The door shuts and that is it
The night is still going on behind me, music leaking out onto the pavement like it has not got the memo, and I am already in the back seat with my bag on my lap counting how long I can keep my shoes on.
I do the whole thank you, yeah this is fine, left at the lights please. Then I stop talking. Not in a mysterious way. In a lights-off way. The performance has a radius, and it ends at the seatbelt.
People think the night finishes when you leave. It does not. It finishes in the cab, when there is nobody left to be fun for.
I am still doing the face
I catch myself in the window before I have even decided to look. That is the habit. Every reflective surface, every chance. Club lighting is a liar. Cab lighting is a witness.
Lipstick has migrated. One eye has given up. My hair has the specific frizz of a woman who started the evening thinking she looked expensive and is now just hoping the driver does not turn the overhead on. I still clock it. I still tidy a bit with my little finger like that is going to save anything.
It is daft. I know it is daft. I also know I would feel worse if I did not look. The face is the bit I can control. If the face is still on, I can pretend I am still in the version of the night where I was winning.
Winning at what, I could not tell you. Looking like I meant to be there, I suppose.
My feet have filed a complaint
I always pack trainers. I do not always put them on when I should. Pride has a half life, and mine usually expires three streets too late.
By the time I am in the cab my little toes have gone numb in that pointed way that means I will be walking the warehouse floor tomorrow like I have aged forty years overnight. I take one shoe off. Then I put it back on because the floor of a London cab at one in the morning is not a place you want your tights meeting.
This is the part nobody puts on the story. Not the drink. Not the look across the room. The private negotiation with your own feet while a stranger drives you home and the meter does that little jump that makes your maths degree sit up in the back of your skull.
I add it up without meaning to. Drinks. The round I should not have got. The extra pizza that never arrived. This fare. I can do it in seconds. I always can. It never makes me get out and walk.
The driver gets the polite version
I am good in cabs, I will give myself that. I say the address clearly. I do not start a life story. I do not cry. I do not ask him what he thinks about men.
If he talks, I do the short answers. Long day? Yeah. You been busy? A bit. That is the whole show. I have had the other kind of night, the one where I am still performing for the man behind the wheel because silence feels rude. Not this one. This one I have already spent everything I had on people who were actually invited.
There is a smell these cars get. Air freshener fighting last passenger. A bit of rain on the mats. I crack the window even when it is cold because I want the city to come in and remind me I am still in it, not just in my own head with a card machine beeping.
London looks different from the back seat. Emptier. Kinder, weirdly. Shopfronts you would not glance at at six o clock look almost soft. I watch a fox trot out of an alley like it pays rent. I nearly say something about it. I do not.
This is when I replay the exit I missed
It starts as nothing. A street I recognise. A song on the radio I do not ask him to change. Then my brain puts the night back on like a tape it has already decided to hate.
Should have left after the second place. Should have said no to the last round. Should have gone when she went for chips. Should have not leaned in for that look I knew was going nowhere except my phone at 3am if I am unlucky, and nowhere at all if I am not.
I do this every time. I pick the exact doorway I should have walked through and I stand there in my head being a more sensible woman. Warehouse Ellie. Promotion Ellie. The one who has an early rota and a colour coded budget and does not treat a Friday like it is going to fix the week.
Cab Ellie has notes. Cab Ellie is very wise. Cab Ellie would like a word with the girl who laughed too loud by the speakers and decided one more would be fine.
The stupid part is I can feel both of them in the same body. The one who had a good time and the one who is already writing the edit for Monday. Neither of them shuts up until the flat is in sight.
Fun, apparently
I will still call it a good night. That is the rule. If I got home, if nobody cried in a way that needs a meeting, if I did not spend money I physically do not have, it goes in the fun column.
Fun is a wide column in my life. It has to be. Otherwise I would stay in and think, and thinking in a small London bedroom with two flatmates through the wall is how you start wanting a boyfriend out loud. I do not do that. I do nights. I do the face. I do the cab.
There was a point, earlier, when it was actually good. I need to keep that bit or the whole thing turns into a lecture I am giving myself in someone else’s car. The lighting was decent. Someone was funny. I felt chosen for twenty minutes, which is not nothing. Then I stayed past the feeling, which is the classic.
I always stay past the feeling. That is my talent. I can sense the peak and I treat it like an invitation to keep digging.
Phone in my hand, not doing anything useful
I open messages. I close them. I open the camera and do not take a photo because I already know what I look like and I do not need the evidence.
If he is going to text, he will text. If he is not, the cab will not change that. I know this. I still keep the screen tilted so the driver cannot see me being a cliché.
Sometimes I write a voice note to a flatmate and do not send it. Just to hear myself still sounding like Els. Bright. A bit smug. The version that left the house with a playlist in her ears and a plan to only have one.
The unsent ones are more honest. Feet are gone. Should have left. Why do I do this. Then I delete them because even my drafts have pride.
The fare is a character test
I watch the number climb and do that thing where I tell myself it is safety. It is safety. It is also me refusing the night bus because I cannot be bothered to be looked at under those lights with my makeup sliding and my mouth still a bit reckless.
Dignity has a price. In this city it is usually twenty something plus the extra because of traffic that should not exist at this hour and somehow does.
I tip if he has been decent. I do not narrate it. I just want the door open and the transaction over before I have to make more small talk with my shoes in my hand.
There is a particular guilt that only happens when you are nearly home and you realise you could have afforded this less than you pretended at 11pm. I put it next to the promotion in my head. Future Ellie will have a buffer. Present Ellie has a card and a hope.
The flat is a different country
Keys. Hallway light I always forget is brutal. The quiet of other people’s sleep.
I am louder than I mean to be taking my shoes off. I always am. Then I go still again, same as the cab, because the house has that held-breath feeling and I do not want to be the girl who brings the whole night in with her.
Bathroom first. Always. Mirror, proper one, no streetlights lying for me. I take the face off like a decision. That is the real end. Not the club. Not the pavement. The cotton pad.
I look younger without it, and also rougher, which is a combination I have never known what to do with. I mouth something stupid at myself. Alright. Get in.
Kettle is too noisy. I have water from the tap like a person who has given up. I sit on the edge of my bed with the street still in my ears and try to decide if I am happy or just empty with good lighting residue.
Both, probably. That is allowed. I do not have to pick a caption for it.
I will do it again
That is the honest last line, even if it sounds like a problem. I will do it again because the leaving-the-house bit still works on me. Hair done. Smirk on. The belief that tonight might be the one that does not need an edit in the back seat.
Sometimes it does not. Sometimes I get in the cab still humming and I do not replay a single doorway. Those are the nights I forget to write down. The other ones stick. The quiet ones. The window ones.
I call it fun anyway. Not because I am lying to you. Because if I call it what it also is, a little expensive disappearing act I run on myself, I might stay in, and staying in is where the wanting starts. Wanting a door that is only mine. Wanting someone who texts when the cab door shuts. Wanting the kind of night that does not need a performance to survive the journey home.
For now I have this. Sore feet. A face in the glass. A driver I will not remember. A story I will tidy for work.
And the quiet. That bit I do not tidy. That bit is mine.
