I can do it in my head before the kettle boils
Drinks. Cab. Extra pizza. That top I did not need and still wore like it was going to change my life. The total lands while I am still in last night’s mascara, standing in the kitchen in a T-shirt that smells like someone else’s perfume and a bit of the night bus.
My maths degree arrives far too late. Usually only after the card has already gone.
That is the joke of me. I can count pallets and rotas and someone else’s stock discrepancy before breakfast. Give me a night out and my brain clocks off like it has earned a break. Then Sunday comes and she is back, smug, with a calculator and no sympathy.
The sum starts before I even leave
People think the damage happens at 1am. It does not. It starts in the bathroom mirror, when I decide the jumper I already own is not the one. When I talk myself into the top that makes my chest look like a plan. When I tell the flat I am only popping out.
Only popping out is how I lie to myself in a voice that sounds very reasonable. One drink. Early night. Work in the morning, sort of. I say it like a woman with a promotion on her mind. Then I put on more lip and the lie gets dressed too.
There is always a reason. Someone is in town. Someone had a shit week. I had a shit week. The weather finally stopped being tragic for five minutes. London gives you a window and you jump through it because if you wait for a cheap night you will die indoors with good intentions and a full fridge.
Drinks, and the bit where I get generous
First round is fine. First round is budgeted, in the loose way I budget, which is me glancing at my balance on Thursday and deciding I can be a person until Monday.
Second round is where I start buying people things. Not because I am loaded. Because I hate the feeling of being the one who sits there while someone else taps. Pride is expensive. So is being liked. I know how that sounds. I still do it.
Pints that used to feel like nothing now feel like a decision. Doubles are a small crime. I watch the card machine ask for a tip like it knows I am already in too deep and would like a little extra, thanks. I tap anyway. I smile at the bloke. I tell myself I will switch to tap water after this one and then I do not, because tap water in a loud room makes me feel like I came to supervise.
I can add that bit up later in seconds. Three drinks. Then four. Then the one I do not remember agreeing to. The number is always uglier than the night felt while I was in it.
The cab I swore I would not get
I know the night bus exists. I have stood at that stop in trainers under a dress, telling myself I am being sensible. I have also stood there, feet gone, makeup sliding, and decided I would rather sell a kidney than do forty minutes of fluorescent lighting and a man eating crisps too close to my shoulder.
The cab is never just the cab. It is the relief of a door shutting. It is not having to clock who is on the top deck. It is paying not to think. By the time the pin goes in I have already justified it three ways. Safety. Time. I work tomorrow. I earned this. All of that is true and none of it makes the fare smaller.
London cabs have a gift for landing on a number that feels personal. You look at it and think, you what? Then you pay it because the alternative is standing in the cold doing the moral maths while your feet file a complaint.
Extra pizza, because of course
I do not need pizza. That is the whole point of extra pizza. Nobody needs it. You want it because the night is ending and your body wants a last little prize for surviving itself.
I will sit on my bed with the box open like a crime scene and tell myself this is the cheap bit. Compared to the drinks it is. Compared to rent it is a joke. Compared to the version of me who was going to be good this month, it is another brick on the pile.
In the morning the box is still there. That is the receipt I cannot hide from the flat. They do not need to see my banking app. They can see the cardboard.
The top I did not need
This is the one that stings in a different way. The drinks at least happened to me in public. The top was a choice I made sober, or close enough, in a shop that smelled like perfume and poor decisions.
I held it up and did the thing I always do. I looked in the mirror like the girl in the glass was someone I could afford. She looked ready. She looked like the night might go her way. She did not look like a warehouse manager splitting a flat and waiting on a raise.
That is the spell. Pretty things help me fake being fine. A new top is cheaper than a new life and quicker than a promotion. I know what I am doing. I still tap the card like the future will sort the rest.
Then I wear it once, maybe twice, and it lives on the chair with the other versions of me I was going to be.
How fast the total arrives
Here is the talent nobody asked for. I can run the night in my head in the time it takes to unlock my phone.
Drinks. Say sixty, if I am being kind to myself. Cab. Another twenty five, thirty if he took the scenic route through my poor choices. Pizza. Twelve, because I added garlic bread like a woman with no enemies. The top. Forty. More, if I am honest and I am trying to be.
It is over a hundred before I have even opened the app. Sometimes nearer two. The app just confirms what I already know. My degree shows up like a late guest who still wants credit for coming.
I used to think being good with numbers would make me good with money. Different skill. One is counting. The other is stopping. I can do the first in my sleep. The second needs a version of me who can sit in the flat on a Friday and not feel like life is happening somewhere else.
The banking app hangover
Physical hangover I can handle. Water, toast, something on in the background, pretend I am a person. The money hangover is quieter and ruder. It sits on the sofa with you. It watches you make tea. It says, again?
I open the app even though I have already done the sum. I want the number to be smaller than the one in my head. It never is. Sometimes it is worse because I forgot the tap I did at the start, the little pre-drink that felt like nothing.
There is a special kind of shame in being thirty and still doing this. Not teenager shame. Adult shame. The kind where you have a job and a degree and a face that looks like it has a handle on things, and your outgoing list reads like a girl who cannot sit still.
I am not broke in a dramatic way. That would almost be cleaner. I am the other thing. Tight. Calculating. Fine until Friday. Then I spend like I am trying to buy a feeling off the till.
What I tell myself I am paying for
It is not just alcohol. If it was just alcohol I could stay in with a bottle and a show and call it a night. I go out because I want to be looked at. I want noise. I want the chance that someone laughs at the right time and the night tilts.
Sometimes it is a flatmate’s birthday and you cannot be the one who stays home with a spreadsheet. Sometimes it is a man who might text and might not, and I would rather be in a room than refresh a chat. Sometimes I am just knackered from the floor and I want my body to belong to me for a few hours, not to a rota.
I can add the pounds up in seconds. I cannot add up the bit where I felt chosen for twenty minutes. That does not go in the app. That is why I keep paying.
Does that make it worth it? Some mornings yes. Most mornings I look at the total and think I could have put that towards being less frightened of my own rent.
I know what I should do
Pre-drinks at home. Cash only. No extra top. Night bus. Leftovers. I have given myself this speech so many times I could laminate it and stick it to the fridge next to someone else’s milk.
It works until a voice note says out. Then the plan folds like it was never serious. FOMO spends faster than rent does. I say that like it is funny because if I say it straight it sounds like I have no spine.
The promotion is supposed to fix this. That is the story I tell myself on shift. More money, less maths in the back of a cab. Maybe. Or I will just become a woman who spends the same and worries in a nicer jacket. I have met that woman. She looks a lot like me with better lighting.
The bit I am actually trying to learn
Adding it up is not the problem. I am gifted at the autopsy. I can tell you where every pound went and what mood I was in when it left. What I am bad at is the five seconds before I tap.
That is the gap. Card out, brain off, girl in the mirror still selling me the night. By the time the degree shows up, the night is already a list.
I do not think I am going to become a saint about this. I like going out. I like looking like I have somewhere to be. I like pizza at the wrong hour. I am not going to pretend I want a life made of herbal tea and a savings pot with a cute name.
I do want to stop being shocked by a sum I can do in seconds. That part is getting old. The surprise is fake. I know what a night costs in this city. I knew it when I left the bathroom. I just decided the girl going out was more important than the one who would have to count it in the morning.
She always is, until she is not. Then it is me in the kitchen, doing the arithmetic too late, licking garlic off my thumb, checking the app like it might apologise.
It does not. It just shows me the night in numbers. Drinks. Cab. Extra pizza. The top I did not need. All of it already gone. And me, still good at maths, still rubbish at stopping, still telling myself next time I will leave when I said I would.
Next time is very convincing. Next time always is. I will probably still add it up in seconds. I would just like, for once, to do the sum while I still have a choice.
Keywords: money, nightlife, London, budgeting, overspending, taxis, drinks, pizza, fashion, regret, payday, hangover, savings, promotion, rent, impulse, banking, nights, maths, pride
