I met up with another debut writer for a drink last week. Alice. Over two large wines, Alice told me she’d recently had to sell her lovely flat after a big breakup. This was, of course, not part of her plan, and she’s now living in a house share in Bromley-by-Bow with a woman she met online, who needs 48 hours advance warning before Alice invites any friends round. Though this is far from ideal, Alice told me she much prefers it to the risk of living with a good friend. There’s so much less to lose this way.
When I first moved to London, I was full of hope. I was going to move into a flat with an NW postcode — I was and still am an obsessive Zadie Smith fan — and yes, it would cost me 80% of my modest salary every month, but I would be a Londoner. And I was going to be living with my oldest and dearest friend. What could possibly go wrong?
By the second week in our new flat, it became abundantly clear that my oldest, dearest friend could no longer stand the sight of me. Everything I did annoyed him. He’d have elaborate dinner parties in our poky dining-cum-living room with his management consultant friends, and I’d find myself eating a Dr. Oetker pizza on my bed with the door closed, feeling I’d made a huge mistake. He accused me of “living like a student” — we were 24.
He was earning well at his job in the City, while I was in my first publishing job and had very little disposable income, so our lifestyles simply weren’t aligned. Inviting him for walks or coffee dates, I tried to remind him that, first and foremost, we were friends. He’d look at me, confused, and say, “But I can just see you at home?”.
I was picturing Will and Grace; he was manifesting The Wolf of Wall Street. We got through that twelve-month tenancy. Just. But after we moved out, we never spoke again.
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This has happened to me before. I moved in with my best friend from uni, who I was sure I could stomach being around 24 hours a day. I’d already been hanging out with her every evening as it was, so how different could it be? The answer was: very. The same things I found endearing about her — her hopelessness with men, her extravagant spending, her loud laugh — became intolerable when I was experiencing them constantly, in a space that was meant to be sacred.
She was seeing this guy for a while who exclusively, inexplicably, wore white clogs, and whenever I’d get home from lectures and see those clunky shoes outside her bedroom door, my heart would sink. Aside from his footwear choices, he wasn’t particularly nice to her, and she’d weep and wail over him every time they fell out.
With some distance, it would’ve been much easier for me to tell her what I thought about him. As it stood, I had to see this man most mornings over my cornflakes, and there never seemed to be the right moment to speak up. Thankfully, I think she’s married to someone kind now, who wears proper shoes. Although I can’t be one hundred percent sure, because… we don’t talk anymore either.
Of course, the common denominator here is me. I’d be forced to accept the notion that I’m a terrible housemate, if it weren’t for the joyful year spent in a ramshackle semi, lovingly nicknamed ‘the crack den.’ The crucial difference was that I shared that home with four strangers. Friends of friends, pushed together through necessity. I showed up, we pulled straws for our rooms, and the drink we all went for that night was our first time ever chatting.
There was a lot of luck involved — I recognise that — in that we ended up getting on. We started from scratch, and the batter of our new friendship included key, raw ingredients like: how long each of us spent in the bathroom, our grocery budgets, and how willing we were to engage in pleasantries before our first coffee of the day. We learned each other’s last names at the same time as we learned about cleaning and sleeping habits. All that stuff was baked right in. There were no nasty surprises. Ten years later, one of those housemates is still one of my closest friends — I’m due to meet up with her next week.
When you reach your mid-twenties, it’s right and just for your core friendships to fork and take different paths — it makes those bi-yearly catchups all the more interesting. Had I heard about the stress and strain of management consultancy, or the clog-wearing heartthrob, second-hand, in the pub, maybe I’d still be in touch with those people now. Like Alice, I’d take the option of a slightly stiff cohabitation with a stranger, over putting another friendship under that amount of pressure any day.
Top 5 rules for housemates:
Homesick by Silvia Saunders is out 30th January
