Zoe sat on Laura’s sofa, corralling loose bits of tobacco with her fingernail. They were looking at old photographs and being careful with each other. Laura had spread the pictures out on the coffee table like a safety net, to remind them of a time when the way they felt about each other had been simpler. She’d taken the photos for an art project when they were at university: they were of Zoe in a black dress holding a melon. Zoe remembered how seriously they’d taken it, and felt embarrassed and wistful.
Laura lived in an eighties ex-council house in Hackney Wick, which she shared with four other artists. The linoleum in the kitchen was covered with swirls of dirt, like a garage floor; there was always washing up in the sink and the living room smelt of smoke and takeaway. The house was cluttered with slightly sinister artworks – there was a plaster model of a small boy riding a horse in the hallway, which Zoe found particularly unnerving, and there were paintings of people puking and shitting in the upstairs bathroom. But there was something domestic and collaborative about the house too: people sat around and smoked and watched TV together and had conversations about drugs or art. The downstairs loo was broken and there was talk of turning it into a camera obscura, though no one had got round to it yet.
Since they’d moved out of their flat in London Fields, Laura had experimented: she’d shared an attic room in a hostel in Shoreditch with five other people, and listened to her roommates having sex on the mattress next to her. She’d lived in a warehouse space in Hackney Wick with no internal walls or kitchen and a communal shower block, putting up curtains between the beds and cooking on a camping stove, the Olympic Stadium looming. ‘I get now why people live in houses,’ she said. It made Zoe envious and grateful at the same time: the way she felt when she saw Laura’s paintings.
Laura had just got a part-time job in arts administration, which was dull, but gave her a regular income and time to be in the studio. As a set-up, it was more mundane and less outrageous than either of them had imagined their lives would be when they were in Brighton, taking photographs, posting poems they’d written to each other, swimming drunk in the sea, and drinking lapsang souchong from a thermos on the beach. But for the first time ever, that kind of quiet purpose and security looked deeply appealing and, though she wanted to be happy for Laura, it made Zoe feel like she’d done things the wrong way round.
She’d been gingerly telling Laura about Adam and had passed over her phone so she could read his texts: he’d sent her the details for the party and a picture of the plinth with a sculpture made out of nails on it, in a gallery. She had told him how much she loved his work and wanted to impress on him how much seeing his studio meant to her, but she couldn’t find the words. She kept wanting to say ‘fantasizing’ and ‘stimulating’ – as though there was a chemical in your brain that produced sex words when you fancied someone. He said he wanted to read her writing. She wished she hadn’t told him about it.
‘It sounds like he likes you.’ Laura handed back her phone.
‘Do you think?’
‘Oh, come on, he’s clearly flirting with you – “oh, look at my plinth, can I read your poems.”’
‘I just don’t really trust my judgement at the moment.’ Zoe put her phone back in her bag. ‘Do you think I should go to the party?’
‘Of course – you have to.’
‘I won’t know anyone. I’ll look desperate.’
‘You won’t, don’t be silly.’
Zoe hesitated. ‘Why don’t you come with me?’
Laura had her tongue out and a Rizla in front of her mouth; she stopped and put it down. ‘Zoe, you know I would. But I’m seeing Nick on Friday.’
‘Bring him?’
Laura just looked at her. Then she picked up the Rizla again and said, lightly, ‘How’s it going in your new place? What are the grown-ups like?’
‘They’re OK. I like her, Eleanor, but she’s quite intimidating. She buys clothes from Jigsaw. And she wears a watch.’
‘God. What about him? Is he good-looking?’
‘Um . . . maybe, I don’t know. He’s just one of those people – I mean, you just wouldn’t ever think of him like that.’
‘But it’s working out OK there?’
Zoe hesitated. She couldn’t truthfully say she liked it. After she’d moved in, she’d scrubbed and hoovered and bleached, but the rooms never seemed to get entirely clean: the brown-grey lines on the enamel and the black spores between the tiles refused to shift. The carpet and the walls felt coated. Even the dust wasn’t normal – it was browner and denser than ordinary dust. It made the light grey fluffy kind seem clean.
And she’d found more writing on the wall, the name ‘Emily’ again, this time above the skirting board near the electric fire. A day later, she’d found another scrawl, slightly larger, in the bedroom, beside the wardrobe. Then one night when she was reading in bed with a cup of tea, she saw the same writing on the wall, next to her pillow. It made her jump and then she was wide awake. She couldn’t understand why she hadn’t noticed it before. She left the marks there for a few days; it seemed a bit obsessive to care about writing on the wall if you could barely get it together to hoover. But she couldn’t completely forget about it, particularly at night, just before she fell asleep; knowing Emily’s name was burning into the wall beside her bed. Eventually, she gave in and got some warm water and a cloth. Kneeling beside her bed, she wondered if it had got bigger. The letters definitely seemed to be sprawling outwards.
But saying this aloud to Laura would mean she’d have to confront it. She had nowhere else to go; she had to make the best of it. So she just said, ‘Yeah, it’s good; I like it,’ unconvincing and evasive.
They looked at each other for a moment; Zoe thought Laura knew she was lying, but didn’t know whether she was going to say anything about it. She wasn’t sure she would like it either way, so she said: ‘Sorry I was being stupid before. I am going to go to the party on Friday.’
Laura picked up her cigarette. ‘I know you are,’ she said.