jade's place
a weekend in edinburgh
Stepping out of the shower, my toes curl around something cold.
A bobby pin, fallen from its mantle on the sink, en route to being lost between floorboards. This tiny reminder that this is someone’s home sends my imagination spiralling. I think of my own bedroom, where yesterday’s clothes are strewn across chairs and makeup items from getting ready earlier that morning remains almost permanently on display. From there, I indulgently draw parallels between her room and my own. In the art prints on her wall, I see the ones on my own that I’ve collected from friends’ art fairs. In her bedside table, I see a copy of the books that sleep on my bed stand every night. Pages cornered and sleeves torn. Everything is purposeful, everything is meaningful.
A tube of yellow Rimmel London mascara sits beside her floor length mirror. I imagine her sat there, eyes still weepy with sleep, as she puts on a face for the day. It’s early; she starts her shifts at the restaurant before most people have turned off their morning alarm. Layers of dust differentiate her decorative piles of books from those that she peels through regularly. I stand in the doorway, but even stretching my toe over the threshold feels like an invasion of privacy. Instead, I observe from a metre away, and pull together scenes from her life with what’s in front of me.
The photos on her bookcase are just a little bit too far away for my eyes to focus on. Images of her with friends, or maybe family, or maybe lovers. Specific frames suggest relationships. Positioning on different bookcase levels suggest importance. There’s a lingering smell of tobacco. I envision her leaning out of her bedroom window, blowing smoke away from the flat as to not infect the other rooms with the scent. Musky incense covers most of it.
From her spare room across the hallway, I hear her talking indistinctly; a post-shift catch up with a friend, perhaps. A call with a partner. A gossip with a mother. Light creeps from under her door as I tiptoe through the flat to the shared toilet. I hover there for a moment too long before I begin to feel guilt. The line between house guest and intruder feels murky. Her house is so personal, and so welcoming. there’s homemade kombucha in the fridge, she texts on the first day of our stay. Her cat treats us as if we are family, marking us with her scent and resting on our bed during the day.
I’m assimilated. This little flat, on the edge of the Meadows, etched into my minds’ eye. In two nights, we memorise the local coffee shops, the quickest route to the main road, the best wine bars. The journey up the four flights of stairs becomes smaller and smaller the more times we embark up and down them.
I meet her twice. The train in my head runs away with the stories I’ve created about her life. She’s both entirely fictional and wholly real. When we leave, I put everything back as closely to as I remember it being.
