The background

This is the situation. Jax and I are best friends. We are in our twenties. We both had serious relationships with boys from university for seven years apiece, until the Itch kicked in and we found ourselves single, liberated, and squatting in my friend Samuel’s loft conversion. Mid-way through her break-up, Jax completed on an un-liveable 1-bedroom ex local authority flat in Shoreditch, which she planned to completely smash to pieces and renovate into a 2-bed. Over a tub of ice-cream and an episode of Friends on a desperate February Saturday night during the first throes of single life, Jax confessed that she couldn’t face doing the flat alone, she couldn’t face it without me, would I move in as her lodger and we could live together, happily ever after? I agreed. We cried. I won’t go into the emotion of that Winter, suffice to say that Spring eventually came, shoots turned into flowers, and Sam plied us with pork belly, cheese boards and very good red wine until we both remembered how to laugh again. So that’s the history, moving on….

Four months later (three months later than planned) and we finally have new walls up in the flat, unplastered, a shower room with no running water, a space where a kitchen should be and no furniture in either of the bedrooms or living area. We figure we’re ready to move in. We left on Sunday with a taxi full of our belongings, me in the front seat clutching my glass bowl of shells from Cuba, Jax riding over on her bike. Sam gave us a framed map of Shoreditch and a bottle of champagne and waved us off. I think he’ll miss us, although at least now he can see his expensive carpets instead of just bags and bags of shoes and bank statements.

We have decided that if we are living in the flat then it will encourage Bob the Builder and his team, Lee the Pessimist and Darren the Ridiculously Fit Plasterer to work quicker as they will be under close supervision. In the meantime we will eat in restaurants and shower at the gym. We arrive at the flat. We unload everything from the people carrier: cases, bags, boxes, bin liners, the guitar I’ve never learned to play, a tennis racket, seven hand stitched rugs from India that Jax has never unpacked, a TV with no aerial and our welly boots. We pay the driver. He drives away. We realise that we do not have a key to the flat. We ring Lee the Pessimist. He asks us why we didn’t think to get the key from him on Friday. We say we don’t know why. He moans. He says he’ll come over at the end of the football in twenty minutes. He also says he’ll bring the Memory Foam mattress (which was delivered to him last week and should have already been in the flat) like he’s doing us a favour. This mattress is the only thing we have to sleep on for the next fortnight until we sort out proper beds; without it we are on a hard wooden floor. We make this clear on the phone. Lee the Pessimist says he can’t do everything on schedule, he isn’t a machine. We scrabble around until we find Sam’s champagne, pop the cork and drink from the bottle on the front step. Suddenly the loft conversion seems like the Waldorf.
By the time Lee arrives we are a bit giggly which does not go down well. He doesn’t really like Sundays he tells us. He is gracious enough to carry the mattress up to the flat, but draws the line at helping with any of the bags or cases. He drives off in his van and says he will see us tomorrow like it’s a threat. We lay the mattress out on the floor of what will be Jax’s room. We can’t find any bed linen so we haul two of the Indian rugs over it as groundsheets and prepare two more to use as duvets. We cannot unpack anything as we have no furniture, so, unable to complete any domestic tasks, we make an executive decision to go to the pub, and there we stay until closing. I don’t want to admit it, but I am dreading going back to the flat. It is a hollow shell without plug sockets, doors or blinds. I sense that Jax feels the same way. We have a swift gin for the road, stiffen our sinews and return home. In fact, the Indian rug-bed looks quite welcoming. The tap in the toilet works so we brush our teeth. I manage to pull out two oversize t-shirts from a case. I offer the yellow 1990s Global Hypercolour t-shirt to Jax and keep the ‘I heart NY’ for myself. The Hypercolour t-shirt still works and it has already gone orange on the armpits where Jax is starting to get the gin sweats. I feel a bit like we’re married. We pull another rug over and close our eyes, hearing for the first time the steady and rather loud sounds of Shoreditch by night.

The following morning we are woken by Darren the Ridiculously Fit Plasterer standing in our doorless doorway wearing nothing but a pair of tight faded blue jeans and holding a roller. He has muscles on his muscles. He grins at us and bids us good morning while staring at our chests. He didn’t know we was lesbos, apparently. We laugh and explain we’re just good friends. He wants more of the lesbian banter, but its too early. He saunters off to the living room to turn on Capital Radio and we dress in shifts, with the other guarding the doorway. Lee the Pessimist turns up and complains that Tesco had run out of chocolate doughnuts and that’s the only kind he likes. He sees the mattress and asks if we’ve become lesbians. Darren gives him a high five. It’s going to be a long couple of weeks.