The Switch(8)

I offer her an arm to lean on as she clambers up, but she waves me away.

‘That’s a very lovely gesture,’ she says, ‘but you are far too sweaty to be touching other people, my sweet.’

I wipe my face with the bottom of my T-shirt and head to the sink for a glass of water. ‘We need proper chairs,’ I tell her over my shoulder.

‘No we do not! These are perfect,’ Martha tells me, wriggling backwards to try to fit her bottom into the seat.

I roll my eyes.

Martha is a high-end interior designer. The work is flashy, exhausting and irregular; her clients are nightmarishly picky, always ringing her out-of-hours to have lengthy breakdowns about curtain fabrics. But the upside is that she gets discounts on designer furniture, and she has dotted our flat with an assortment of very stylish things that either serve no purpose – the W-shaped vase on the windowsill, the cast-iron lamp that barely emits the faintest glow when turned on – or actively don’t fulfil their intended function: the breakfast stools you can hardly sit on, the coffee table with the convex surface.

Still, it seems to make her happy, and I’m so rarely in the flat it doesn’t bother me much. I should never have let Martha talk me into renting this place with her, really, but the novelty of living in an old printworks was too good to resist when I was new to London. Now this is just a very expensive space in which I can collapse into bed, and I don’t notice that what we’re doing is, apparently, ‘artisan warehouse living’. When Martha leaves I really should talk to Fitz about the two of us moving somewhere more reasonable. Aside from the weird old cat lady next door, everyone who lives in this building seems to have a hipster beard or a start-up; I’m not sure Shoreditch is where we belong.

‘You manage to speak to Yaz last night?’ I ask, getting myself another glass of water.

Yaz is Martha’s girlfriend, currently touring a play out in America for six months. Yaz and Martha’s relationship causes me high levels of vicarious stress. Everything seems to involve incredibly complex logistics. They’re always in different time zones and sending one another important documents transatlantically and making crucial life decisions on WhatsApp calls with really patchy signal. This current situation is an excellent example of their style: Yaz will be returning in eight weeks’ time, taking possession of a house (which has yet to be bought) and moving her pregnant girlfriend into it before the baby is scheduled to come a few days later. I’m sweating again just thinking about it all.

‘Yeah, Yaz is good,’ Martha says, idly rubbing her bump. ‘Talking at four-hundred miles an hour about Chekhov and baseball games. You know, Yaz-like.’ Her fond smile stretches as she yawns expansively. ‘She’s getting skinny, though. She needs a good meal.’

I suppress a smile. Martha may not be a mother yet, but she’s been mothering everyone within reach for as long as I’ve known her. Feeding people up is one of her favourite forms of benevolent attack. She also keeps insisting on bringing friends from her Pilates class around for tea in the blatant hope that they might make an honest man of Fitz, our other flatmate.

Speaking of Fitz – I check the time on my fitbit. He’s on his fourth new job of the year; he really shouldn’t be late for this one.

‘Is Fitz up yet?’ I ask.

He wanders in on cue, pushing up his collar to put on a tie. As per usual, his facial hair looks like it was cut against a ruler – I’ve lived with him for three years and am still no closer to understanding how he achieves this. Fitz always looks so misleadingly together. His life is in a permanent state of disarray, but his socks are always perfectly ironed. (In his defence, they are always on show – he wears his trousers an inch too short – and they are more interesting than the average person’s socks. He has one pair covered in a SpongeBob SquarePants motif, another speckled like a Van Gogh painting, and his favourite pair are his ‘political socks’, which say ‘Brexit is bollocks’ around the ankle.)

‘I’m up. Question is, why are you up, holidayer?’ Fitz asks, finishing off knotting his skinny tie.

‘Oh, Leena,’ Martha says. ‘I’m sorry, I’d totally forgotten you weren’t going to work this morning.’ Her eyes are wide with sympathy. ‘How’re you feeling?’

‘Miserable,’ I confess. ‘And then angry with myself for being miserable, because who feels miserable when they’ve been given a paid two-month holiday? But I keep reliving the moment in that meeting. Then all I want to do is curl up in the foetal position.’

‘The foetal position is not as static as people think,’ Martha says, grimacing and rubbing the side of her belly. ‘But yeah, that’s totally natural, sweetheart. You need to rest – that’s what your body is telling you. And you need to forgive yourself. You just made a little mistake.’

‘Leena’s never made one of those before,’ Fitz says, heading for the smoothie maker. ‘Give her time to adjust.’

I scowl. ‘I’ve made mistakes.’

‘Oh, please, Little Miss Perfect. Name one,’ Fitz says, winking over his shoulder.

Martha clocks my irritated expression and reaches to give my arm a squeeze, then remembers how sweaty I am and pats me gently on the shoulder instead.

‘Do you have plans for your weekend?’ she asks me.