Eden Spence is a writer of literary fiction and journalism. Her work is character focused, interested in how themes of the body, economy and aesthetics intersect in the lives of young women. Eden graduated from the University of Exeter with a First Class in English and has an MA in Photojournalism from the London College of Communication. Below is an extract from Eden’s novel in development.
Email: edenespence@gmail.com
Instagram: @edenespence
Chapter One
Elliot rolled, so that it was his face, patterned with the pillow’s creases, instead of the pink fin of his back in Eva’s eyeline. The mattress was lumpy and spring-loose, so as he shifted, Eva was dumped into the indent beside him. She adjusted to press herself against the wiry, blonde coils on Elliot’s chest, but he placed his two palms against her collarbones, guarding the space between them. His expression was difficult to interpret. Without his glasses, Elliot’s eyes were liquidy and unfocused. But, before he’d finished saying, “I’ve been thinking,” Eva knew that his next sentence would reveal something she’d dislike. Her nakedness suddenly felt painful and embarrassing. She tugged her knees in front of her chest and felt around the sheets for her discarded underwear. Elliot had decided, he said, “the best thing we can be for each other, just now, is friends.”
That was a revelation. For two and a half months Eva had accepted the truth as she found it: his favourite thing about me is fucking me. Elliot didn’t seem to mind how Eva passed her days before landing in his bed. And when she arrived, he was normally preoccupied with what combination she’d like to fill the smudged glass he’d extracted from the sink. He didn’t try to unpack her. Their conversations were remote and impersonal, that was his appeal.
Elliot had gotten up, stepped into a pair of grey sweatpants and was gulping from the amber bottle that lived on his jumbled bedside. His features crumpled as the rum soaked his tongue. The lamp’s unshaded bulb was switched on, casting a crisp spotlight against the yellow wall. “It’s difficult for me,” he said, circling his thumb around the bottle’s neck, “watching you wither away like this.” Eva extinguished herself in the duvet and pressed her lips. She wanted him to say everything without the benefit of her scaffolding between his hesitations- if he was cutting her off, Eva certainly wasn’t going to give him the words. ‘Withered’ sounded saccharine in Elliot’s mouth- alien, artificial and not quite true. It was obvious that he’d rehearsed this conversation with somebody beforehand, workshopped a script.
“I feel faint,” Eva said, after the silence started to grate. Elliot told her to put her head between her knees, like a school nurse. He wasn’t even watching. She looked down at the floorboards and her hair fell forward like mown flax, curtaining her face. It was too late for the tube; Eva began calculating the hour-and-a-bit journey she’d need to make on the night bus to get home.
Once her light-headedness passed, Eva righted herself and found Elliot beside the tall, industrial-style window blowing smoke over the rooftops. A plane’s red landing light blinked across the patch of sky visible behind him. Expansive chest falling to a neat, cinched waist; long, wedge feet and loggish arms. Elliot looked like he belonged in water. “Okay. Cool. I understand,” Eva said, “but it’s a real drama to get home now. Would it be okay if I crash here?” Elliot grinned.
“Sure, I’ll take the couch,” he said, padding over to the depressed hunk of criss-cross fabric and spilling foam. His studio was tight, a single room sliced by a diagonal ceiling. The end of his mattress butted-up against the couch’s arm, so banishing himself from the bed only achieved a performative separation. “Have you been thinking about this for a bit?” Eva asked as Elliot lay down. She’d imagined sounding unphased, untouchable, but her words came out thinly, as though she was sick. Elliot drummed his fingers on his taught stomach and stared at the motionless ceiling fan.
“I thought we’d agreed, neither of us were ready for more than casual. We were on the same page. If I’d known you wanted more, I’d have ended things before now.” That was true, just before the first time they’d had sex, Elliot mumbled into Eva’s ear that he didn’t have enough time on his hands for a committed relationship, would that be okay for her? Eva had agreed to be satisfied with his leftover time and attention. She wasn’t sure when she’d permitted herself to stop believing that she was disposable, Elliot certainly hadn’t said as much. It just seemed natural that given enough time, affection would sprout alongside his desire. Relationships didn’t seem to be something Eva could pen into a particular time of the week, nor could she ration her feelings according to how much time was available. It surprised her that other people could limit these things.
“I’m not saying I expected more, I’m wondering how long you’ve been tapped out. I hadn’t noticed,” Eva replied. “But never mind, I’m tired.” She’d realised curiosity was tantamount to self-sabotage- it’d only sting to learn exactly how Elliot had arrived at ‘no longer interested’. He made an appreciative grunt, which swiftly rolled into purring snores. He’s pleased with me, Eva realised, glad that I’m keeping things tidy instead of spiralling off. Disappointing; Elliot unironically claimed to value authenticity above all else, eye-rolled at people he suspected of ‘faking it’ for attention.
Eva cut the light. She didn’t understand, or more accurately, hadn’t realised Elliot had been watching her closely enough to notice something was wrong. She felt more dissected than flattered. Ash, her landlord, had introduced them a few months earlier, when Elliot appeared at an otherwise unremarkable gathering at their place. Ash had explained over the music, with her arm slung around Elliot’s shoulders, that he was a friend of hers from Bristol, recently relocated to London to initiate his serious adult life. Though Elliot was older, Eva had laid down the cards, gaining on the admiring glance he’d shot her through a puff of smoke from the roll-up between his teeth. Initially she’d found it charming, how he preferred grainy, arthouse films and read a paper copy of the Guardian each morning instead of doom scrolling Twitter. Eventually she figured that he enjoyed slipping these facts into conversation more than the actual doing.
Eva stretched into the space framing her on the mattress. She imagined herself a white outline on concrete, the vacant patch where a body fit into a crime scene. Elliot’s cringing devotion to his mediocre start-up, coupled with the beige opinions that he lifted from personal development podcasts had saved Eva from falling really in love, but she knew she’d miss the lukewarm comfort of his tenting arms and felt idiotic for not predicting their unreliability. As Elliot’s breaths lengthened, Eva wondered if he would let her, one more time, worm into his armpit so she could feel his weight bear down on her while they slept. She didn’t dare try.
As soon as the grey dawn started leaking around the curtains, Eva gathered her things; in the quiet room, she could hear the microscopic patter of raindrops puddling on the roofs outside. Her mesh t-shirt was flimsy and cropped, so she hastily smuggled Elliot’s navy puffer off its hook. Petty, maybe, but a new coat would be expensive.
The high-street was just waking-up, steel shutters peeled upwards and the baking smell of sausage rolls and coffee grounds wafted out of the caffs. With her headphones stuffing out the noise, Eva felt like a ghost, veiled and transparent, as she passed along the street. A mixture of yawning, hunching, iphone-tappers swarmed the station. Eva muttered a prayer that her Oyster would let her tap-through without showing a minus figure. On the platform, she noticed a woman redirecting her daughter’s attention, while flashing Eva a bleeding look. With her rumpled jeans and mascara flakes dusting her cheekbones, there was no hiding the fact that she was headed home from the night before.
Inside her flat, the mechanical whir of the blender struck as soon as Eva opened the front door. Her room was through the kitchen, no chance of slipping by undetected. “Eva, is that you?” Ash called down the hall. Perched on a barstool in silky shorts and a fringed robe, she gave the impression of a hatched butterfly, fragile and dishevelled, beautiful and vain. She was using one hand to hold her green smoothie and the other to absentmindedly pet the silvery kitten on her lap. “I didn’t know you were staying out,” Ash cast Eva an arched brow as she entered the kitchen. “I thought we agreed to let each other know.” The ominous tone of her previous months’ tarot reading had left Ash even more fanatical than usual.
“Sorry. Elliot dumped me, if that saves you the need to design further punishment,” Eva played for pity. Ash sighed and tucked a short, blonde tendril behind her ear. “Yes, he mentioned that.” As Eva had suspected. She and Ash weren’t friends per se; Eva had moved into Ash’s box room a year ago, because she’d been owed a favour from the girl who’d lived there last. That girl gave her a recommendation, Eva moved in, and Ash had been implying she regretted it ever since. Nevertheless, two women living within seven hundred square-metres, a degree of entanglement was inevitable.
“Cheers for the warning then.” Eva switched on the kettle, then opened and closed the fridge door without taking anything. Ash responded, guilt and concern undetectable, “I didn’t know how to broach it. He said he was worried about you.”
In fairness, Ash had warned her. As soon as she’d cottoned-on to Eva’s interest in her old friend, Ash had told her that Elliot would never be serious about someone who ‘lacked ambition and structure’. Eva had been curious to know how a person could lack structure, as if her skeleton was somehow deficient. The kitten leapt down and began batting Eva’s ankles while she dumped coffee granules into a mug. The jar was down to dregs. Silence hung for a few beats before Ash asked, non committedly, while inspecting her cuticles, if she was alright. “Of course. I’ve told you. It wasn’t deep with him,” Eva replied, and Ash nodded approvingly- she herself had disavowed relationships in favour of arrangements a while ago.
“Good. So, you won’t think I’m a bitch for mentioning your rent, again.” Eva regretted lingering in the kitchen, focused on dissolving the coffee with her spoon. She responded vaguely, “I’ve already told you, I’m on it.” That wasn’t strictly true. Ash crossed her arms and swung her left leg over her right, she looked like a pissed-off Tinkerbell. “Eva. In a completely serious and non-negotiable way, I need to see cash this weekend.”
They often disputed how urgently Eva needed to make good on her payments. The flat belonged to Ash’s eccentric New York aunt, who’d basically forgotten she owned the place. Ash transferred pittance each month, then used most of Eva’s contribution to buy roses and organic vegetables from the market. Besides, Ash had a lucrative gig hosting in Soho. Meanwhile, Eva was penniless and had burnt-through all the meagre generosity she’d ever received from family. Her grandmother’s inheritance had kept her ticking since her student loans were subtracted, but now that was gone too- a fact Ash knew just as bluntly. “I’m not keeping anything from you.” This initiated Ash’s chirping lecture, that if she decided to open a women’s refuge, she’d let Eva know, but in the meantime… Eva tracked the pellets of rain sliding and merging on the window. It was humiliating, this condition of dependency. Like a rag, drifting between people who’d managed to establish, or been bestowed with roots, assurance, a place that belonged to them. The kitten began testing her sharp, flexible claws against Eva’s calves, throwing her attention back into the conversation.
Ash sounded exasperated, “I’ll wait an extra fortnight, if you promise to cover the bar on Wednesday.” There were few things Eva wished to do less. She despised the heady, florid club where Ash hosted. Jupiter’s was a haughty, phones-off establishment, where London’s finest debauchees showed up to be noticed, and have a free pass to do things that’d raise a scandal elsewhere. Yet, she was cornered. As Ash frequently lectured, money wouldn’t appear under her pillow overnight. Eva’s eye sockets were beginning to feel tight and floating white tufts speckled her vision- pain wouldn’t be far behind. “Sure, thanks.” Coffee in-hand, Eva reached for her bedroom door. Ash seemed to soften, “Don’t you want breakfast? There’s smoothie leftovers.”
Eva shook her head, “Don’t worry. I’m desperate for a bath.” She closed her door on the conversation before further critique could be offered. Eva’s space was cluttered, not because she owned very much, but everything that did belong to her shared that box room- a life-sized game of tetras. Unlike other nest-fliers she knew, Eva didn’t have a childhood bedroom preserved for her, like a shrine to an absentee god. She rummaged for a towel, soap, hairbrush.
Inside the bathroom, Eva didn’t switch on the lights. Her impending migraine had begun really probing her eye-sockets. She sat on the toilet seat while the long-necked, Victorian taps filled the swooping basin. She couldn’t be bothered to wait for hot water, the bath was the same temperature as the air, so her skin immediately prickled. Fine, transparent hairs on her arms and legs stood to attention. As she leaned back, the nodules of her spine rubbed against the enamel. Eva pushed her head under the water and winced as the coolness of it lapped over her chest and face. With her eyes screwed shut it was black, except for the psychic explosions of colour that began to throb inside Eva’s mind. She concentrated on annihilation, held her breath until her lungs started to burn. After a few minutes, before she could blackout, instinct propelled her upwards and she gasped like a newborn once she found air. Eva remembered playing the breath-holding game as a little girl, except back then, when her mum complained, she told her it was because she was practising to swim with whales.
Chapter Two
Ash blew around the corner into the alleyway, told Eva and Jamie their break was beyond finished and demanded to know why the bottle fountain wasn’t ready in the VIP section. They stamped-out their cigarettes and Jamie said in his sweet, lilting Newcastle accent, “aye, I can see she’d be a tough one to live with.” If Eva had to endure a shift at Jupiter’s, she was glad Jamie was there to suffer in solidarity. He was a dainty, charming Fashion Communication student who Eva had tucked underwing. They want to devour him like a peach, she’d often thought of the oily men surveying the bar, whose raw sausage fingers oozed out of golden rings.
Eva allowed herself a glance at her messages while Jamie disappeared through the backdoor. No unreads. Elliot had been blocked, unblocked and reblocked several times since the night he cut Eva loose, and each time she unbarred his contact, a mean slither of optimism led her to anticipate a flock of ‘forgive mes’ that never arrived.
Upstairs, the first guests were preening in the mirror room, a flock of heron-legged girls in bandage dresses, who’d arrived distastefully early to avoid the harsher entrance requirements after midnight. Ash ruled the door like a harpy, admittance only by recognition or a considerable bottle spend. Eva and Jamie poured themselves a furtive drink and clinked glasses between the steel shelves in the storeroom. Jupiter’s occupied a single floor that was reached by a stairwell, like a gold, twisted spine, from street level. The main room was a circle, orbiting around a cabaret stage that was flagged by velveteen sofas. A spattering of dance poles punctuated the ceiling and booths around the circumference provided a degree of seclusion. The décor was hot and flushed, like a harlot’s boudoir.
As the floor filled-up, performers in sequin leotards begun twirling from the ceiling in hoops; a fire-eater took to the stage in gleaming, beetle latex. Heckles and gasps emanated from the tables, while those dancing congratulated each other’s undulating, shivering bodies- a shoal responding to the rhythm as one.
Meanwhile, Eva and Jamie chased after clicking fingers and demands for ‘more, now’. This can’t be so different from working in a nursery, Eva thought, chasing after beings who refused to communicate with please or patience. Jamie exited the men’s bathrooms looking sweaty and puddle green. “Absolute creatures,” he muttered, while unpeeling his marigolds into the bin. As her feet swelled and the muscles around her mouth begun to ache from her customer-service grin, Eva rested her attention on a spaniel-eyed girl fidgeting with the hem of her dress. She lowered the average age of her table by decades, the only woman in the group. It made Eva anxious. Mostly, the girl was ignored- still as a painting, except occasionally she’d be petted or have her glass replenished. Still, she kept smiling, continued twisting her fingers beneath the table. Eva jabbed Jamie in the ribs and gestured towards the group, “does that look right to you?” Jamie shrugged.
“She can’t be having a worse time than we are, and probably doing better out of it too,” he said. Eva wondered the trick she was missing, was that power? She glanced towards the girl again and decided that she didn’t look afraid, only impassive- like her thoughts were somewhere detached from her body. With practised form, Eva’s hand found the glass she’d tucked beneath the till. As she drained it, she found herself regretting the decision to skip dinner for a cereal bar en route. She could almost feel the alcohol bruising her unlined stomach.
Gifts, money, influence, security, it wasn’t like Eva didn’t care for, or need, any of those things, but when she tried to visualise herself in that girl’s position: old men’s spearmint breath on her neck as they whispered patronising flirts, Eva’s imagination recoiled. Though she supposed it might be desirable, if she dismissed Greer and Millett from her consciousness, the promise of things being taken care of. The requirement to do nothing but maintain appearances, and remind someone how much he was needed. But Eva knew she would choke on the silence, speaking without an invitation came too naturally. She watched one of the greying men sidle himself right next to the girl, until their bodies were jigsaw-pieced together. He reached inside his jacket, removed an iphone and used it to take a selfie of the two of them. As he raised his arm, Eva could see a circle of sweat soaking the fabric of his pit.
“You’re very striking,” the voice that penetrated Eva’s thoughts belonged to a woman with a pixie-crop and elegant spiderweb creases around her eyes. Stacks of silver bangles chimed on her wrists, and substantial gemstone earrings stretched-out her lobes- more bohemian looking than the regular crowd at Jupiter’s. “Seriously, have you ever considered modelling?” Eva had, and it hadn’t worked out. But she didn’t say this out loud, it seemed ungracious, repaying a compliment from a stranger with her personal disappointments. Instead, Eva restored her painted smile and handed over a cocktail menu.
Undeterred, the woman continued, “I’m an artist, Melonie George. I tutor figurative drawing too.” Eva’s mind reached, trying to align the facts: hippie, artist, teacher- Melonie was nothing like the scouters she’d encountered before. Once, when she was fourteen, a gum-smacking woman outside Topshop had given Eva a rubber band with an email address printed inside and told her to submit pictures of herself in nude underwear, while she looked admiringly at Eva’s purple knees and spiky collarbones. Her Mum had confiscated the band right away and smacked Eva on the wrist for acting stuck-up. “Here, take my number,” Melonie presented a pearly white business card. The paper contact seemed whimsical to Eva, a fossil in the brave new world of digitised friends lists and followers. “Thanks,” she said, running her fingers along the crisp edges of the card. Melonie winked as she carried her vodka cherry back into the crowd.
Eva tried to trace Melonie through the heaving throng with her eyes, but a sudden flurry at the opposite end of the bar snatched her attention. An acrylic-clawed hand was clasping Jamie’s wrist to the countertop and the assailant’s expression was tart. Eva darted over in time to hear the woman hiss through her sluggish mouth, “I’ll repeat myself: shots for my group, and don’t you fucking forget yourself princess.” Jamie winced, stuffed his teeth into his bottom lip like he was going to cry, but shook his head resolutely. She was evidently drunk, kept needing to reorganise her feet to stay balanced. Jamie was doing her organs a favour, refusing service. The woman didn’t agree. Fastening her grip, in a spit-laden hiss she said, “you’re disgusting, you know that? A young man who’s pretty like a little girl. It’s perverse.”
Eva spared a moment to squeeze her friend’s shoulder, felt his muscles ease beneath her touch, then transitioned her hand so it covered the one restraining him. She leaned across the bar on pointed toes, until she was nice and close to the woman’s tangerine face. No need to create a spectacle. “You’re going to let go, do you hear me? I’m not asking.” The bitch didn’t budge, simply continued squinting through her spider-leg lashes. Eva recognised this breed of client; refusal was a foreign taste that reminded her ego that she was mortal, fallible, and worst of all, just like everybody else.
Curious faces, one by one, like blank flags, were switching in their direction. Eva went in again, “let go, walk back to your friends and admit that you’re the bigot who secured them all a lifetime ban.” No way she had that kind of authority, but the threat worked to release Jamie. The woman flung both her hands into the air and began shrieking. “Entitled bitch! I’ve been coming here since before you were born. You whore.” Her stringy neck pulsed. She was hysterical, even the performers froze to gape- their painted, powdered faces like carnival masks beneath the spotlights.
Ash appeared in the stairway then, flagged by a pair of robust doormen. Security marched towards the offender, while Ash blocked Eva in behind the bar. “Hag,” Eva muttered as the woman was escorted back to her booth all too soothingly, in her opinion. The watching eyes regretfully looped back to the scheduled entertainment, as it became clear that actual violence had been averted.
“What the hell Eva!” Ash said, “you’re going to give me a bloody hernia,” and then, aghast, “are you drunk?” Her whisper seethed. “Get inside the office. Now.” Eva felt like there was static between her ears while the adrenaline slipped away; she wished she was more than tipsy as she exited the main room behind Ash.
The brightness of the office felt persecuting. Ash sat Eva and Jamie in high-backed chairs behind the desk and told them Ms Hollis was a beloved guest, a regular big spender who was, currently, very distressed. “How was I supposed to know?” Eva protested. “And actually, I don’t care who she came in with last weekend. She was abusing staff. There’s a policy about that, right?” Ash told her to stop being so naïve.
“It’s called service, Eva. They’re allowed to treat us like shit. Do you know how many times I’ve had my arse patted on the door tonight? There’s a pecking order: you’re replaceable and desperate. Deal with it, like everybody else.”
“That’s fucked up,” Eva said, genuinely depressed that, for all her ferocity, Ash was swallowing the patriarchy. Mostly she pleaded on Jamie’s behalf. Technically, Eva needed the work just as urgently as he did, but she felt nothing of the fear plastered all over his face. “Mam told me she can’t send me anymore money until Christmas,” he whimpered, while Ash took a prickly call from her boss in the next room.
Jamie had only been a legal adult six months; his stubble still grew in fretful spurts along his jaw and upper lip. The tips of his ears and nose flushed when he got upset or embarrassed. Eva was relieved that she didn’t have any little siblings of her own, like Jamie, to fret about all the time. She stroked his floppy black hair and reassured him that Ash’s threats were usually more colourful than her deeds, which turned out to be quite true. It was only Eva who was asked not to come back again. “You’re lucky I’m not charging you for missing stock,” Ash said.
Eva decided to bunk the close-down. Instead, she took the walk between Jupiter’s and Leicester Square slowly, intercepting shards of conversation from other night passengers. Their lives all seemed very full- lovers and fretting parents waiting-up at home, and managers they needed to impress the next morning. If they suddenly became absent from their lives, they would leave holes. Eva tried to remember when people had ceased to have expectations of her. The last great disappointment she’d delivered had been to her Classical Lit professor, when she confessed that she was skipping final exams for a test shoot in Ibiza, despite all the extended deadlines he’d signed-off. That photographer had screwed Eva over anyway, and similar opportunities began to drip. Cigarettes faded her baby-doll face and her portfolio gradually sunk to the bottom. For a while it’d seemed like a kind of release, after that to have been the sole victim of her screwups. No reverberations.
The train was just pulling away as she descended onto the platform, leaving Eva alone in the concrete tunnel. Sooty mice scurried like tumbleweeds between the benches, disappearing when the headlight from the next train shot around the bend.
Back at the flat alone, Eva passed between the bathroom and her bedroom in gloom, as if switching on the lights would break the spell of soothing, undemanding emptiness. When she lay down on her bed, contorting her body between strewn outfits and makeup, Eva found the ceiling lightly rocking. The last thing she remembered before falling asleep was a screen that read ‘no new messages’ and then sinking.
Ash told Eva the next day that she was giving her until the weekend to move out, though she agreed to let her store whatever of her things would fit inside the attic, until Eva found somewhere permanent to stay. Her room needed to be vacated to make way for a new tenant. Tenant, as in somebody who would pay rent. Eva left the issue pending until Saturday night; it was cheap satisfaction, watching Ash squirm in the face of her passivity. “You have found somewhere, yeah? Like, you’re not planning to move onto the street.”
“Sure,” Eva maintained, without shifting her gaze from her laptop screen. She wouldn’t be homeless, Eva was pretty sure, because, technically, she could ring her Mum and plead her way back to Winchester. But that was a hell of its own kind. Firstly, it was recommitting herself to the enclosed horizons and claustrophobic familiarity of small-town existence, achily far from the urban expanse from which her adult self had spawned. But worse, what had speared her away in the first place, was Jacob and his imported religiosity that had glued itself to Mum and their home. It scolded Eva, in a way that cut deeper than pestering quotes of scripture hanging in the bathroom, or the ritual of grace before every meal.
A few of her neglected friendships from university were still hanging on by the last tendon, but Eva knew those girls subsisted in already overstuffed house shares, with boyfriends she couldn’t stand, or who couldn’t stand her, or were chronically infested with rats. In the end she called Jamie, who secured a hesitating green-light from his flatmates to let Eva crash in their dorm for a couple nights. Just while she dried her wings. “Sorry pet, that’s the best I can do,” he said.