Friend Request(16)
As I walked down the front path, I almost bumped into a dark, thickset boy with the same hazel eyes as Maria and her mother. He didn’t introduce himself, but looked at me suspiciously. I smiled, feeling flustered without knowing why, and let myself out of the gate. I didn’t turn round, but I could feel his gaze, white-hot on my back all the way down the street until I reached the corner.
Later that evening I was in my room pretending to do my homework when the phone rang. I picked up the one on the landing outside my room.
‘Hello?’
‘Lou? It’s Sophie.’
Her voice sounded gentle and hesitant, a world away from the strident confidence she had displayed earlier in town. For a moment I thought she was going to apologise. I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the landing floor, knees up to my chin, twisting the phone cord around my fingers.
‘I’m worried about you. You hardly hang out with me and the girls any more.’
The girls? Sophie’s the only one out of all of them that ever shows an interest in me. The rest of them barely know I exist, unless they want to copy my homework. There was a part of me that automatically wanted to apologise, to put everything back how it was before. But I still had Maria’s voice in my head, still had the illusion of confidence that spending the afternoon with her had given me.
‘What do you mean? You haven’t even been speaking to me at school.’
‘That’s so unfair,’ she said in injured tones. ‘You’re the one that’s been ignoring me. I didn’t have anyone to go into town with after school today. Claire was a right cow to me this afternoon. I was looking for you everywhere.’
‘But you were with Matt and Sam! You looked pretty happy to me!’
‘Oh, those two. I only went with them because I didn’t have anyone else to hang out with. You certainly seemed like you were having a nice time.’
‘Yes… I was.’ My resolve was fading. Could she really be upset? Had I read everything wrong? ‘But obviously… if I’d known you wanted to come with us, you could have done.’
‘I don’t know about us,’ she said carefully. ‘I wanted to go with you.’
‘What’s wrong with Maria? She’s really nice.’
‘I’m sure she’s all right, although sorry but she was quite rude to me this afternoon. Also, what do you actually know about her? Where has she suddenly appeared from? The things I’ve heard about her… well, I shouldn’t gossip. If you want to be friends with her, then of course that’s up to you. But don’t dump your old friends, Louise, otherwise you’re running the risk of losing them. If you’re not careful you’ll end up like Esther Harcourt.’ Sophie gave a little laugh – but a worried one, indicating that although she was joking there was a grain of truth in what she said. ‘Obviously it’s up to you who you hang out with but if I were you I’d think very carefully about where your loyalties lie.’
After we hung up, I sat on the landing for several minutes, my hand still on the phone. I thought about defying Sophie, and what that might mean for me socially; about the parties and sleepovers that I felt I was on the verge of being invited to, and of how much I wanted that. I wondered whether I was ready to throw all that away for someone I liked very much but hardly knew, who could potentially end up being my only friend.
The next day at school I didn’t have any lessons with Maria in the morning. At break I went straight from Biology to the library and sat there for twenty minutes pretending to read a book about Anglo-Saxon England. I was going to skip lunch, but Sophie stopped me on my way back to the library and hauled me off to the canteen with her. My jacket potato was dry and starting to crack inside, and, as I added a small pot of congealed baked beans (no butter), I could see Maria out of the corner of my eye, a few places behind me in the queue. I paid and Sophie shepherded me firmly with her over to the far left corner table, settling down next to me with a protective hand on my arm. I could feel rather than see Maria coming up behind me. She put her hand on the chair next to me, but Sophie was ready for her.
‘Sorry, that seat’s taken,’ she said, smiling brightly.
‘It doesn’t look taken,’ said Maria. ‘It looks totally empty to me. Unless one of your really skinny friends is sitting there and has managed to slim down so much that nobody can see her.’ She looked at me, hoping for a smile or at least an acknowledgement but I stared studiously at my tray, running my fingers over the brown moulded plastic bumps as though they were braille, and I blind.
‘I’m saving it,’ said Sophie. ‘For a friend.’ The emphasis on friend couldn’t have been more pointed.
Maria risked one more glance at me, but my eyes were glued to the tray.
‘Right. OK. I get the picture,’ she said, and took her tray over to the furthest possible table.
As I left the canteen I looked over at her. I think of her now as she was then: sitting on her own, her lunch barely touched in front of her, hunched over, pale-faced and staring unseeingly at her maths textbook. I saw Esther Harcourt watching her too from another table where she also sat alone, unread book in hand.
Chapter 7
She stands on the bridge, staring down at the water, brown and uninviting on this sunless winter day. Her knuckles stand out, harsh white against the dark wood of the railings. A solitary drink can bobs under the bridge and out of view, the only bright spot in the murky ribbon that snakes its way through the city. She could dash across the road in a kamikaze version of the childhood game of Poohsticks, to see if it makes it to the other side; to see if she does.