Friend Request(10)
By the time the tube pulls into South Kensington, I’ve convinced myself that I was being paranoid. I’ve allowed the fear I felt when I first got Maria’s friend request to overlay my life like an Instagram filter, turning everything a shade darker. No one is following me. I walk evenly up the steps from the platform, the knot in my stomach easing a little. The easiest route to Sophie’s flat, and the one I planned when I looked up her address earlier, is through the tunnel which runs under the roads to the museums. During the day it’s thronged with people – families going to see the dinosaurs in the Natural History Museum, tourists on their way to the V&A, but now although it’s not deserted, it’s quiet. I consider carrying straight on with the majority of people as they stream out of the main entrance, but then I give myself a mental shake. I’ve allowed myself to become cowed, afraid. I’m being ridiculous. I turn down the tunnel.
I’m about halfway along when I hear the footsteps. I can see a man about fifty yards ahead of me, but otherwise I am alone, apart from whoever is behind me. I speed up just a fraction, I hope not enough for anyone to notice, but I’m sure the footsteps speed up too. They echo around the tunnel; proper shoes, not trainers. I speed up a bit more; so do the shoes. I risk a glance behind me and I can see a figure in a black coat, hood up. I daren’t look for long and I can’t tell at this distance whether it’s a man or a woman. I’m not far from the end of the tunnel now and I am filled with a need to be outside where there are cars and people. I start to run, and so does the figure behind me. My handbag is flying up and down and the carrier bag in my hand containing a bottle of wine that I spent forty minutes choosing in the supermarket last night bangs against my leg with every stride. Blood roars in my head and my chest starts to burn, and then finally I see the exit, and a group of women in suits coming towards me, chatting and laughing. I slow my pace, breathing heavily. One of the women looks at me with concern.
‘Are you OK?’
I force a smile. ‘Yes, I’m fine. Just… in a hurry.’
She smiles and goes back to her conversation. Once they have passed me and I am nearly at the exit, I look back. There is no sign of the figure in the black coat; no one there at all but the group of women, their laughter echoing around the tunnel.
Out on the street, I lean against a wall for a moment until my breath, which has been coming in panicky gasps, slows to something approaching normal. Out here in the street-lit world, full of people and cars and life, my fear seems suddenly out of proportion. What did I think was going to happen?
I force myself to check the map on my phone and start walking, legs still wobbly, in the direction of Sophie’s flat. Soon I find myself walking down a row of elegant, cream Georgian terraces fronted by black wrought iron railings and sporting carefully tended window boxes. Normally I would be peering enviously through the large sash windows at antique furniture and painstakingly restored fireplaces, my own flat seeming cramped and plain in comparison. Some of them are still one house, with the basement converted into a homely but expensive-looking kitchen with room for a squashy sofa as well as the obligatory kitchen island. Today, however, I can’t focus on anything except Maria.
Workers rush past me in their daytime uniforms, wrapped up against the freezing wind, hurrying home to hot baths, warm rooms, dinners cooked by loved ones. I pass a group of teenage girls dressed in onesies and sheepskin boots with their hair in enormous curlers. They are dancing along together, oblivious to the cold, arms linked, hysterical with laughter. I feel a twinge of envy laced with shame, and am filled with a sudden longing to be curled up on the sofa reading Henry a Thomas the Tank Engine story.
When I reach Sophie’s door, I glance up at the lighted windows behind the plantation shutters, firmly closed to keep out the darkness. I take a moment to compose myself, and then press the top buzzer. Seconds later there’s a pattering of feet, and a figure gradually takes shape, refracted through the stained-glass panels in the front door. And then the door is opening, and there she is. We look at each other for a couple of seconds, both of us seemingly unsure about how to play this. Then she breaks into a smile that lights up every corner of her lovely face.
‘Louise!’ She goes to kiss me on the cheek and then thinks better of it and pulls me into her, enveloping me in her arms, her perfume, her personality. I’m overwhelmed by memory, by sheer sensation. The intervening years, during which I have worked so hard at forgetting, melt away and for a moment I’m sixteen again – awkward, conflicted, intensely alive.
Close up she is not quite the glossy creature of her Facebook photos but she’s not far off. With a flagrant disregard for the inclement weather, she’s dressed in skinny jeans with bare feet and a silvery gossamer-light vest top accessorised with a chunky statement necklace. Her honey-streaked hair falls around her tanned shoulders and she is lightly but expertly made up. I was reasonably confident when I studied myself in the mirror before I left the house, but now I just feel frumpy.
‘Hi, hi!’ she exclaims. ‘It’s so good to see you!’
She even talks in exclamation marks.
‘You too,’ I manage. ‘You look great. How are you?’
‘Oh, I’m great, really well, really, really well,’ she gabbles, pulling me into the spacious tiled hallway, studying me with her head on one side. ‘Aw, you look exactly the same.’
Upstairs in her top-floor flat it is almost stiflingly warm, and I can feel sweat begin to soak into the fabric that presses into my armpits and pool between my breasts. I’d like to take my jumper off but I can’t risk Sophie seeing the dark circles under my arms.