Falling Flat
by Chris Cottom
I’ll move in, London at last, squeeze my stuff into your second bedroom, my Garrard record deck and Ferrograph amp, my After the Gold Rush and Tea for the Tillerman, assuring you I’m headphones only, that I’ve left the speakers at my mum’s. I won’t mention being a little in awe of you, with your executive sass and copper brown bob, your all-colour cookbooks and Habitat rugs. You’ll announce it’s flatmates together as far as laundry goes and you’re doing darks so I’ll head for the machine with my crusty football kit but you’ll take it from me, say you’re no stranger to stains, what with having four brothers. Sometimes after my evening class I’ll come home to the whoosh of the shower and you’ll emerge minty fresh and turban towelled and we’ll drink bedtime cocoa together and you’ll talk about holidays on your auntie’s farm in Connemara, about all-day blackberry picking expeditions and riding ponies bareback through the morning surf, how your favourite was called Cúchulainn, that he’d died and you hadn’t known, hadn’t found out til the following year. And you’ll tease me about girls, insist you don’t mind if I bring someone back, that there’s a sweet young thing in the typing pool who needs a nice boyfriend. One time I’ll get home and you’ll introduce me to your colleague Quentin, all cufflinked and double-breasted, who’ll ask me all about being a trainee actuary and claim he can barely count the wheels on his Lotus Elan, except he’s obviously only being polite so I’ll go to my room to read my Principles of Risk Modelling while half listening to Songs of Leonard Cohen on my headphones. And one evening you’ll be curt and stompy and I’ll ask what’s wrong and you’ll say nothing it’s fine and I’ll ask again and you’ll say let’s have a glass of wine so I’ll nip down down to the corner shop on the Earls Court Road and you’ll sigh and say you expect I’ve guessed that Quentin’s a bit more than a colleague, boss actually and sort of boyfriend but completely impossible. And we’ll finish the bottle and you’ll have a little cry, there on the sofa, and I’ll want to stand up, take two steps, put my arms around you, tell you I love you, but I won’t because then I won’t even be able to be your flatmate.
