He picked at another flea bite, she bit skin from around her nails. The bedsit smelled of cheap cigs and cat piss but they didn’t care. There was a crunch from the cassette player as the knackered tape bumped over a section that had been fixed back together with the tiniest sliver of Sellotape. They were never tired of these songs. They would use all the tape in the world to keep them playing in this particular order, in this particular place. Ashtrays and glitter nail varnish and dirty tights littered the floor, and the second-hand coffee table was covered with pictures torn from music magazines. They shared clothes, a once-feral cat, a toothbrush and a bed, but there was never a concern around sex. He wasn’t interested in girls, and she just wasn’t interested. It was perfect. 

A phone rang. The girl was confused because they had the same ringtone and that wasn’t it. The boy dug his phone out from down the side of the cushion and scurried into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. She heard his voice low, flirting, with someone he had kept secret. She opened the door and he was gone. The clocks spun wildly through the months as the window let in leaves then snow then the smell of bins warming up again. 

She walked into him - right into him - in town, and he was tanned and clean and laughed that she was still wearing the same glitter polish. He didn’t even ask after the cat, so she shouted after him as he walked down the street, “It died you know. Bowie. It died of loneliness.” 

The cat had actually died when she went on a week long bender and forgot she had ever had a cat or a bedsit or a best friend. The smell had never gone away but she couldn’t afford to move. So now she was stuck in a bedsit that smelled of cheap cigs and dead cat, and she was still listening to the same songs.