Don't screw the crew

I hadn’t, at first, clocked you as that good-looking. Cute, sure; but your hair is frizzy no matter what you do to tame it, and you’re somehow squinting in every photograph, and greeting us when you got back from work with a smiling kia ora! always struck me as a bit twee.

We’d been housemates for maybe six months. You’d come over from New Zealand for a job and found our Peckham group house online, a little community of friendly weirdos. It was a toss-up between two people in the end, and I picked you – you would be working from the office full-time, and if you weren’t a good fit then at least we wouldn’t see much of you. That turned out to be a fateful choice.

You’d come home from a rooftop wine bar in the old factory building on Rye Lane, open for the first time after being closed for the winter. You wanted to show me photos you’d taken of the sunset. You sat next to me on the sofa, sliding a little too close, your thigh touching mine. I could smell the alcohol on your breath.

In that moment some part of my brain rewired itself, and no matter how bad an idea it was I manufactured our next encounter, a house movie night or dinner or some such. We drank and smoked weed. And when the others went to bed, I draped my arm around you, and you leant on my shoulder and we lay down and held each other and after a while you softly kissed my neck and I looked at you and kissed you back.

“I don’t know if we should,” I said, attempting restraint. “That’s what makes it so exciting,” you replied.

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I still don’t understand what happened to me in those following few weeks. The limerence was brutal, totally consuming, until it devolved into something almost psychotic. My mental health fell off a cliff – who develops an anxiety disorder at 32? – to the point that I had to take time off work. You went from hot to cold and back again, assuring me each time we had sex that it would be the last, until I made it conditional on you not saying that again.

A housemate objected vocally to our seeing each other, saying I was going to destroy the houseshare, the home that she depended on – but admitting, months later, that the real reason was her own jealousy and insecurity. You found out and got upset. She must think I’m such a slut, you said, sitting on the end of my bed, head in your hands. You decided to break things off and for some stupid reason I went along with it – a level of passiveness of which I am still ashamed.

But when I realised that would mean the end of something so significant, that ‘maybe in another world’ actually just meant ‘never’, my favourite Rumi quote came to mind – run from what’s comfortable, destroy your reputation, be notorious – and pretty soon I was knocking on your door again.

I knew you’d be returning to New Zealand in a few months, though part of me hoped you would stay. I prepared to move out – it didn’t seem wise to be seriously dating a housemate, and I wanted to make the most of our time together, give things a shot. Quietly I wondered how practical remote work might be with a twelve-hour time difference.

And then, quite suddenly, you announced you had quit your (prestigious, high-status, yet dreadful) job and were going to travel round Europe. Your November departure became August, then late July, then early July. I couldn’t understand why you wanted to cut things short, when most nights (and mornings) we’d be sharing a bed or the sofa.

I suggested I could join you for some of your trip, but you wanted your independence, and I knew better than to press.

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It was just us in the house on that final summer’s day. I woke up at 5am, watched you sleeping next to me. I made you breakfast. You asked for a photo of you wearing your huge hiking rucksack by the open front door. I gave you a note I’d written the day before, my handwriting shaky from anxiety; told you not to read it until you’d crossed the border. Then I said goodbye.

I went to my room and looked at the photos I’d just taken. In one of them you’re laughing, mouth open, nose wrinkled up in that trademark squint. It’s how I picture you, even now.

I panicked. Maybe I could stop you, or delay you a day or two. I put the phone down, threw the door open and ran after you, but you were already gone.

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I can point out on a map, from memory:

The town where you grew up, the house you spent your adolescence in, the high school you went to, the hill you had to climb at the weekend to get cell reception to see if any boys had texted you, the forest where you went bush bashing and got lost and nearly died. The firebreaks you rode your dirt bike up and down as a teenager. The river you were tubing down when you were twelve and your friend broke his arm and it hung limply at a sickening angle. That river ran past the campsite your parents owned, now sold and closed; in the summers you helped tourists pan for gold there.

Why am I like this.

For a long time there wasn’t a day when I didn’t think about you, about the time we spent together. About the first time we got together, the unhinged sexual chemistry we had; how when you got back from a work trip you came to my room and instead of speaking we just started stripping each other naked. The time we both cried with laughter, trying and failing to explain to a housemate the premise of that show where they make cakes that pretend to be things. The time you called me up to your room and you were standing fully nude wanting help with your fake tan before a girls’ trip to Ibiza. How we’d spoon on the sofa and watch Stranger Things and I’d hold you when you jumped.

The time we lay in bed together in the dark as a summer rainstorm battered the windows and talked about whether we had a future. And the next time we talked about it, when you told me that we didn’t.

You came home one night, before we got together, drunk as a skunk on “cab sav” and unable to find your keys. Pounded on the front door until I woke up. I went downstairs, shirtless, and found you slumped on the ground with your phone in your hand. “I’m so cold, Henry.” You held me close, and handed me the phone so I could tell whoever was on the other end that you weren’t going to die of exposure.

In the days leading up to your departure, you packed your stuff, leaving behind things you didn’t want. You offered some of them to me. I took them because they reminded me of you, and got rid of them for the same reason.

I kept the t-shirt of mine you wore the last night we were together until it stopped smelling like you. In the end, all I have left is a business card from that job you hated, a scrunchie you left on my nightstand, and a photo I took of us on the sofa together. Months after you left I printed it out, and on the back of it I wrote maybe it isn’t all hopeless bullshit.

“You’re a real catch,” you once said, peering at me with hazel eyes. “You’ll make someone very happy someday.”

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When you fall in love with someone, you fall in love with how they see the world, and so I found myself going on weekend hiking trips to Snowdonia, to surf school in Newquay to catch waves on the freezing Atlantic, interrailing around Europe; mimicking your adventures in an attempt to capture some of the joy and curiosity with which you moved through life.

But with you gone, I was chasing a ghost.

You once showed me the necklace you liked to wear: a New Zealand fern in 18-carat gold. You bought it with your first paycheque. I loved the symbolism of deep commitment to your adopted home, with its sparkling lakes and piercing mountains. I can’t imagine feeling that way about England, a place where it increasingly feels like my time is up.

I once heard that, as adults, we try to be whatever we weren’t in high school. In your case, that was cool and rich. So in London you courted a set of friends straight out of Mean Girls; people who cared a great deal about being thin, who dated your ex behind your back, who abandoned you on holiday when you were sick, and who kicked you out of their group chats as soon as the wheels were up.

It’s funny because one of the things I loved about you was how conscientious you were, how civic-minded. You cooked us vegan meals, you ran a book club, you helped people on the street. You managed to avoid the hard shell that most Londoners adopt after living here for a while, retreating to their inner worlds when they leave the house and not caring to interact with anyone outside it.

I was an anxious kid. I cared about getting good grades, getting into a good university, getting a top degree. At some point that fell away and I learned not to worry so much, that none of that stuff counts for nearly as much as everyone makes out. And when I realised just how much time I wasted being anxious, I risked becoming cynical and sneering.

Like so much about you, I found that necklace intimidating. It showed how much you cared about building a life from the rubble of your traumatic upbringing, the long shadow of which you were still grappling with. I couldn’t imagine caring that much about anything.

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I didn’t hear much from you once you left. I thought you might want to keep in touch, but I was too proud to reach out. When I finally did message, you said that you weren’t coming to London on your way home as planned, but you’d happily talk on the phone – until something changed and that, too, was out of the question. The scope of our relationship, such as it was, shrank until it could fit into a text message.

So I said goodbye for good. That you meant such a lot to me, that you should look me up if ever you’re passing through. You never did. Your final message: “Thanks, all the best,” and then your profile picture went blank and I didn’t hear from you again.

I ended up moving out of that house. When I opened the storage locker in the garden, I saw the blue bike you left behind. And there, in the helmet hooked on one of the handlebars, was a strand of frizzy auburn hair. Proof you were here, that it really happened, that I loved you once.

A reminder that you’re out there, on the other side of the world, living out your life with people who adore you.

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I’m glad our paths crossed, for a bright, brilliant moment. I’m not sure I could do it again. But part of me will always long for the land of the long white cloud.

Thanks to Lily Blackburn, Jasmine Ren, Matt L., Drew Schorno, Emma Baker and Alexander Wales for their feedback and encouragement to post this after three years in my drafts.

Thanks also to Hauke Hillebrandt for putting up with a summer of me being insufferably heartbroken.