It was mid-afternoon by the time I pulled up outside a house I’d thus far only seen in pictures. A two story, tidy Victorian house-share in Clapham with on-street parking. A bit of a unicorn for the area.
I’d lived not far from here the first time I’d lived in London – before my life changed irrevocably.
I stood on the pavement for a moment, looking up at the house as wind tousled my hair around my face. Taking a deep breath, I walked up the short, tiled pathway to the front door before knocking.
It was opened a few moments later.
“Kaiya?”
The young woman who opened the door had a pretty, unassuming face as she looked me over.
“Hello,” I said, with an awkward wave.
The young woman smiled and pushed her glasses back up her nose.
“Come in. I’m Harinder – Hari. We spoke on the phone.”
Hari opened the door wider, moving aside to let me in, and I stepped over the threshold.
She led me through the house, showing me the communal areas, the bedrooms and finally to the room at the top of the stairs. My room.
It was a four bedroom house and I was renting one of the double rooms. The other rooms were occupied by Hari and two other young women -
“Moni and June,” Hari pointed out the two women sitting in the living room, who’d looked up as we passed.
The other girls had watched me curiously as Hari led me around the house. It reminded me of freshers week at university when we went around the dorms, shyly introducing ourselves, while all I’d wanted to do was get settled in my new room.
Later, to welcome me to the house, we ordered pizza and opened a bottle of wine. I’d been asked my preference for dinner, and I had tried not to notice the weird looks when I’d, too enthusiastically, shot down the idea of fried chicken and beers.
It turned out the house belonged to Hari’s Grandma, but she was too old to manage the big house on her own, so she’d moved in with Hari’s parents, and rented her house to pay for her medical needs.
Hari, June and Moni had met at university, where they were all on the same Bio-Med course. I was taking the room of another friend of theirs, who’d moved out to live with her boyfriend, apparently.
“So you lived in LA?” Moni asked, taking a sip of wine before pulling a face and putting her glass down.
“For just under a year, yeah.”
I tried to act nonchalant with three people intently staring at me.
“Why did you leave?” She asked.
I shrugged. “I met a boy.”
They all made ‘ooh’ noises and grinned at me as if we were five minutes away from singing karaoke into hairbrushes. Even though I was feeling a little cynical, I smiled.
“What happened then?” Moni prompted, leaning forward to eat her pizza over the box.
“Well, I left LA and moved with him. To Korea.”
I’d considered lying, but it was all over my blog anyway. Hari had admitted she’d Googled me. I’d been more surprised that I could be Googled, than by the fact she had done so.
“Korea?” June wrinkled her nose. “North, or South?”
She let out a snorting sort of hiccup that I took to be a giggle, while I tried not to grind my teeth as I feigned a grin.
“Ha ha, yeah. Good one,” I said, but no one was really paying attention to my reaction, which was probably for the best.
“So, anyway, I was in Seoul for a few months, and then I moved back to the UK just before lockdown.”
