The bedroom, a steal at ￡800 a month, was absolutely tiny. I’d barely be able to fit my bed in there, let alone the books I’m determined to carry through life with me.
When the tiny posh boy in a decorative dirty trench coat and flip-flops who showed me round let me out and told me he’d be in touch, we both knew that it wasn’t going to happen. The second place I went to see was a studio in Camberwell. Completely out of my price range, but I’d watched a YouTube tutorial on haggling that I was going to put into practice. I had to use Citymapper to find my way to it, so obviously I was sent on an urban scenic route all around the houses.
The area was looking very gray, but as expected the app sent me the wrong way, so I cut back through the not-so-Camberwell-Green-in-winter park with its little playground in the center.
I was running late, so when I eventually turned onto the road that the flat was on, passing a fleet of Nigerian men sitting and chatting in fancy cars, I was sweating from every pore. I walked toward number twenty-three, looking up and down at my phone map so much that I was like one of those nodding bobblehead dogs you used to get on car dashboards.
“Hello, lovely girl, are you my five o’clock?” a man with a strong Polish accent asked as he stepped out of the car that he’d parked next to me at speed, bringing the stench of stale cigarettes out with him. His suit was cheap, his hair thinning.
“Queenie. Sorry, yes, I got lost.” I took off my coat and put it through the strap of my rucksack.
“Okay, don’t worry, I have someone else coming in five minutes, so quick, quick!” He smiled in a way that suggested he thought I would be charmed. Why did they do this, this organizing of forty viewings at a time so that everyone panics and throws money at these overpriced and underkempt boxes masquerading as flats?
When we’d made it in, me having to contort myself so that we didn’t merge into one person in the three-inches-squared space of hallway, I stood in the flat trying to calculate how I’d fit any of my furniture into an area so small. The estate agent shocked my socks off and out the door by telling me the price of a month’s rent. “Twelve hundred pounds?” I shrieked, holding a hand to my mouth in a move usually deployed to express faux shock. This was real shock.
“Well, you know, that’s the cost of living in London, lovely girl,” the estate agent lied.
“My name is Queenie,” I reminded him. “The cost of living in London? There’s not even a washing machine.”
“Launderette is close, no problem. You put it all in a bag, carry it down the road, five pounds easy.”
“There’s no actual oven.”
“There’s room for a microwave, yes? And look, a hotplate.” He opened one of three cupboards to show me a two-ring plug-in hotplate that looked back at me as though it knew it would never be enough.
“But it’s one room! The kitchen is the bedroom! I could cook my Bolognese from my bed!” I said to the estate agent.
He told me that everything in the flat was state-of-the-art, new, and refurbished, and that even though I wouldn’t have access to the garden, I had a garden view. When I looked out the window at the patch of grass and four concrete slabs below and asked where the rest of it was, he tried to distract me by showing me the bathroom. He opened a door in the corner of the room and beckoned that I go inside. I left the lure of the garden view and went in, ducking through the low doorframe as I felt for the lightbulb cord.
“Oh, the light is here.” He crossed the room and stood by three switches next to the front door. “These two control the main room”—he flicked each switch up and down, bright spotlights beaming white, artificial light down onto the kitchen surface and then the middle of the room—“and this one is for the bathroom”— he flicked the final switch down and the light went on above my head.
“Why is there no window in the bathroom?” I asked, turning around once to scan the room, my bag hitting every area in there: the shower, the bathroom cabinet, the sink.
“No window, but extractor fan . . .” He opened the small cupboard underneath the light switches and pressed a button. A whirring began above my head. “You see? The bathroom, everything new. Power shower, newly fitted toilet, sink.” The estate agent slid past me, his face too close to mine, and lifted a handle to turn the sink tap on. Nothing came out. He pushed it down again. “It will all be working once you move in.” He smiled.
“I don’t think it’s for me, but thank you for taking the time to show me,” I said, making my way two steps toward the front door.
“Don’t go so soon,” the estate agent said, stepping close to me. “There is a way that it could be a bit cheaper.”
I stepped back.
“You know, I do you a favor, you do me a favor?” He placed a hand on my shoulder, the moisture on his hand making it stick to my cotton sweater as he moved it down to my chest.
I stepped farther back, falling into the kitchen counter. “What’s wrong? You don’t want us to help each other out?” He smirked as I reached for the handle and backed out of the front door. “My people, we like your people. We’re all outsiders. First Brexit, then Blaxit.” He chuckled.
Disgust and anger had propelled me out of the flat, and to another viewing at a tiny cottage in Mitcham that smelled of lavender. When I arrived, I wasn’t shown around, but was instead sat on a sofa and interviewed by two women who introduced themselves as Lizzie and Sarah without differentiating which was which. They were in their late thirties, possibly a couple, and visibly realized that they should have specified a higher age bracket when advertising the room as I walked in the door with my hair falling out of its bun, my coat hanging off my shoulders, and my open rucksack spilling various sanitary products onto their beautiful wooden floor.
“Are you clean?” was the first question one of them asked. “It’s very important that you’re clean.”
“Do you make a lot of noise?” the other asked. “Sarah and I don’t like a lot of sounds.”
“Do you have a lot of guests?” the one who I’d now deduced was Lizzie checked. “We don’t like visitors.”
“Do you cook a lot?” Sarah asked me. “We don’t like a lot of . . . fragrant foods. The smell hangs in the fabrics.”
“Do you keep yourself to yourself?” Lizzie folded her arms. “Sarah and I very much keep ourselves to ourselves.”
“Do you shave?” Sarah asked. “It’s just that we have a very delicate drainage system that can’t really cope with thick hairs.” That question felt pretty personal.
“I just need a room because me and my boyfriend are on a break, and I’m sorry to be dramatic, but if I have to look at another house I’ll honestly kill myself!” I exploded, and they both jumped in their seats.
“Oh no, sorry to hear that,” Lizzie said quietly.
“How did you . . . meet?” Sarah asked out of politeness, desperate to move the conversation away from me potentially living with them.
? ? ?
“I’ve read that.”
“Huh?” I looked up at the stranger who had sat right next to me on Clapham Common despite the unlimited grass that surrounded us. I was trying out this whole “being outside in the summer” thing that people seemed to like so much, and it was mainly fine apart from the insects. I should have known that someone would come along and spoil it.
“The Lost World.” With one hand, the stranger shielded his eyes from the sun, and pointed at my book with the other. Even though they were partly hidden, I could see how green they were. “I like it, as far as sequels go. Didn’t like the film, though,” he said.
“It’s one of my favorite films,” I said, lifting my sunglasses and letting them rest in my hair.
“Ha, sorry. I’m Tom,” the boy said, holding out his hand to shake.
“I don’t like touching strangers. Don’t take it personally, though. I don’t really like touching anyone.” I put my book down on the grass. “I’m Queenie.”
“Is that a nickname? Or your actual name?”
“Yes. Is Tom yours?” I smiled at him.