben told her that the show was going to be good, he thought, although sometimes he watched scenes he wasn’t in and worried that actually it was going to be very, very bad, and Ada assured him that she would lie and say she loved it either way. He thanked her then leaned in close and told her he’d started sleeping with one of the other cast members, the lead actually, he was playing Nora. They were trying to keep it under wraps until after opening night and Ada said, ‘Showmance or romance, do you think?’ Then she listened and ate and loved Ben and loved him more when he insisted on paying.
The birthday drinks were in a pub by the canal and the front section was full of men in straight-legged jeans watching the rugby. Ada asked Ben if this was definitely the right place and he said, ‘What, a gay man can’t enjoy a rugby pub?’ and Ada said, ‘Yes, sorry, so homophobic of me, you love rugby.’ And Ben took her through to a private back room with its own bar and heavy-hung lanterns and a lineup of pre-made negronis. She said, ‘This is more like it,’ and Ben said, ‘I do like rugby though, you know,’ and they grabbed glasses and sipped and scanned the room.
Ben pointed out his director, a tall lanky man wearing only a waistcoat on his top who Ada knew must have more money than his aesthetic suggested. He waved to them then went back to his conversation and though Ada stayed three hours she never actually said hello to him. She was caught up talking to friends and people she vaguely recognised from festivals. Ben dizzily introduced her to his new lover who said, ‘Ah, Ada, the Holly to Ben’s Capote,’ and Ada didn’t know what he meant and knew Ben didn’t either though he laughed and laughed. She only got to the director as she was leaving, to say thank you for inviting her. He kissed her cheek and said, ‘Of course!’ so she left him believing they had met before, and anyway, maybe they had.
Ben walked Ada out the front of the pub to hug her goodbye. He was sticking around to see if he and Nora could sneak away later and Ada asked him if he found all the secrecy hot and he said, ‘Of course!’ Then she asked him if he’d like to take Mel’s room, because she knew he was still living with his parents and because Ben was fun and the negronis had been free all night. And Ben said, ‘Oh my god maybe! We would be such a party house!’ and she regretted asking him straight away.
