The night out

I paced the corridor with giddy impatience as my flatmates selected the lucky pieces of clothing among piles of rejects. The dynamics of my beloved home were about to change, but tonight was not the night to mourn.

I set off with the birthday boy — who was about to move into a new home 15 minutes down the road and into another world. We passed the street he would soon be living on, and we talked about what his new life would look like.

The bar looked like the sort of building you’d walk past without noticing. With big, grey bricks, it looked like the kind of old-fashioned, middle-market apartment building that converted into artisan bakeries and restaurants long before I was old enough to know what the word artisan meant.

We walked up four flights of wide, stone, dog-leg stairs; a veritable trail of unacquainted Londoners tied together by the different ways our lives intertwined with the birthday boy.

I sought refuge in the new people I’d met on my way up to the bar, as a room full of marginally fresher strangers looked our way. We quickly settled on the rooftop, where I took in the view of London’s skyline as I caught my breath. It looked so still and peaceful I could almost believe it wasn’t changing so quickly.

With my cocktail of 80% ice in one hand, my other was free to partake in nervous gesticulation as I grew prematurely familiar with two of the birthday boy’s friends.

We bonded over ambitions, loud laughs, transparent insecurities and an inhibition to voicing our personal failings to new people.

The pink horizon and skyscraper tips at the edges of my gaze soon fell captive to an ever deepening dusk — the kind that smelled so good it required as many deep breaths as possible without feeling disoriented.

As I coexisted among grown-ups mature enough to not spill their £10 cocktails down their expensive dresses and shirts, but free enough to Instagram London’s candyfloss skyline on a weeknight, I felt an unsettling deja vu.

I had seen this in a dream. This was the London I had fantasised about in the days when it was completely out of reach. A pipedream of glamorous strangers, hidden bars and city views so embarrassingly unrealistic I’d forgotten all about it until now.

We spiralled back down the staircase hours later. Not only had I devoured the first pages of two new people in the otherwise lonely storm that encircled London, but I had learnt something new about the old friend I’d called home for four years.

That night, I had seen a concentrated version of the London of my youthful dreams, and played along.

I waved birthday champagne in the air to the songs coming from a nearby phone as we wobbled through the park. I protested at the unfairness when a head appeared out of a window to quieten us. I danced with the birthday boy in our living room around the remains of greasy chips sinking further into the table with every beat.

I’d correctly predicted the feeling of everlasting youth, befriending new people with ease and riding strangers’ bikes through parks at 1am; albeit for one night only.

But I could never have guessed these things would mean something beyond the shallowness that can be inevitable in such a fast-paced and money-driven city if you don’t fight against it.

The younger me couldn’t have predicted the meaning I had grown capable of cultivating from the city’s bright lights and beautiful backdrops.

The birthday boy was leaving the inner circle of my life: we would no longer be sharing a wall and a kettle. But as I climbed into bed with pounding feet and a ketchup smile, I drifted off knowing that we had both found reality in a place that stars in so many dreams.