Read by Ray Newe (3rd story in podcast, at 37m 45s)
Before you know it, you’re ageing.
And, in the confusion of it all, he’d let his toenails grow too long. He used to be, what, maybe good-looking? Now his skin was blotchy, dry, and he had dark crescents under his eyes. It seemed not that long ago he’d been a teenager, but he’d plucked a grey hair from his head just yesterday. His back ached. The heavy satchel that hung every day from work to home had lowered his shoulder. It was always so difficult to get a seat. He was on his feet all day. He’d lost weight, gained weight, his clothes never fit. They were scuffed, stretched. Fraying at the corners, there were loose threads. If you looked close enough, there were pale worn patches, soft spots, even buttons missing on second-hand designer items.
From a distance though, he looked good.
Enough.
Good enough.
Up close he looked …
Worse.
So he paid 2k a month for a studio apartment in a back-of-beyond up-and-coming shit-hole in the wrong end of town, but its going price was easily pushing a million. His rent was still subsidised by his mother. The place had the best of intentions, all mod-cons, spotlights and waste disposal unit. But three bulbs had gone and the unit clunked. In the white bathroom, limescale and slime tumbled over the sealant, taps and shower head. The less said about the washer-dryer the better: so he smelt of fabric softener with base notes of leaky loft. He hadn’t got round to washing the dishes in a week. The dishwasher was faulty and the microwave was for show.
It was dusty.
A bottle of stainless steel cleaner sat unopened under the sink.
The vacuum was old, but he couldn’t afford a new one.
If you keep lighting low though, life seems all right and you look younger than you are. There is no dust, no limescale, no dirt. Only when the lights are on do you see what you’re living in.
Flowers, as they die, have a very distinctive smell. Bitter. He’d have to replace them before she arrived. He’d need to cut his nails too.
Maybe they’d have sex.
The thought exhausted him.
#
He'd arrived back home at 9:00pm, left work at seven. He showered and changed into a freshly un-ironed shirt, faintly yellowing at the underarms. She was due at ten. What was a good thing to serve at such an hour on a Friday? Crudités? Canapés?
Nibbles?
It wasn’t a function, for God’s sake. It wasn't a convention. Just a reunion of two friends, back from her round-the-world tour, which had taken six months and cost as many thousands.
Perhaps he could throw on some nachos. It was 9:45pm, not enough time to remove socks and cut nails and run downstairs for wine and nibbles. He’d have to choose.
In the shop across the road, he sidled along a selection of white wines, discreetly examining the cheapest bottles to the distant soundtrack of the self-service. There was a Pinot Grigio for under a tenner. Good. A Spanish table wine for less than five. Oh dear. He hadn’t sunk that low. Chablis. Merlot.
It was her dream to come here. And here he was living it: the shining exemplar. Everybody wants London. Nobody wants to admit it wasn’t worth it. He’d been here fifteen years. He mustn’t look cheap. White Zinfandel, two for one. That’s a compromise. She needn’t know it was on offer.
Next door was a wine shop with a specialist selection. For the sake of fairness, he’d have a look at what they had in there as well. That seemed the right thing to do when one had guests to dinner. To nibbles. Whatever. Yes, he’d like to be one of those people that bought his wine from a local boutique.
It was candlelit and full of sofas. Industrial-chic. Fat pipes overhead, wooden beams that looked as though they’d give you a splinter.
There were overly-informal chalkboards upon which were smiley faces and the names of on-trend vineyards. Bargains weren’t called bargains because they were written in calligraphy. They were ‘introductory offers’. Saving money is sensible, but nobody wants to be poor.
He selected a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. The absolute cheapest in stock. It's a crowd-pleaser, right?
Next door, with the wine under his arm, he grabbed a family-size bag of crisps and a nondescript dip, just in time to get back into the flat, light a few candles, bin the flowers, and switch on some music by 10:01pm.
He didn’t want to open the wine before she arrived, so he had a glass of sharp, tannic white that had been souring in the fridge for three weeks and was starting to smell like the expensive cologne he sprayed so liberally on his neck that it formed tears and rivulets down his skin.
He heard a plane, a siren, a knock.
She was cocked to the left, arms raised, face open. Action. She emitted a long joyous ‘A’ sound: “Tommy! Tommaaay – yaaaaaaaaaay! – ”
#
In each hand she held a bottle of White Zinfandel. Two for one.
#
She had a flower in her flyaway salted hair and bangles on her tattooed wrists.
#
There was a tatty bag slung over her shoulder, a great tinkling necklace. She wore a vintage coat, psychedelic leggings, boots and tie-dye tank top. Her nose was pierced. She was tanned. Here she was: blogger, bangles and tattoos.
“Hello, Harmony,” he said, and she kissed both his cheeks. “Come in, come in.”
In the hallway, she threw off her bag and heavy coat, grunting with the release of the weight.
“Ugh. I love your plaaaace!” she said, elongating the central ‘a’ of ‘place’ at a pitch higher than the rest of the sentence. Then she did a little dance and hugged him again.
“So good to see you!” she said.
“Yeah. Thanks for coming.” He closed the front door.
“Sorry, I’m a little bit late. Had to stop downstairs for some wine.”
“Ah,” he said, gesturing for her to enter the lounge. “There’s this great wine bar across the road.” (He’d never actually sat down inside for a drink.) “I picked us up a nice bottle from there.”
“Ooh, loving your style,” she said, screaming then at the overwhelming excitement of touring his flat. “This place is fantastic! Look at those views!”
#
In the distance were cranes and demolitions.
#
He smiled, took the wine and went into the mirrored kitchenette.
They hadn’t seen each other in nearly ten years.
“It’s a new-build,” he said, dipping into the fridge for the Sauvignon, “this block. A few years back.”
#
The screw-top cracked as he twisted it open.
#
From the cabinet, he took two ostentatiously large glasses in which he poured ostentatiously small amounts of wine.
She clapped and patrolled the panoramic window. “Oh! It’s ideal! This is just the type of thing I’ll be after when I move.”
“When are you planning to come?” he said.
She turned, accepted the glass, and took a swig. “Couple of months max, I reckon. I kept back some of my travelling money.”
It was 10:25pm already. He had work at nine the next day. He’d need to be up at six.
“Yeah, we must talk about that,” he said, taking a seat on a ripped leather chair, slashed, with its stuffing bulging out. “Your … travels.”
She laughed. “You can imagine how dull life seems now.”
“Right,” he said, handing her the glass while she lowered herself into a stumpy armchair designed specifically for the comfort of young professional urbanites.
Tom would like to have travelled. But that wasn’t the identity he chose. Two hundred years ago, he might perhaps have undertaken a Grand Tour, but nobody real has the time or the money for that now. Globalisation though. It’s all coming to you.
And it all burns the same eventually anyway.
“I need to get out of my parents' place as soon as possible!” she said. “I can’t be thirty-five and living with my parents.”
Oops. He’d just had a little micro-sleep. What had she said?
“Right, definitely,” he offered.
“I’ve looked online at a few places but nothing concrete yet.” She sipped her wine. “Anyway, how are you? What’s been happening? You look well.”
#
He raised an eyebrow.
#
Candlelight. He wondered what she really thought. Maybe this performance was all just to hide her shock at seeing a once wild and popular boy having turned into a tired and average man.
“I’m well, I am well,” he said, smiling. “Everything’s good here.”
“How’s work?”
“Oh, you know. Yeah. It’s going really well. You know. Yeah. You been working since you got back or …?”
“Picked up a couple of shifts here and there, nothing major. Bit of pocket money. Been spending a bit of time on my painting, putting them on the blog, sold a few, these exotic things, just free-flowing, being at one with my thoughts and memories about my time away, things like that, challenging our perceptions of race and culture.”
“Sounds great,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said, “when I was away, I spent some time with a Tibetan monk and he taught me how to really zen out, you know, reach a place of peace and higher consciousness.”
Tom thought about the three hours he spent on the train every day, everybody loudly silent, each in a meditative state, reading, sleeping, thinking, using the empty time as a private, personal gift. And in some ways it was—just the type you didn’t really want but don’t have the receipt for.
He could see Harmony now as she was when they first met, as an impetuous and uncomplicated twenty-something, a fluorescent beauty, whimsical, quizzical, curious. She was going to be an actress; she was going to be a painter; she was going to be a singer. They had been hungry for knowledge, learnt nothing and left starving.
#
She’d turned into none of those things.
#
He answered her questions—How are things? How’s the family? What are your plans?—but he gave flat and uninteresting answers. Things are fine. The family’s good. No plans just yet. He listened to her stories—the monasteries, the colours, the food—but he found them distant and tiring.
Fifteen foreign years into adulthood and neither of them had really changed. Who you are, he saw, doesn’t, just the person you’re trying to be. Maybe he never really knew her. She thought she was a New Age hippie; he thought she had too much money. She’d been travelling. He’d eaten gourmet skinny burgers. She’d had religious experiences. He’d been drinking two-for-one. And they’d been rewarded with convincing personalities.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
They’d drunk two bottles of wine.
He drank too much.
It was 1am.
#
When did that happen?
#
Where did all the time go?
#
“Oh, yes. Everything is absolutely fine. I hope you’re having a good first night in London.”
“Oh I am! Wonderful!”
They went to bed at 2am, and Tom fell asleep confident in the knowledge that the evening had been a resounding failure. It hadn’t even ended in sex.
#
Birds and traffic.
#
He looked at the clock and it was 5:59am. There was enough time to stare at the ceiling before the grinning ditty of his alarm began.
#
Snooze.
#
He needed more time, but there wasn’t any.
#
7am.
#
7:10am.
#
He would now no longer be in time for work.
#
He was still looking at the ceiling at 7:30am.
#
8am.
#
Next door, Harmony slept absently, dumbly, freely. He got up and started to get dressed.
#
Under the dead weight of broad daylight, there were smudges on the white walls of his bedroom. He didn’t know how they got there. But suddenly he didn’t care.
He thought of Harmony and how much she loved the flat. It seemed only right then that since she loved it that much, since she really loved it that much, she should have it.
Yes.
And he walked barefoot out into the morning,
wondering
who
I’d pretend to be
next.
(c) Alix Owen, 2025
Alix Owen is a writer & theatre reviewer from Wales. His work has appeared at the Camden Fringe, Liars' League, & in print & digital anthologies internationally. You can find his reviews in London Pub Theatres Magazine & the rest of him, extraordinarily scarcely, on Instagram @alix_owen_ & X @alixowen.
Ray Newe has appeared at the National Theatre, Dukes Theatre, Theatre Peckham, Liverpool Playhouse, Lancaster & Lyric, Hammersmith amongst others. TV includes Murphy's Law, Eyes Down & Brookside.
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