Articles Available Online

Owen’s room was clean and his laugh genuine and he’d roll you a smoke He was thirty-three, and had a broken wind chime spelling LOVE hanging from his wardrobe door   We lived in a shared house in London that was cheap because it was sinking You couldn’t tell from the inside, but looking out of the window told a different story The plastic flamingos staked in the garden soil were slanted, as if one of their pink legs was shorter than the other The house had been a funeral parlour, and retained its Victorian shop-front covered in yellowing newspaper You could read about the millennium bug in screaming black capitals; or peruse adverts for purebred puppies that had long since been put to sleep     I was the last to move in and got the smallest room The man-and-van man solemnly carried my life upstairs in boxes, avoiding the eyes of passing residents I followed him in and did the same I was twenty-six, jobless, with mildly webbed toes I listed these ailments aloud and let them hang in the air above my single bed At night, I listened to my neighbours shagging then arguing – make-up sexing in reverse   I’d moved to London a year earlier, assuming I’d quickly become a successful model I knew deep down I was too old, but I’d read in a dentist’s sticky waiting room magazine that Isabella Rossellini didn’t start her modelling career until she was twenty-eight With two new silver fillings and a still-numb mouth, I cut and dyed my mousy hair into an orange bob and shaved my eyebrows off I hoped my newfound edginess would hide my heart face, my five feet and seven inches   I fucked creeps with homemade tattoos who never texted back I bought shit coke and befriended posh girls with