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Sausage had a long layover in London. She was returning to Washington D.C from Africa, and her connecting flight didn’t leave until 4:30 that evening. It was just enough time to squeeze in a brunch with her oldest friends. If it were me, I wouldn’t have left Heathrow because I’d be terrified of missing my flight even if it was eight hours until take off. Sausage, though, has never worried about time. The clock works for her, not the other way around.
Thanks to the Find a Friend App, I found Sausage coming out of Chiswick’s Tesco with a supply of Quavers. (Whenever in the UK, she stocks up on her favourite potato starch snack).
We wandered down to Lettuce’s flat, where Amy joined us. The four of us went to the same catholic girl’s school, so no matter how different we are as adults, we are bound together by memories of singing Ave Maria every Monday morning.
Lettuce, like the rest of us, lives alone and has made the space her own with a colour palette of creams and burnt orange. She had made an ambience with scented candles and Justin Timberlake’s acoustic set. I KNOW WE’RE SHOWING OUR AGE.
Her cream sofa and rug matched her cream Chihuahua named Effie, who took a fierce dislike to me from the moment I appeared at the doorstep. She followed me around and barked and barked as if shouting, Who are you? Who are you, bitch? Get out. Get out. Get out. Intruder! Intruder!”
It can make you feel self-conscious when a dog singles you out like that, like when a baby starts to cry when you hold them. It’s as if they can sense something is deeply wrong with you.
We sat in the living room with tea and spoke about girls we went to school with. Meanwhile, Effie was still yapping at my feet.
“Isn’t she married now?
Get out! Get out! Get out! Get out!
“Everyone is married now.”
Get out! Get out! Get out! Get out!
“Apart from us…”
Get out! Get out! Get out! Get out!
Before the fluffy demon could bark itself to death, we left the flat and went to the High Road Brasserie for brunch. It took us time to scout out the table because Lettuce has an ick about sitting close to a restroom or even having it in her eyeline. “If I’m paying to eat toast, I don’t need to see that.” We finally settled on a table around the corner and ordered three normal fry-ups, extra beans and no black pudding. And my plant-based fry-up with extra mushrooms. Love me some mushrooms.
Our conversations had moved on from the girls at school to our dating lives. We are all single in our early thirties and unsure what to think about it. Is it good or bad? Is it us or them? One thing is for sure: as time passes and we get more settled in our routines and sea-salted scented flats, it’s becoming increasingly less appealing to have to adjust to someone else’s needs.
“Like, what shall we have dinner?!” Amy piped up. “I don’t want to have to have a joint decision of what to eat. You eat what you want to eat, and I’ll eat what I want to eat!” she said, exasperated.
Speaking of food, our fry-ups had arrived.
“You want him to have the pick of the bunch, but he picks you,” Sausage said, waving her fork in the air.
“That doesn’t happen,” I argued.
“It does!” Sausage snapped back. “It happened to my friend. Her husband saw her from across the room and fell in love with her straight away.”
“He did not…”
“Did too!”
Lettuce interrupted the dispute by showing us a footballer’s Instagram page.
“We’re DM-ing each other,” she announced. The three of us squinted at a beautiful (10 years younger) man in a red kit.
“Does he play for Liverpool?” I asked.
“Not sure,” Lettuce said, inspecting the photo for clues. “Amy, who does he play for?”
Amy, who worked in the FA for a few years, glanced at the photo and said, “Belgium.”
“Ooh,” we said in a chorus.
“So, shall I date him?” Lettuce asked.
“No Lettuce!” we said in unison.
She put her phone away and sighed. “See, the thing is,” she said. “I don’t know what way to go. Do I go for the director or the actor? The businessman or the artist? The coach or the footballer?” As Lettuce listed her options, I realised her dating pool differed somewhat from mine in Oxford. Do I go for the theologian or the scientist?
The thing about being single in your 30s is that you don’t know what way you’re going to go. Who you may end up with, or if you’re going to end up with anyone at all. You don’t know if this is it; this is your life. You have arrived. The traditional family life that you had always expected is not going to materialise. And so even though there is happiness, it’s in a different way.
Or maybe not. Maybe tomorrow, you’ll walk into your coffee shop, and someone is there, waiting to change the path. (Someone Amy wouldn’t mind discussing her dinners with). And if that were to happen, we might look back at this time in our lives as if it was just a layover before a new journey began.
Sausage needed to leave to catch her flight. We went to Ealing Broadway and stood on opposite platforms, waiting for our trains. She was taking the Lilly line to Terminal 5. I was going to Paddington. My train arrived first, and we waved furiously at each other from across the tracks until the train got in the way.
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