I would like it on record that I did not scream like a child. I made a noise. There is a difference. It just came out of me at a pitch I did not know I owned, the sort of sound you hear off a fox at 3am if the fox has seen God. I was naked. I was hungover. I was having a perfectly decent Saturday morning. Then I opened his front door a crack because he shouted “can you grab that, babe” from the kitchen, and there it was. Full costume. Red nose. Big red shoes. A fistful of balloons that said HAPPY 6TH in colours that should be illegal before noon.
I made the noise. Then I ran.
Rewind, because otherwise this just sounds like I am unhinged, and I am only unhinged in specific, well documented ways.
Friday had been a long one. Inbox from hell, my manager hovering like she could smell the promotion on me, three coffees and a vape break I took like it was medically prescribed. I should have gone home, put something on the telly, ignored my phone. I did not. I never do. I matched with him on Thursday, nothing clever, just a bloke who looked like he owned a decent duvet and did not live with his mum. We had been messaging in that lazy, filthy way that does not pretend it is going anywhere serious. After work I said I was already in town. He said come for one. One became four. Four became a kebab I barely tasted. His flat was a twenty minute Uber from the pub and I was in that lovely warm state where my brain had clocked off and my body had taken the wheel.
His place was fine. Not impressive. Not grim. The sort of flat a twenty-something man keeps when he has a job and a niece and no idea how to buy more than one type of towel. I vaped on the little balcony while he put music on, something inoffensive, and when I came back in he kissed me like he had been thinking about it since the second pint. Good kisser. Handsy in a way I like. I am not shy about what I want and I was not shy that night. Clothes came off in the hallway. I had him against the back of the sofa first because I like starting that way, on my knees, taking my time, showing off a bit. I know I am good at it. I am smug about it. He made that helpless sound men make when they were not expecting you to actually know what you are doing, and I looked up at him with mascara probably wrecked and felt that little spark of oh yes, this is why I came out.
We made it to the bed eventually. Proper filthy, lazy, I-am-not-going-home sex. I like that kind. No performance review, no pretending it is love. Just heat and skin and the sort of rhythm you find when you are both a bit drunk and neither of you is trying to impress the other’s parents. He was decent. Not the best I have had. Not the worst. I came twice, once with his mouth and once when I was on top and I tipped my head back and laughed because it felt good and I was a bit gone and the room was spinning in a friendly way. After, I stole his t-shirt, vaped out the window, and fell asleep with my face in a pillow that smelled like cheap detergent and whatever aftershave he thinks is subtle.
Saturday morning should have been simple. Hangover like a blunt object. Mouth like a carpet. That heavy, greedy feeling I get when I wake up next to someone and my body decides it has not finished. He was already half hard against my hip. I did not even open my eyes properly. Just reached back, wrapped my hand around him, and heard him swear into my hair. We went slow because anything faster would have made me sick. Still good. Still that smug little current through me, the one that says you can be hungover and still make a man forget his own name. I was on top again, moving lazy, one hand on his chest, thinking about nothing except how warm he was and whether I had a charger in my bag. The doorbell went.
He swore. Not sexy swearing. Annoyed swearing.
“That’ll be the shop,” he said. “I got bits in for later. Can you grab it?”
I should have said no. I should have asked bits for what. I should have put pants on at the very least. I pulled his shirt down as far as it would go, which was not far enough, shoved my hair behind my ears, and padded to the door like a woman who has never made a bad decision in her life.
I opened it a crack.
You need to understand something about me before the next sentence. I do not do clowns. I have never done clowns. I was six when my mum died and there was a party not long after, well meaning relatives, some bloke in a wig who thought a sad kid needed a balloon animal. I do not remember the details on purpose. I remember the face. The paint. The mouth that was too wide. After that, even a picture on a shop window could put me on the floor. I do not joke about it. I do not “give it a chance”. I leave. That is the whole policy.
So the door opened and there was a grown adult in full party kit. White face. Red nose so shiny it looked wet. Yellow wig. Those trousers that could hide a family. He had a speaker box on a strap and a bunch of balloons bumping against the frame, and he did this little flourish with his hand like ta-da, as if I had ordered him.
“Morning!” he said, bright as bleach. “Here for Poppy’s party! Bit early, traffic was kind!”
I made the noise.
It was not a scream exactly. It was higher. Shorter. The sort of sound that comes out when your body decides the conversation is over. I slammed the door so hard the letterbox rattled. Then I was down the hall, into the bathroom, lock twisted, back against the tiles, shaking so hard my teeth clicked.
He knocked on the bathroom door about four seconds later.
“Cat? You alright?”
I could not answer him properly. I was trying to breathe and also not be sick and also work out if the clown was still on the other side of the front door or if he had somehow come in. Logic had left the building. I had his toothbrush in a mug next to me and a damp towel on the floor and I was wearing one stolen shirt and nothing else, and somewhere in the flat a children’s entertainer was waiting to make balloon swords.
“There is a clown,” I said, which was accurate and also the stupidest sentence I have ever produced.
“Yeah,” he said, like this was normal. “My sister’s kid. Party’s at two. I said he could drop kit here because she is coming over to set up. I thought I told you.”
He had not told me. He had said “family thing later” while I had his cock in my mouth on Friday night. That is not the same as “a man in full slap will be on my doorstep while you are still wet from riding me.”
“Get rid of him,” I said.
“I can’t just send him away, babe, he’s booked.”
“Then put him in the garden. Put him in the road. Put him on a bus. I am not coming out while that thing is in the building.”
There was a pause. I heard him walk to the front door. Muffled voices. The clown laughed. Of course he laughed. They always do that little honk laugh like the universe is a children’s menu. My skin went cold. I sat on the closed toilet lid, pulled the shirt over my knees, and vaped with a shaking hand because I had grabbed the thing off the sink on the way in without thinking. Mango. The same flavour I had been smoking when I was feeling like a goddess twenty minutes earlier. It tasted like panic.
He came back to the bathroom door.
“He’s going to wait in the car,” he said. “You can come out.”
“Is he in the car.”
“Yes.”
“Can you see the car from the bathroom window.”
He actually checked. I will give him that.
“Yeah. He’s in the car.”
I unlocked the door a sliver. Looked at him. He was in boxers, hair smashed flat on one side, looking at me like I had just admitted I believed in ghosts. Maybe I do. Clowns are worse than ghosts. Ghosts do not turn up early with balloons.
“I need my clothes,” I said.
He fetched them. I dressed in the bathroom like a hostage. Jeans, yesterday’s bra, the top I had worn to the pub that still smelled like beer and his hallway. I washed my face. I looked like a crime. When I came out he tried to touch my arm and I flinched so hard I knocked a framed photo off the side table. It was his niece. Six. Party hat. Lovely little face. I felt like the worst person in Essex for about one second, then the memory of the red nose came back and the guilt packed a bag.
“I’m going,” I said.
“Cat, it’s just a bloke in a costume.”
“Do not,” I said, and I meant it. “Do not explain clowns to me like I am being cute.”
He stood there with his hands out, that helpless man pose, and I hated how good he had felt an hour ago. That is the cruel bit. My body still had the echo of him in it. I still had that loose, used, satisfied ache I like. And I was leaving anyway, because safety for me is simple and specific, and a painted smile is not on the list.
I got my bag. I did not look through the glass in the front door. I knew the car was there. I could see yellow in the corner of my eye like a stain. I went out the back way because his flat had a side gate, and I walked to the main road in last night’s boots with my hair doing something criminal. The Uber driver did not speak. Bless him. I vaped out the window the whole way home and stared at a woman walking a dog and thought, that is a normal Saturday, look at her, she has never opened a door onto a children’s entertainer while she was still slick from sex.
The flat was loud when I got in. Both housemates in the kitchen, radio on, someone frying eggs. I stood in the doorway and they took one look at me.
“Oh my God,” one of them said. “Was it bad or was it funny.”
“There was a clown,” I said.
They screamed. Proper screamed. Then they made tea and I sat on the worktop and told it start to finish, including the bit where I was on top of him feeling like I ran the world, including the doorbell, including the noise I made. They cried laughing. I laughed too, eventually, the shaky kind, the kind that sits next to the fear and pretends they are friends. I changed my sheets even though I had not slept in them. I put the telly on. I did not answer his messages for three hours.
He sent four.
You alright?
Sorry I should have said.
He’s gone now if you want to come back.
Then a photo. I should not have opened it. It was the clown in the garden holding a balloon that said SORRY. I blocked him so fast I nearly dropped the phone.
I know how this reads. I know I sound dramatic. I also know what my body does when it sees that face and I am not interested in becoming a braver person about it. Sex is supposed to make me feel safe. That is the honest bit I do not say in pubs. Not loved, not chosen, not any of the pretty words. Safe. Warm. Held in a way that does not ask me to talk about my mum or the quiet house after she went. A clown at the door strips that feeling out of me like paint. There is no sexy version of that. There is no “face your fears while he is still inside you” workshop I am going to sign up for.
The funny part, and there is one, is how fast the morning had been good. That is what gets me when I replay it. The lazy grind of it. His hands on my hips. Me laughing into his mouth because I always laugh when it is good, I cannot help it. The smug little thought that I could stay another hour and still make it look like I had somewhere important to be. Then a red nose and the whole thing folded.
I went to work on Monday like a person who had not hidden in a stranger’s bathroom. I did my job. I was sharp. I wanted the promotion even more, which is what fear does to me, it makes me greedy for the bits of life I can control. Numbers. Emails. A calendar that does not include children’s entertainers. At lunch I told one girl from accounts a cleaned up version and she spat her drink. That helped.
Would I go back? No. Not to him. Not to a flat that can produce a clown with two hours notice. I might go back to the feeling, because I always do. Another Friday. Another pint. Another balcony and a vape and a man who does not know yet that there are two versions of me, the one who will drop to her knees in a hallway like it is nothing, and the one who will lock herself in a bathroom over a wig and a painted mouth.
If you take anything from this, take the obvious. Ask the question. Not “any kids” like you are interviewing him for a visa. The real question. Is anyone in a costume arriving at this property before noon. It should be on every dating app, right under height and politics. I will not be caught out again, standing in a stolen shirt, hungover, half fucked, staring at a red nose like it had come to collect a debt.
I still think about the sex, which is irritating. I still think about the balloons bumping the doorframe. I still jump if a bus advert has a circus on it. And if his sister’s little girl had a lovely party, good. I hope the cake was nice. I hope the clown stayed in the garden. I hope I never see that wig again for as long as I live.
Next Saturday I am staying in. Telly. Music. No doorbell. If anyone knocks, they can wait. I have learned my lesson and the lesson is simple. Never, ever answer the door when you are still wearing last night.