The eviction notice arrived on a Tuesday, which seemed unnecessarily cruel. Tuesdays are already the most pointless day of the week, not even pretending to matter like Monday or Friday, and here mine was being ruined by a council letter that might as well have been written in Comic Sans for all the dignity it afforded me. Fourteen months of rent arrears, apparently. Funny how time disappears when you're not really living it.
I'd been existing in what estate agents would generously call a studio flat in Croydon, surviving on Universal Credit and the occasional bit of QA testing work that let me stay hidden behind a screen. Perfect setup, really. No colleagues, no small talk. Just me and my laptop and the soothing glow of forums where other people understood that the world had gone completely mental and we were the only ones brave enough to say so.
The housing office smelled like disinfectant and desperation. I sat in a plastic chair that had probably seen more misery than a hospital waiting room, watching the receptionist's fingernails. Painted aggressive pink, clacking against her keyboard. She had the look of someone who'd heard every sob story twice and filed them all under "not my problem."
"Right," she said, not looking up. "Emergency accommodation. You're lucky, actually. Most people wait weeks."
Lucky. Right. Nothing says fortune like being twenty six and homeless because you've spent the better part of two years arguing with strangers on the internet about hypergamy and the decline of Western civilization. Though I wasn't about to share my curriculum vitae with Pink Nails.
"There's been a mix up with our system," she continued, finally gracing me with eye contact. "The room we've got for you is temporary, shared accommodation. Just until something permanent comes up."
Shared accommodation meant people. People meant conversation, observation, the exhausting performance of being a functioning human being. "How shared?"
"One other tenant. Sade Okoye. Nice girl, very quiet. She's a physical therapist, so she's out most days. You'll hardly see her."
The universe, it seemed, had a sense of humour after all. Of course it would be a woman. Because clearly what my delicately balanced mental state needed was to be thrust into close quarters with a member of the sex that the forums had spent months explaining were either manipulative harpies or victims of their own biological programming. Brilliant.
"I'm sure it'll be fine," I managed, which was possibly the most transparent lie I'd ever told.
The address was in Brixton. The tube felt like being slowly digested by something with bad breath and no respect for personal space. I'd forgotten how many people existed out here, all of them moving with purpose I couldn't fathom. My rucksack contained the sum total of my possessions. Clothes that had given up caring. My laptop. A half empty bottle of antidepressants that I'd been rationing like wartime chocolate.
Number forty three was a Victorian terrace that had been converted into flats with all the aesthetic sensitivity of someone using a chainsaw for surgery. The front garden was mostly weeds and someone's abandoned bicycle, but the windows had curtains and there weren't any boards nailed over them, which put it several steps above my previous accommodation.
I pressed the buzzer for Flat B and waited, mentally rehearsing the least threatening way to introduce myself. The forums had endless theories about how women assessed men in the first three seconds of meeting them, cataloguing everything from posture to grooming as evidence of genetic fitness or beta male status. I was fairly sure I'd score poorly on all metrics.
The intercom crackled. "Yeah?"
"Er, hello. I'm Colin. From the council housing thing?"
A pause. Then the door buzzed open.
The hallway smelled like someone's Sunday roast, which made my stomach remind me that I'd been living primarily on Pot Noodles and spite for the past fortnight. Flat B was on the ground floor, door already ajar. I knocked anyway, because my mother had raised me with some manners, even if she'd also raised me with crippling social anxiety and a face only she could love.
"Come in then."
The voice belonged to a woman who appeared in the doorway like she'd been expecting me for weeks rather than minutes. She was shorter than I'd imagined, though to be fair, I hadn't really imagined her at all beyond a vague female shaped anxiety. Her natural hair suggested she'd never particularly cared what magazines thought she should do with it. Dark jeans, a burgundy jumper that had seen better years but was holding up admirably, trainers that actually looked like they'd been used for training.
"Sade," she said, extending a hand that was surprisingly callused. "You look terrified."
I did the thing where you shake someone's hand while trying to calibrate the exact pressure that suggests confidence without aggression, respect without submission. The forums had detailed guides about handshakes, naturally. Everything was a power dynamic to be analyzed and optimized.
"Just tired," I said, which wasn't entirely false. "It's been a bit of a day."
She stepped aside to let me in, and I caught the scent of something medical. Not hospital, exactly, but that sharp, clean smell that clings to people who work with bodies professionally. Hand sanitizer, maybe.
The flat was small but didn't feel cramped. Someone, presumably Sade, had made actual choices about the space. A sofa that looked comfortable rather than stylish. Bookshelves filled with medical texts and what appeared to be an alarming number of romance novels. Plants that were not only alive but thriving, which felt like showing off. The kitchen was visible from the living area, separated by a counter that looked like it had been installed by someone who understood what kitchens were for.
"Right," Sade said, closing the door behind me. "Council said emergency placement, so I'm guessing you're not here by choice."
I'd prepared several responses to this inevitable question, ranging from vague family difficulties to temporary financial setbacks. What came out was, "Got evicted."
"Fair enough." She walked to the kitchen counter and picked up what looked like a set of keys. "This is yours. Front door, flat door. Rent's handled through the council for now, but utilities are split fifty fifty. That all right?"
I stared at the keys. They were silver, ordinary, attached to a keyring shaped like a tiny cactus that someone had probably thought was amusing. The forums would have had thoughts about this interaction, about power dynamics and dominance displays. But Sade wasn't testing anything. She was just handing me keys.
"Yeah," I managed. "That's fine."
"Good." She walked over to a charging station near the sofa and unplugged what looked like a small medical device, its cord retracting with a soft mechanical whir. "Your room's down the hall, last door. Bathroom's shared, obviously. I'm usually up early and out most of the day, back around seven ish. You work?"
"Sometimes. Freelance stuff. Testing." I didn't elaborate. Most people's eyes glazed over when you started talking about quality assurance.
"Cool." She tucked the device into what looked like a work bag. "I was about to order pizza. You fancy some?"
I paused. When had someone last asked what I wanted to eat? Not what I could afford or what was available, but what I actually fancied.
"I... what kind?"
"Was thinking margherita, maybe some of those little pepperoni ones. Nothing fancy." She pulled out her phone. "Any preferences? Allergies? Strong feelings about pineapple?"
"No pineapple," I said, then immediately wondered if that made me sound boring. "I mean, not against it, just."
"Not on pizza. I get it." She was already dialing. "Proper controversial topic, that. Start wars in some households."
"My mum used to put sweetcorn on pizza."
"Christ. No wonder you're homeless."
The joke landed before I could catch it, and I actually laughed. A rusty sound. Sade grinned, and for a moment I forgot to catalog her facial expression for signs of mockery or manipulation.
"Right, pizza sorted. Should be here in twenty minutes." She grabbed her bag from the counter. "I need to nip out and grab some milk. Make yourself at home, yeah? Remote's on the coffee table if you want the telly on."
And then she was gone, leaving me standing in someone else's living room holding keys to a door I'd never opened, in a flat that smelled like Sunday dinner and hand sanitiser, waiting for pizza I hadn't paid for from a woman who'd just treated me like a normal person.
I sat on the edge of the sofa, careful not to disturb the throw pillow that looked like it had been positioned just so. The remote was indeed on the coffee table, next to a medical journal and what appeared to be a romance novel with a shirtless man on the cover. The juxtaposition was oddly reassuring. Evidence of a person who couldn't be easily categorized.
My phone buzzed. A notification from the forum, probably someone responding to my post about hypergamous sluts and their systematic destruction of male self worth. The words that had felt so urgent yesterday seemed strange here, in this warm room with its thriving plants and evidence of actual human habitation.
I didn't open it.
Instead, I sat in the growing dusk light filtering through curtains that someone had chosen because they liked them, listening to the soft sounds of life from other flats. A television. Someone washing up. A dog barking three streets away. For the first time in months, I was somewhere that felt like a home rather than just a place where I kept my stuff.
When Sade returned with the milk, she found me still sitting on the edge of her sofa like a nervous cat, but she didn't comment on it. Just put the milk away and started setting out plates like having a strange man appear in her living room was the most natural thing in the world.
"Pizza should be here soon," she said. "Hope you're hungry."
I was, I realised. Properly hungry, in a way that had nothing to do with the Pot Noodles.
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