Friend Request(11)

Her flat is immaculate with airy, high-ceilinged rooms and solid wood floors, but it somehow manages to be cosy at the same time. An extravagant crystal chandelier hangs in the centre of the living room.

‘What a gorgeous flat,’ I say as I hand her the wine I brought.

‘Oh yeah, thanks. Come through to the kitchen.’

I follow her into a small but tasteful and expensively fitted-out kitchen, where she shoves my wine into the fridge and pours us both a glass from a different bottle.

‘Is it… just you here?’

There’s a pause.

‘Um… yeah.’ Her eyes flick to the fridge, which has photos and appointment cards stuck to it with magnets. She seems uneasy and I guess she’s unwilling to admit to being single. Even though I’m in the same position, there’s a tiny, secret, mean part of me that is glad she too is alone in her forties.

We take our wine back to the living room and she gestures to me to sit at one end of the purple velvet sofa, curling herself in the opposite corner like a cat. The sofa is so deep that if I want to keep my feet on the floor, I can’t rest against the back, so I balance on the edge, legs primly together, shifting my wine glass from hand to hand.

Despite her studied insouciance, I can tell she is nervous too, rattling off questions – what do I do for a living, do I enjoy my job, where do I live – leaving me little opportunity to ask any of my own.

‘And your parents, how are they?’ she asks when we’ve exhausted the other avenues.

‘They’re really well. Still living up in Manchester.’ There’s not much more to say. We haven’t fallen out exactly – I think you’d have to be closer than we are for that to be possible. It’s just that there’s a wedge between us, as there is between me and everyone who doesn’t know the real me, doesn’t know what I have done.

‘Do you get up there a lot?’ she goes on.

‘Not that much. It’s difficult, you know, with work and everything.’ It’s not that difficult really. Manchester’s not much more than a couple of hours on the train from London. The truth is that it’s an effort, spending any time with them. Our relationship is superficial, the conversation skating over the surface of life, never plumbing its depths. It’s a struggle to keep up the facade for longer than a few hours every now and then.

‘And your parents?’ I ask.

‘Oh, they both passed away. Dad when I was twenty-one, and then Mum a couple of years ago.’ Her tone doesn’t change from the bright cheeriness of a moment ago but I sense a brittleness behind her words.

‘I’m really sorry to hear that.’

‘Yeah, thanks.’ She dispatches my condolences neatly. ‘Sooo, tell me more about your work. Do you find it hard, working for yourself?’

I go on too long about the perils of setting up my own interior design business and the awards I’ve won, and after a while her eyes begin to glaze over. She does perk up a bit when I mention being featured in the local paper back in Sharne Bay when I won a design award, but only because she too has a story about being featured in the same paper when she ran a charity race.

‘And you?’ I ask eventually. ‘What do you do for work?’

‘I work in fashion.’

‘Oh, great. Doing what?’

‘Oh, bits and bobs, you know. Sales, marketing. This and that.’

I sense that for some reason she’s being deliberately obscure, so I don’t ask any more. I notice that she doesn’t ask me about a partner, or children. Is that because she knows about me and Sam, or because she doesn’t want to talk about her own relationship situation? She seems edgy, as if her incessant questioning is a way of keeping the conversation on the track she wants it on. When she finally runs out of questions, silence falls, and I rack my brains for a new topic. Sophie looks down, fiddling with her glass, uncharacteristically uncertain.

‘It’s so good to see you, Louise,’ she says. ‘You know, you were really important to me. You were the one I could… talk to, I suppose. You seemed to properly care about me, not like some of the others.’

I am verging on speechless. Surely I was the one who had gained from our friendship at school, not her? She was my pass to the other world, the one who kept me from being Esther Harcourt. Looking back, I suppose I provided the uncritical, adoring acolyte she so desperately needed, but at the time I was so desperate to keep her that I never thought to wonder what was in it for her.

I start to reply, but she cuts in, as if already regretting what she’s just said. ‘Soooo… excited about the reunion?’ She smiles, giving the distinct impression that she is well aware that I only found out about it recently. How very Sophie. The conversation has swung so swiftly back onto the regular track that I wonder if I imagined that lowering of her guard.

‘Yes, yes. Should be great,’ I reply. ‘Can’t wait.’

‘You do know Sam’s going? I heard about you two, such a shame.’ So she does know. Does she genuinely think it’s a shame? I was never entirely sure whether anything had happened between her and Sam when we were at school, and a ridiculous teenage part of me pulses with jealousy. She regards me soulfully from under her eyelashes, concern oozing from every pore. ‘Will it be a bit awkward, d’you think?’

‘No, it’ll be fine. It was very amicable,’ I say, as if reading from a script. I could call it My Life As I Want It To Be. Hearing his name from her lips, with the past draped heavy around me, makes the weight on my shoulders press down just that little bit harder. ‘How did you hear?’