Chapter 1
I stood in the kitchen, clutching a small box of crockery, and stared
at the cupboards, which were already full. I wondered if I had ever
felt so profoundly miserable. I searched my memory but then
concluded that this was it. This was the most miserable I had ever
been. In hindsight, I think I was being dramatic. I probably could
have conjured up more miserable moments if I had wanted to, but
nobody likes recalling times when they have been utterly miserable.
I wondered how I had come to be standing in the grimy kitchen,
which was too small, with tacky surfaces that looked like they hadn’t
been cleaned properly in months, and mismatched crockery that was
shoved haphazardly in cupboards. There was no room for any of my
things. I didn’t care about my plates or knives or forks or spoons, but
it seemed wrong that there was no space for my mugs. I sighed, put
my battered box on the counter, and took the seven steps to my
bedroom.
My room felt even bleaker than the kitchen, which was probably
because it was empty. The bare walls were a dirty white. The boxes
and giant IKEA bags of my belongings were scattered across the
floor. I decided it was okay to be miserable, because anyone would be
if they could see their life compressed into one of those hideous blue
bags. There was a faint, but definite, stain on the mattress. How my
life had come to this? IKEA bags and stained mattresses. I wondered
whether the stain was coffee, or something else. I wondered which
was preferable: a blood stain or a shit stain. It was a lose-lose situation.
I couldn’t even find my bedsheets to cover the stain, but I did find a
towel.
The bathroom ceiling had recently been painted, which was good,
apart from the fact that it was obvious it had been painted to cover mould. There were pockets of mould in the corner of the bath and
the shampoo bottles on the side of the bath looked like they had been
growing fungus for months. I took off my clothes, wondering if it
was possible to get clean in a room that was dirty. The bathtub felt
slimy under my feet, but the shower was hot and powerful. I stayed in
the shower, the water beating my skin red, until the water ran
lukewarm. The floor tiles were pleasantly cool underneath my hot
feet. The room was so full of steam, it was impossible to get dry.
I went back to my room. My clothes were buried somewhere in
the boxes with the bedsheets, and I suddenly felt an insurmountable
fatigue. I curled up in a ball on the bed, still wrapped in the towel and
soaking wet. My first night in 3A was spent cold, profoundly
miserable, and acutely aware of the fact that the only thing separating
me and the undefined stain was my towel.
***
Flat 3A, Elsted Street, Elephant and Castle, London, had never been
part of my plan. It wouldn’t have been part of anyone’s plan. I don’t
think anything ever goes to plan, though. I should have learned that at
school, from reading Of Mice and Men. There’s a lot of things I could
have learned from that book if I had been ready to learn them, but, at
fifteen, I hadn’t been ready. What I did have when I was fifteen,
however, was a plan. My plan was this: I would do my GCSEs, then I
would do my A levels, then I would go to university – to get a degree,
but also a man – then I would get married, and then I would have
children. This was all to be completed by the time I was thirty. It was a
basic plan; I never fleshed it out. Why would I need to? I did consider
whether it was a plan suited to a modern feminist, but, at fifteen, I
wasn’t sure whether I considered myself a modern feminist. At
fifteen, I don’t think I understood much about feminism at all. It was
confusing because the patriarchal society I inhabited told me that my
role was to be a wife and a mother, but feminist voices in that society
told me that being a wife and a mother were not aspirations, that I
needed a career as well, but that the best women, the best feminists, did it all. It was difficult to decipher the messages that society was giving me. It was difficult to know what I was supposed to do. I talked
to Mum about it once. ‘I think I want to go to university,’ I told her, a
few months after I had started my A levels.
Mum was looking at a piece of paper listing all of my mock exam
grades on. I had done well in my mocks. Very well. ‘That sounds like a
good idea, Florence,’ she had mused, looking intently at the paper.
‘Lots of very intelligent, well put together young men go to university.’
I wondered if that flimsy piece of paper made me a good
candidate for marriage, as well as university.
When I had made my plan at fifteen, I had not foreseen any
obstacles getting in my way. There was no reason why, at thirty,
I shouldn’t have achieved everything I set out to. I should have
listened to Steinbeck, because, at twenty-nine years and four months
old, I was moving into 3A. The worst part was, my plans had still been
very much on track when I was twenty-nine years and one month old.
Unlike George and Lennie, whose dreams unravelled slowly, my
plans, my dreams, came crashing down in a way that my fifteen-yearold self could never have predicted.
I ended up in 3A because my relationship of almost nine years with
Bradley Hobbs-Beckham ended. There was definitely a part of me that
was invested in the relationship because of the surname. If I had
married Bradley Hobbs-Beckham, I would have become Florence
Hobbs-Beckham, and I liked the sound of that. It sounded better than
Florence Holt, which I thought sounded abrupt and bland. Florence
Hobbs-Beckham sounded elaborate and classy, and it might have made
people think I was related to the Beckhams. People would be drawn to
it, because they were drawn to Bradley. I never called him Bradley;
I referred to him as BHB, because that’s what his friends called him.
BHB and I broke up because he was an arsehole. At fifteen I had
not known – or factored into my plans – that so many men exist as
arseholes.
*
