I still remember the first conversation we had about living together in the flat my dad had help me and my sister to buy. You were still paying £600 a month for that terrifying house in south London with eight other people, a damp problem and a landlord who would let himself in uninvited whenever he felt like it. In fact, I’d only ever lived with strangers I’d met on Gumtree.
We went through the Ikea catalogue meticulously picking out stuff for our living room, spoke about the house,plants we were going to buy and the prints we were going to get framed. I was only going to charge you enough rent to cover the mortgage – so we’d have lots of money left over to do the place up. It was going to be our little project. We were finally leaving student living and wanted to make the flat feel like a place where ‘proper grown-ups’ lived – the type that always had fresh coffee and matching glasses to give to guests at the dinner parties we were going to throw a couple of times a month.
We’d known each other for six years since the first year of uni, been on holiday together and basically spent every weekend in each other’s bed since we met – living together was going to be a breeze.
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I guess the problems began when I started to buy all that stuff. I knew you’d always had a bit of a problem with money, so I offered to pay for all of it for now and you could give me half the money back when you got paid. But then pay day came round and I didn’t hear anything, even though I was dropping hints about the how much the dinner table, sofa, plates and glasses had cost and how unexpectedly expensive this whole ‘home improvement’ thing was turning out to be. When two weeks passed, I was forced to ask you outright for the cash, which was just unfair of you. Why did you put me in that awkward situation? If I hadn’t asked, would you just have let it slide? Even though I was charging you so little rent and you should, in theory, have more money to spare? Was this how it was going to be? Skirting your best friend in the whole world for cash unless she outright asked you for it?
Then the bills came and I realised that, yes, it was. I asked if you’d like to take on any of the bills and you told me you couldn’t put any of them in your name because you had a bad credit rating. That’s absolutely fine, I said, but you’d have to set up a direct debit to me every month so that I wasn’t left out of pocket whilst I was collecting you and my sister’s bills. My sister did it right away, but you kept ‘missing the bank opening times’ and then, predictably, when bill time came you ‘forgot’ to transfer me the cash.
You were never around to talk about it in person because you were out all the time getting wrecked and staying with other friends. I could have messaged you about it, I guess, but talking about money felt like I was talking to a landlord, not my best friend in the whole world. I wanted to talk you through the fact you kept getting with guys who didn’t seem to want to have a relationship, not the fact that I’d just got a red letter about the gas and I was worrying about how to pay it. By the third embarrassing time I’d ask you about it over breakfast, you eventually agreed to send me the cash, but I had to watch you do it on your computer to make sure you’d done it. Cross, you asked me if I trusted you and, even though I said yes, the last few months had made me question if I did.
The money was the real problem, but then all the other stuff I’d known about you (but tolerated) started to drive me mad. Your shit was all over the house and you seemed fine with letting me pick up after you. I woke up in the morning every day to your shit in the sink and had to clean it up. Didn’t we promise that we wouldn’t be that kind of studenty house? When you told me off for waking you up with the noise of it, we had the first proper row we’d ever had. I told you that you were the laziest person I’d ever met and that was the reason men didn’t find you as attractive as they should. I felt instantly bad – it wasn’t really about the dishes, it was about you taking the piss out of me – but the damage had been done and we were never really the same again.
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I think you acted defensively when you started to bring your loud friends round midweek on nights you knew I had to get up early for work the next morning. They smoked in the house and left fag butts in my new carpet. When I asked you to get it cleaned, you told me to lighten up and understand that the house couldn’t be perfect all the time.
My sister was upset that I was upset, took me to my bedroom and told me she’d had enough of seeing me miserable – she had a friend who needed a room, was good with money and who she believed would be a better fit for the house. You were my best friend but this was my sister and it was her house, too – I knew I was going to have to ask you to leave.
I’m embarrassed, but I when the time came to do it I sent you an email. It took you two days to respond to the 1,000 word essay I’d written, and when you did you told me you’d rather if I wasn’t around when you moved out in three weeks. You’d been thinking about doing the same thing anyway, but you hadn't wanted to have a row. I didn’t want to see you, either – you hadn’t even said sorry and I’m sure you knew you were in the wrong and you still owed me £300 from bills and house stuff, which you didn’t even mention in your response. Maybe keeping our distance for a bit was for the best.
When the day came, I went and sat at my boyfriend’s house and cried for hours, but the honest truth is that it had gotten so bad I felt relieved. The weeks passed and I didn’t hear from you, which was hard but I was still so angry that I wasn’t sure it was worth reaching out. Months later and we still haven’t seen each other and you still haven’t paid me the money you owe. You’ve been avoiding our friends to hang out with the wasters you brought back to our house, and even though I wonder if you’re OK I’m relieved they’re no longer a part of my life. I love you and I hope it will be OK soon and you realise you need to pay me. But for now, I’m sorry but I’ve got my grown-up house – with or without you.
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Picture: Lukasz Wierzbowski
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.