The strange intimacy of flat-sharing

When I was younger, I dreamed of being a Jane Austen heroine. Nearly two decades on, in my late twenties, I am living in the guest room of a married older cousin in a leafy suburb of London, house-hunting in the middle of a housing crisis, waiting on a security clearance for a public-sector job, and wending my way through a dizzying array of balls, dinners, and public talks while I wait, observing a long-decaying society in the fullest bloom of its collapse.

The 1990s dream of single professional womanhood, complete with uptown apartment, financial independence, and unlimited opportunity has been unmasked as an illusion, while the underlying realities of the world remain as they always were. Doing things alone is difficult. A husband – or a family which is either proximate or financially supportive – seem to make the practicalities of life much easier. Strip away the entire twentieth century and what, essentially, is different? Dreams have a funny way of coming true in the most unexpected ways, don’t they?