Beth O'Leary - The Flatshare

On bedroom door:

Hi Tiffy,

THANK YOU for telling me about the scarves. Yes, need the money. Will sell — can you recommend where/how?

Gentleman at work knits them. He’s basically giving them away to anyone/everyone who will take them (or else I’d feel bad taking the money . . .)

Hey,

Oh, definitely — you should sell these through Etsy or Preloved. They’ll have tons of customers who would love these scarves.

Umm. Odd question, but might this gentleman at your work be interested in crocheting for commission?

No idea what that means. Btw, take your fave scarf — will put rest on interweb tonight.

Fallen on floor by bedroom door (quite hard to track down):

Morning,

As in, I’m working on a book called Crochet Your Way (I know — it’s one of my best titles, I have to say) and we need someone to make us four scarves and eight hats very, very fast so we can photograph them to include in the book. He’d have to follow my author’s brief (on colour and stitch etc). I can pay him, but not a lot. Can you give me his contact details? I’m really desperate and he’s obviously crazily talented.

Oh my God, I’m going to be wearing this scarf all the time (I don’t care if it’s technically spring time). I love it. Thank you!

Back to bedroom door again:

Eh. Can’t see why this wouldn’t work, though might need to run it by Matron. Write me a letter and will give it to her, then to gentleman knitter if she gives the OK.

If you’re wearing that scarf all the time, can you dispose of the five hundred scarves currently occupying your side of wardrobe?

Other news: first scarf just sold for £235! Mad. It’s not even nice!

On kitchen breakfast bar, beside unsealed envelope:

Hey,

My side is the key part of that sentence, Leon. My side, and I want to fill it with scarves.

The letter is here — let me know if you think it needs changing at all. At some point we may need to do a bit of a tidy of our notes to one another, by the way. The flat is starting to look like a scene from A Beautiful Mind.

I pass Tiffy’s letter to Matron, who gives me the all-clear to offer Mr Prior the opportunity to knit for Tiffy’s book. Or crochet. Am extremely unclear on the difference. No doubt Tiffy will write me a long note at some point with detailed explanation, unprompted. She loves a lengthy explanation. Why use one clause when you could use five? Strange, ridiculous, hilarious woman.

One night later and Mr Prior’s got two hats done already — they look hat-like and woolly, so I’m assuming all is as it should be.

Only downside to this arrangement is now Mr Prior is fascinated with Tiffy.

Mr Prior: So she’s a book editor.

Me: Yes.

Mr Prior: What an interesting profession.

A pause.

Mr Prior: And she lives with you?

Me: Mm.

Mr Prior: How interesting.

Look at him sideways while writing his notes. He blinks back at me, beady-eyed and innocent.

Mr Prior: I just didn’t imagine you’d like living with another person. You like your independence so much. Isn’t that why you didn’t want to move in with Kay?

Must stop talking to patients about personal life.

Me: It’s different. I don’t have to see Tiffy. We just leave each other notes, really.

Mr Prior nods thoughtfully.

Mr Prior: The art of letter writing. A profoundly . . . intimate thing, a letter, isn’t it?

I stare at him suspiciously. Not sure what he’s getting at here.

Me: It’s Post-its on the fridge, Mr Prior, not hand-delivered letters on scented paper.

Mr Prior: Oh, yes, I’m sure you’re right. Absolutely. Post-its. No art in that, I’m sure.

Next night, and even Holly has heard about Tiffy. Amazing how uninteresting news travels so fast between wards when significant proportion of people in building are bedbound.

Holly: Is she pretty?

Me: I don’t know, Holly. Does it matter?

Holly pauses. Thoughtful.

Holly: Is she nice?

Me, after a moment’s thought: Yes, she’s nice. Bit nosy and strange, but nice.

Holly: What does it mean, that she’s your ‘flatmate’?

Me: Flatmate means she shares my flat. We live there together.

Holly, eyes widened: Like boyfriend and girlfriend?

Me: No, no. She’s not my girlfriend. She’s a friend.

Holly: So you sleep in different rooms?

Get bleeped before I have to answer that one, thankfully.

As I peel the Post-its and taped scraps of paper off cupboard doors, tables, walls and (in one case) the bin lid, I find myself grinning. It was a weird way to get to know Leon, writing all these notes over the last few months, and it sort of happened without me noticing — one minute I was scribbling him a quick note about leftovers, the next I was in a full-on, day-to-day correspondence.

Though, as I follow the trail of heart-to-hearts along the back of the sofa, I can’t help noticing that I generally write about five times as many words as Leon does. And that my Post-its are a lot more personal and revealing than his. It’s kind of strange reading it all back — you can see how dodgy my memory is, for starters. Like in one of the notes, I mentioned how super awkward it was that I’d forgotten to pass on Rachel’s birthday-party invite to Justin last year, but I remember now — I did invite him. We ended up having a huge fight about whether I could go. Justin always said my memory was terrible; it’s very annoying to find written evidence that he’s right.

It’s half five now. I finished work early because everyone’s out of the office for a goodbye party that I can’t afford to go to, so I made an executive decision to go home in the absence of any actual execu­tives to make the decision for me. I’m sure it’s what they would have wanted.

I thought I might actually catch Leon tonight, as I got back at around 5 p.m. It felt a bit strange. I’m not really allowed to come home early and bump into him, according to the official terms of our agreement. I knew when I signed up for this that we wouldn’t be in the flat at the same time — that was why it was such a good idea. But I didn’t realise that we would literally never meet. Like, ever, at all, for four whole months.

I did think about spending this hour at the coffee place around the corner, but then I thought . . . it is starting to get a bit weird, being friends but not having actually met. And it does feel like that, like we’re friends — I don’t think it could be otherwise, the way we’re in each other’s space all the time. I know exactly how he likes his eggs fried, though I’ve never actually seen him eat one (there’s always tons of runny yolk left over on the plate). I could describe his dress sense pretty accurately, even though I’ve never seen him in any of the clothes drying on the clothes horse in the living room. And, weirdest of all, I know what he smells like.

I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t meet — it wouldn’t change the terms of how we live here. It would just mean I would actually recognise my flatmate if I saw him walking down the street.

The phone rings, which is odd, because I wasn’t aware we had a phone. At first I go for my mobile, but my ringtone is a jingly happy tune from right down the list of those available from Samsung, not the retro ring ring that’s currently singing out from somewhere invisible in the living room.

I eventually track down a landline on the kitchen counter, under one of Mr Prior’s scarves and a string of notes about whether or not Leon used up all the butter (he totally did).