Typography & design by
Richard Wolfströme

Exhibition and installation
by Standard 8

Website
Words William Shaw
Design Richard Wolfströme
Photography Kenny Laurenson

Publishing consultant Adrian Driscoll

An Unmadeup Production

...how tough it is to be single when all your friends are in relationships

The No 7 bus, the ever-useful useful east-west route that links Hove to Kemptown

To be honest, visiting her old housemate from university felt more a duty than a pleasure. She wanted Isobel to meet her new boyfriend. Come on up to Liverpool. But now it’s Sunday and all Isobel wants to do is get back home.

Isobel guessed – wrongly – that the quickest train from Victoria would be the stopping train to Hove. Now she’s standing on the platform at Hove Station and the next train to Brighton isn’t for ages.

Dithering, in a foul mood, she notices another passenger beside her: he looks every bit as lost as she is.

"I don’t believe it," she says out loud. Something like that. It’s a habit she got from her mum, talking to strangers.

It turns out he’d made exactly the same wrong decision at Victoria. "Let’s see if there’s a bus," he suggests. And there, waiting outside, as if ordained, is the Number 7.

She boards first, sits down; it’s only been a brief shared moment so far and she’s conscious that he could just as easily sit anywhere on the bus, but instead he sits beside her.

It’s a nine-minute bus ride to Brighton Station. In that time they talk about what they’d been doing (he’d been seeing an old friend from university too), what they do for a living (he’s a script writer), and how tough it is to be single when all your friends are in relationships. In her early 30s, Isobel’s been single two years. He’s the same. His friends are all in couples too, some with kids.

She wonders to herself if women read too much into conversations like this. Ask the man and he’ll probably just go, "We had a chat, yeah." But it seems that there is a meaningfulness about the way they’re talking.

The bus arrives at Brighton Station. He stands to get off. It would make sense for her to get off nearer home. On impulse, she gets up and leaves the bus too.

But outside he walks one way, she the other.

Tomorrow is Monday; the week starts again.