I am in a coffee shop two minutes from my flat. Tom is due any second. I’m wearing what someone normal would wear for a normal meeting – jeans, a top, ballet pumps – and I am trying to make my insides reflect the averageness of my exterior.
Really, they’re not average. They’re extreme, with a stomach that’s so excited I haven’t eaten all day and a chest that’s hammering away and a lower back that’s damp. I’m scrolling on my phone – because what’s more average than that? – when he walks in.
‘Harriet?’ he says and when I confirm, he offers to get me a coffee, but I’ve necked an espresso already.
‘Just a tap water,’ I say. I’ve been practising my measured smile, speaking slowly so my voice doesn’t shake.
And then, we chat.
It’s businesslike, on his part, and on mine, too – like I say, exterior.
I tell the three or four musical theatre anecdotes that I’ve been practising.
‘I think there’s genuinely something in this,’ says Tom when I’ve finished.
He looks up from the iPad he’s been making notes on.
‘I’m going to take this to the production company. There’s an executive producer there who I think would go for it, if I can sell it right.’
‘And if they do?’ I ask. ‘What happens then?’
Like I give a shit.
Tom gives a wry smile.
‘They’ll take it to the commissioning editor at whatever channel they think it would work best for,’ he says. ‘They’ll say they like it but “don’t think the idea is quite there yet”. Ad infinitum until we all lose the will to live waiting for it to happen.’
I don’t know what to say. There’s an awkward pause. I’m not very good with sarcasm.
‘But you know!’ Tom laughs, breaking the silence. ‘Hopefully not. Hopefully it’ll get made and we’ll all get together to watch it and toast our – your – awesome idea.’
He wants to drink with me; celebrate with me. He wants to make a TV show about me then celebrate with me.
I stare at him. That face. Then there’s another pause, and I know he’s going to say it.
‘So, where are you based?’
‘I’m round here, just a fifteen-minute walk down Essex Road,’ I say, fake stifling my fake yawn, the one I do when my voice is shaking or I’m blushing and I need to draw attention away from that.
And then he fake yawns too, and I realise: he already knew.
‘How weird, me too – whereabouts?’
I tell him, taking a sip of water. ‘How about you?’
‘Yeah, same. Opposite the noodle place.
‘I’m in that building!’ I laugh. Fake laugh.
‘This is possibly odd, but I’m in there too and I always hear my next-door neighbour playing the piano. You’re not number one hundred and twenty-four, are you?’
I start laughing and this is fun. And whatever else this is, I’ve missed fun.
‘Okay, stalker,’ I say, and he throws his head back. A Luke move.
‘That’s hilarious,’ he says, pushing his too-long hair out of his eyes again, and I think Luke, Luke, Luke.
‘And embarrassing,’ I say. ‘I bet you’ve heard me hit some rough notes. And God knows what else.’
‘Same,’ he says. ‘I bet you’ve heard my girlfriend and me do all kinds. One rule in London, you never meet your neighbours. We’re convening all laws.’
‘Tell you what, if you have any follow-on questions, just hammer on the wall and yell them and I’ll stop singing and answer.’
‘Agreed. And if I’m playing computer games too loudly when my girlfriend’s out, mention that, too.’
I think of when the noise did make it through. I think of when the shock of hearing their conversation made me think of when I lived in a psychiatric hospital. All the things you don’t know about me, Tom, I think, all the things you don’t know.
‘Right,’ he says, putting away the iPad and necking the last of his latte. ‘I think that’s all my questions. Thanks for that, really helpful. You never know, there might be something in it and if there is, you can pop round and we can all watch the final product together.’
‘Sure, if that annoying girl from next door isn’t playing her piano again.’
We’re grinning and I’m thinking: this is almost a date. If you’d just stop mentioning your girlfriend.
He stands, kisses me politely on the cheek, then stops. He blushes before he even asks it. I know what’s coming.
‘This is a strange question, but did I come to a party at yours a few months ago?’ he says.
I wait for him to continue, look blank.
‘There was this really drunken night … I sort of stumbled into a flat near ours …’
Blank.
‘A red-haired girl was kind of whizzing around in circles and then fell over?’ he says.
Oh, Chantal. A class act, always.
‘Not mine, I’m afraid. Wow, you must have been seriously drunk not to know where you were.’
‘Oh, I was,’ he says, bright tomato now. ‘I even lost my flat keys; the porter had to let me in.’
Ah! So that’s what happened.
I picture him, asleep.
‘Ignore me,’ he says, slipping into his jacket. ‘Just a stupid night.’
He is stumbling.
‘I guess we’re going in the same direction?’
He says this awkwardly too, because it’s one thing having a coffee together and another walking along the road and letting yourselves into your respective flats, where you can immediately hear each other through the wall.
I let him off.
‘Actually, no; I’m going to meet the girls,’ I say as though I am a person who has girls. ‘But shout if you need anything else. And if not, I’ll see you in the elevator.’