The Big Smoke seemed to be more about supermarket sushi and Uniqlo, than anything as exciting as mass industrialisation or smoking. No one ever sat down there. Wobbling on unpractised pins as they took trains and pavements, their pints equally unsteady, propped on wonky outdoor mantelpieces. Gamine wondered if this was because they all had sitting-down-jobs, and so afterwards it was sort of exciting to use their feet again. Men in suits walked down the streets with Itsu clutches, looking too clean, and a bit out of place; like they’d left the house in pyjamas, or gone to school on a Saturday. Gamine had sublet her room on instagram in an attempt to make her ex jealous. Folded clothes and careful double dents in the sheets. Surely it would remind him of sex, ideally with her. She wondered, now living 500 miles South of him, whether it had been worth it.

People are always banging on about what home is: something to do with dogs and double gin and tonics she gathered. Gamine read that feeling at home was all about routine. Hers invariably started on tiktok, paired with tea and toast. A cyclical bop-it of hand to mouth, and screen. For a sort of sitcom feel - playing the fictional local- she would sometimes save a bit of her marmited toast, and kind of jog out the door with it. As if she was just in such a rush, and so incredibly comfortable with herself, she could nibble cold toast on the street. 

Gamine would walk up some streets, and then down others. She would return to the same posh perfume shop each day for a spritz from their array of testers. She had a good thing going with the security man, Gary: he would ask her what it was tonight and they would tailor the perfect scent accordingly (she felt he appreciated her unwavering brand loyalty). Gary had become somewhat of a father figure to Gamine. She hadn’t properly understood what window shopping meant until she moved here– she had always thought shops were for buying things from. 

For lunch, Gamine would sometimes window-eat. Staring into restaurants that bustled with tiny plates, she would hear haunting echoes of ‘Vogue fed me more’, to then invariably go home to an enormous bowl of pesto-pasta. Sometimes she would have a few pieces of lettuce on the side, and cock her head in confusion at how close chic food was to rabbit food. The afternoon would creak by, punctuated by a single can of coke, after which the real work would begin. The chosen Coke-du-jour was deeply semantic: full fat, like Joan Didion, when wanting to write and be clever; Diet, like Kate Moss, when wanting to feel blonde and charming. Zero when feeling clever but fun. Like Emma Chamberlain, Thompson? She wondered if Didion would have drunk Coke Zero, had it existed, and then whether she would have had a podcast, and what it would have been called.

In the evenings she worked. Trial shifts and first dates, of which there seemed to be really very little difference. One must look nice, but not as if it took any effort; and be nice, but not as if it is taking any effort. Last week she had turned up for a trial shift, only to have her colleague-to-be explain the boss lived above the pub. ‘‘She’ll just watch on the CCTV and text you later if you’ve got the job’’. It made Gamine's tummy feel a bit funny, and she wished she’d put a bra on. 

Gamine asked if the boss was always watching, to which the Colleague replied, probably not. “I think she just takes lots of coke up there. But she always could be, you know, watching… that's how she gets you”. Gamine snuck secret bumps of salted peanuts to keep her going and tried not to look the cameras in the eye. A panopticon pub: her punishment for working for minimum wage. As Gamine snogged the Colleague after the shift –holding onto his lovely jaw for balance– she wondered if she was self-consciously trying extra hard. Arching her back and biting lips, just in case the coked up deity was looking down on them. She romantisied the Colleague, seduced singularly by his height. There was a simplicity to their interpersonal relationship. All night he had leaned over her to reach glasses from the shelves above. She hadn’t minded his tall sweat, his armpits passing that gruesome animal test with distinction.

Gamine had recently got worked up panicking that ring doorbells were ruining first kisses; the kind of kisses that only happen at the door after first dates, and before the age of 21. Bezos making tech-voyeurs out of security conscious parents. But that night, surrounded by surveillance, it hadn’t stopped Gamine. In fact, just at the second their lips met, her phone buzzed, a message from above- ‘You were great tonight. Are you free Saturday? 7pm start? X’. 

She began to settle into the Big Smoke. Each Wednesday night she would go for a G+T with Gary. Sometimes he would bring his dog along- a doting labradoodle, and their likeness to one another- Gary and his dog- would invariably reinstill Gamine's belief in a God. She started to become more picky: refusing dates involving uniform, and trial shifts where the boss had to fancy you. At the end of the night she didn’t always sleep with them, but if she was serious about them, she often thought it best to get it over with, before it was too late, and- God forbid- they slept with you!