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Mel knew though, how at peace Ada often felt when the money was coming in and she was setting an alarm at 7:45 and choosing a Pret salad for lunch every day. One salad, one bread roll, one elderflower soda. Mel had suggested gently a couple of times that maybe Ada could look into production work, put those spreadsheet skills to creative use. But Ada knew the second her efficient office cosplay collided with her ambition then both sides would fail to please her. She didn’t compartmentalise her lovers from her friends but she would never invite a temp colleague to drinks at the Soho Theatre bar and those lines were drawn very clearly in her mind. Mel never pushed it, like she never pushed the money stuff generally. She thought she wanted Ada stable and provided for but if that happened then who would Mel look after? So temping was off the table for now and Ada wondered exactly which bill she would struggle to pay this time that would lead her back there.

So, after the pub it was Tesco for ingredients and then she’d be cooking, playing Reply All through the Bluetooth speaker in the kitchen when Mel got home. It was Thursday and they’d been back for just over a week when Mel dropped her heels in the hall and jumped on the kitchen bench as usual. Mel’s oldest brother owned the flat but they called it ‘their’ flat because he lived in Belgium now and had let them paint their bedrooms in the spring. Brendan had been the sole recipient of an inheritance from their grandfather for bullshit patriarchy reasons and he’d bought this generic east London new-build with the money when he was twenty-nine, then immediately taken a transfer to Brussels. Mel said she figured he felt guilty and that’s why their rent was so low, though not, Ada observed, ‘guilty enough to split the money in the first place.’ Mel thought that over and said, ‘Well, if he’d split it, none of us could have bought flats. At least now there’s one,’ and Ada said, ‘You’re either a really good person or a fucking idiot,’ and Mel said, ‘I’m both.’

Ada was frying some black beans for tacos and Mel performatively coughed at the spices filling the air. Ada turned and said, ‘I’m sorry, my little English rose, I hope this cayenne pepper doesn’t literally murder you,’ and Mel said, ‘I remember a time before you moved in when I thought my palate was normal.’ Ada turned back to the stove and said, ‘No, you’re my sweet baby girl,’ and then Mel said, ‘OK, OK. So, give me the Stuart update.’ Ada smiled because this was all she wanted to do but she said, ‘Are you sure you don’t want to talk about work?’ and Mel said, ‘I never do,’ which was true actually and Ada found it pretty weird.

Mel worked in radio, making fancy documentary shows about suffragettes and wind power and the rental market in Berlin, and it seemed like a cool job. She’d taken leave in August to produce a Very Important Theatre Piece in Edinburgh and it had done OK but privately Ada wondered why you’d bother with the non-legit shit when you could work in the arts in a real, salaried way. She always said she couldn’t wait to sell out and Mel would tell her she didn’t know what she was saying but she was pretty sure she’d choose slightly less creative freedom and slightly more ability to pay for her own dinner in Islington. But no one was offering her a job with sell-out kind of money, so it was easy to believe that.

Ada began her daily Stuart debrief. Between the tea every morning and the canal walks and the pub and Tesco and cooking there was Stuart. He had already messaged her when she woke up – he’d sent a link to the Wikipedia article for Girls Aloud and she wasn’t sure why until she realised at some point the day before she’d complained that British reality shows didn’t make any sense to her because she didn’t know who the celebrity contestants were. While she’d wandered towards Victoria Park, she tried to convince him to let her call him Stu and he’d refused and she’d said he shouldn’t have a nicknameable name if he didn’t like nicknames. The afternoon passed with her suggesting new names for him before he finally agreed to let her use Stu so she deliberately typed ‘Stew’ in every message from then on until he threatened to log off. But he didn’t.

He also didn’t show her any of his art even though she asked at least five times a day. He told her to just imagine he was really talented and she said she never assumed men were talented and he said, ‘Harsh but fair,’ and then they discussed whether Nicholas Cage was the best or worst actor of all time. Stuart said worst and Ada said he needed to watch Moonstruck and he said he was making a list of all the things she told him to watch and read and she liked that.

She had told him that, in her experience, seeing a person do something they’re really passionate about is either extremely hot or cringey in the extreme and he had said that hadn’t made him more inclined to show her his art. So she googled him and eventually found a picture of teenage-him next to a sculpture of a bird. He had won a local Liverpool competition and when she sent him the link he told her she was a weird old perve looking up pictures of high schoolers and then she asked him what the bird symbolised and he said honestly it had just been a bird.

Ada told Mel about all of this and continued as she stirred. ‘He seems kind of young but he’s out of university and he did a gap year so he has to be like … twenty-two, right? Are twenty-two-year-olds fun when you’re not twenty-two any more? Wait, were they fun when we were twenty-two?’ Mel shrugged and opened the alcoholic ginger beer Ada had taken out for her. Ada knew Mel liked to drink that first before moving on to wine and when they headed to one of their rooms to watch TV there would be gin and neither of them would ever, ever suggest they shouldn’t do that every night.

‘I was dating ancient dudes when I was twenty-two so I dunno, let’s call this an experiment. But he’s pretty cute. I was going through all his Facebook photos again but there’s only like two from this year because who is still uploading photos to Facebook regularly, you know? And his Instagram is private which is rude, honestly. But yeah, I was scrolling and once I hit his high school graduation I knew I’d gone too far so I liked it to freak him out and now he’s calling me Mrs Robinson.’

Mel raised an eyebrow and said, ‘You’re like three years older than him,’ and Ada said, ‘Maybe four? I dunno. I refused to tell him how old I am so now he thinks I’m like forty probably, which is pretty funny.’

Mel said, ‘And he’s still interested in this evasive forty-year-old who creeps on his Facebook?’

‘Yeah, I mean he’s extremely Male Feminist. Dating an older woman is praxis.’

Mel jumped off the bench, shaking the spice rack off the wall behind her as every flimsy bit of new-build wood in the kitchen rocked. Mel’s body fascinated Ada. She had the kind of build that would lead a man to rugby, average height but broad all over, with tiny breasts and thighs like bronze. Once at a crowded pub Ada felt herself get lifted off the ground from behind and placed to one side and felt a rush of lust towards the abstract sensation of strong, hard hands. A second later she turned and saw it was Mel, who needed to pass her to get to the loo and the moment snapped, but she wondered sometimes what Mel could do with those hands if she wasn’t afraid of herself. She wore pencil skirts and kept her hair long but when they’d painted their rooms she put on an old pair of dark green coveralls and looked so correct that Ada privately cursed Mel’s austere, pale parents for their lack of imagination. Mel even built Ada’s bed frame with its ornately carved head but she didn’t like to talk about it, though Ada did, to everyone who she slept with in it. The next morning over tea they’d watch her professional flatmate scrub a spot off her dark blazer and apply a nude lip and wonder if Ada was lying.

‘You kind of like this guy huh?’ Mel was replacing the spices one by one and when she ran a hand through her hair a streak of something powdery appeared and Ada’s heart filled just a little bit more.

‘I think so but let’s be honest, I’m also totally bored. Like he’s unemployed and I’m whatever you call unemployment when you’re not being honest with yourself—’

‘—the gigs will come, they always do—’

‘—so we have a lot of time to talk. He’s keeping me occupied and maybe I’m in love with him on Messenger but I might not be in person, you know?’

Mel was reading the back of a jar of paprika. ‘This expired before we moved in.’

SIX

07/09/2017

Stuart Parkes

20:03

I told my brother about you

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