In at the Deep End. Kate Davies

I’d find someone I sparked with. Or someone who didn’t laugh when I did my ‘sexy’ face – I’d settle for that at this point.

      I put on my good pair of underpants (not as faded as the others) just in case I got lucky, and my most flattering jeans. I didn’t have a clean bra, but hopefully the lighting would be low if I got to the point of taking my top off. I considered wearing heels, then remembered that I’d once bruised my coccyx dancing the ‘Macarena’ in a pair of wedges, so I went for trainers instead. I brushed my hair and nodded to myself in the mirror. ‘Looking good, Julia,’ I said out loud, panicking momentarily before I remembered that Alice was out at a book launch and wouldn’t hear me chatting myself up. (A low point.)

      I left our flat and marched down Green Lanes towards the pub listening to the ‘Young, Wild and Free’ playlist on Spotify, my heart beating louder than the music, my breath white in the cold night air. I was alive! Anything could happen!

      And then I was at the Rose and Crown and the whole thing suddenly seemed like a terrible idea. The windows were steamed up with the breath of everyone having a lovely time inside without me. But I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I’d turned back.

      I pushed the door open and did my best to swish my way to the bar. It wasn’t easy – the pub was packed with tight-knit groups of friends, laughing at in-jokes, not looking particularly open to being chatted up by lone women. There was no sign of Jarvis anywhere. I sat at the bar and drank a large glass of house red incredibly quickly, trying to catch someone’s eye, but I was hemmed in by tall men leaning over me to order drinks, knocking into me with their rucksacks.

      One man did notice me – an old bald man with a very red nose at the other end of the bar. As he raised his pint to me, I looked away, and then realized that I probably looked just like him – a lonely borderline alcoholic, albeit younger and with more hair.

      I rummaged around in my bag for a bit after that, trying to look purposeful, a ‘Where are my paracetamol?’ expression on my face – and then my phone buzzed with a text from Alice: Where are you, Jules? Me and Dave going to a party with some of his friends, want to come?

      I ran all the way home, my vision jarring as my feet pounded the pavement in that fun way it does when you’ve had some wine and you’re about to have a lot more.

       3. THOSE AREN’T MY TITS

      The party was at a warehouse in Hackney Wick, which was quite exciting – the sort of place trendy people who have lots of sex might go on a Friday night, I thought. As we walked up the concrete stairs, edging past a couple in his-and-hers fur coats drinking rum straight from the bottle, my body began to pulse with possibility. Who knew what was on the other side of that door?

      ‘So my friend Jane lives here with about six other artists,’ said Dave, knocking on the door. ‘She’s a conceptual painter. Her work is kind of confrontational – you’ll see what I mean in a minute.’

      The door swung open and we edged our way into the warehouse, past a DJ playing electro on actual decks. The walls were covered in canvases splashed with phrases like You’re a cunt and What are you looking at?

      I stopped in front of a huge blue square bearing the words No one likes you.

      ‘Sell a lot of these, does she?’ I said to Dave, but he was standing at the makeshift bar with his arm around Alice, pouring vodka into two plastic cups.

      I looked back at the painting. I was beginning to take it personally.

      ‘What do you think?’ A woman had sidled up next to me and was standing with her arms crossed. She had a blunt bob and was wearing high-waisted trousers; she looked just like I do in the daydreams where I’m a bohemian novelist (and part-time detective) living in Berlin.

      ‘They give a lovely homely feel to the place,’ I said.

      ‘Ha!’ she said, and turned to face me. ‘I like that. You’re funny.’ She held my gaze for longer than was comfortable.

      ‘You painted them, didn’t you?’ I said.

      ‘Yep.’

      I opened my mouth to say something, but my humiliation had slowed down my thought process a bit.

      She waved away my embarrassment with her hand. ‘To be fair, I was going through a bad break-up at the time,’ she said. ‘My new stuff’s much softer. I’ll show you some of it.’ She caught me by the hand and pulled me through the fog of sweaty, dancing bodies to the far end of the warehouse.

      ‘Here,’ she said. She pointed to a pink canvas with curving purple script that read Your cunt tastes delicious. ‘What does this one make you feel?’

      I considered the painting. ‘Flattered? Sort of?’

      She raised her eyebrows.

      I turned back to the canvas. ‘Violated’ was the honest answer, so I said that out loud, and she seemed pleased. ‘Are these all things someone has said to you?’

      ‘They’re things I’ve wanted to say to people but never worked up the nerve.’ She looked me in the eye again. Not smiling any more.

      ‘Right,’ I said, focusing on the painting while I thought of something to say. Was she hitting on me? ‘I guess you’re going out with someone you like now, then.’ I said.

      ‘Nah,’ she said, shrugging. ‘It was a one-time thing.’

      ‘Right,’ I said again.

      ‘You seeing anyone?’ she asked. I could feel her eyes on me.

      ‘Not right now,’ I said, still not looking at her.

      ‘You ever been with a woman?’ she asked.

      ‘No,’ I said, flicking my gaze at her and away again straight away. I wasn’t drunk enough for that level of intense eye contact.

      ‘You should try it,’ she said.

      ‘Maybe I will!’ I said, in an Enid Blyton sort of voice. I started nodding and didn’t seem to be able to stop. ‘Do you need another drink?’

      ‘Nah, it’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’m on the K. Want some?’ She held out a wrap.

      I looked at the wrap. It was made of a flyer for a club night that I’d never been to; the photos on Facebook were full of trendy genderqueer people and I’d always assumed I was too boring to get in. This was my chance to be cool, to be young and spontaneous.

      I’d always vaguely wondered what it would be like to be with a woman; I had occasionally masturbated while thinking about Beyoncé, and I’d even half-heartedly come out as bi to Cat when we were 17. We’d talked about it in whispers, and hugged melodramatically, and then somehow I just sort of … forgot about it. Maybe I should seize the moment, have a line of ketamine and a little light lesbian sex. But I’d just read an article in the Guardian about ketamine damaging your bladder, and I can’t even handle cystitis without wanting to scratch my insides out. Besides, I wasn’t sure I wanted Jane to taste my cunt. Apart from anything else, she was obviously a cunt connoisseur, and I wasn’t sure mine would be up to standard. I couldn’t think of anything worse than being the subject of a painting that said something like You need to trim your pubic hair, or Your cunt did not taste as good as that other cunt.

      So I shook my head.

      ‘Another time then,’ she said, already on her way to the toilets.

      I looked around for Alice and Dave, but they were dancing in a corner, foreheads together, grinding into each other like a pestle and mortar. I needed wine, a pint of red wine, preferably. There was none in the bar area so I walked around the edge of the room, picking up every bottle I came across. They were all empty or dark with cigarette ash, the butts floating on the surface like drowned flies.