Friend Request(4)

Chapter 3

2016
I’m still sitting shell-shocked at the kitchen table, Maria’s Facebook page open in front of me. Questions crowd my mind. Who is doing this, and why now? I try to wrap my mind around the horrifying possibility that somehow, somewhere, Maria is still alive. When a new Facebook notification pops up, I click on it with trepidation.

Sharne Bay High Reunion Committee invited you to the event Sharne Bay High School Reunion Class of 1989.

Reunion? I click feverishly on the link, and there it is: Sharne Bay High School Class of 1989 Reunion, taking place two weeks on Saturday in the old school hall. On top of the request from Maria, it’s a sucker punch right in the solar plexus. Can it be coincidence, getting this the same day? I click on the Facebook page of the group organising it, and although there’s no way of telling who has set it up, it seems bona fide. There’s a post pinned to the top of the newsfeed from our old English teacher Mr Jenkins, who apparently still works at the school. There were all sorts of rumours that used to go round about him – keeping girls back after lessons, looking in through the changing-room windows, stuff like that – but I don’t suppose there was any truth to them. We all thought the PE teacher was a lesbian because she had a glass eye, so we weren’t the most reliable of witnesses. The rest of the newsfeed is full of excited chat from people going to the reunion, dating back a couple of months. Why has it taken until now for me to be invited? My neck is flushed and there are treacherous, foolish tears prickling at the back of my eyes. How easily, how stupidly, I am transported back through the years; how quickly that familiar rush of shame washes over me: shame at being left out, being left behind. Still not really one of the gang. An afterthought.

I click on the list of attendees, furiously scanning for his name. Yes, there it is. There he is, eyes crinkling away at me from his profile photo, his right arm around someone out of shot. Sam Parker is attending this event. Why hasn’t he said anything to me? Obviously we hardly spend hours chatting, but he could have mentioned it when I was dropping Henry off. Maybe he’s hoping I don’t find out about it.

Other names I recognise jump out at me: Matt Lewis, Claire Barnes, Joanne Kirby. For a heart-stopping second I see Weston and think wildly that it’s Maria, but no, it’s Tim Weston. My God, her brother. He wasn’t at school with us – he was a year older and went to the local sixth-form college – but he used to hang out with Sam and some of the other boys in our year so I suppose it’s not so surprising that he’s going. There are loads of other names – some I know, others that I don’t remember. So many names, but not mine.

I keep scanning the list of attendees until I find Sophie. I knew she’d be there. I click on her profile. I’ve looked at it before, but always resisted the temptation to befriend her. This time I go straight to her ‘friends’ section, but Maria’s not there. Of course that doesn’t mean that Sophie hasn’t received the same request I have, only that she hasn’t accepted it. She’s got five hundred and sixty-four friends. I’ve got sixty-two and some of those are work-related. I’ve thought about deleting my account before, to prevent myself from getting sucked into that terrible time-wasting vortex where you find yourself poring through the wedding photos of someone you’ve never met instead of meeting a work deadline; but actually it’s important to me, particularly in the last couple of years. Since Sam left, I have had to shrink my world, in order for the important things not to fall apart: Henry; my business. I don’t have the time or energy for anything else, but Facebook means I haven’t completely lost touch with my friends and old colleagues. I still know what’s going on in their lives – what their children look like, where they’ve been on holiday – and then on the odd occasions that we do meet, the thread that binds us is stronger than it would otherwise have been. So I keep posting, liking, commenting; it stops me from falling out of my world completely.

The wind is rising outside and a strand of the wisteria that trails around the outside of my French windows taps on the glass, making me jump. Even though I know it was the wisteria, I get up and peer out, but it’s nearly dark and I can’t see much beyond my reflection. A sudden sprinkle of rain rattles against the windowpane, as if someone has thrown a handful of gravel and I jump back, heart thumping.

Back at the kitchen table, I click on Sophie’s profile photo. It’s one of those faux-casual ones where she looks impossibly gorgeous but manages to give the impression it’s any old snap she’s thrown up there. Look closely and you’ll see the ‘natural’ make-up, the semi-professional lighting, the filters applied in the edit. Lean in closer and you might see the lines, but I have to admit she’s worn well. Her hair is still a tumbling waterfall of molten caramel, her figure enviably but predictably unchanged since her teenage years.

I wonder if she’s ever looked for me on here, and I click back to my own profile picture, trying to see it through her eyes. I’ve used one that Polly took, me sitting behind a table in the pub, glass of wine in hand. Under my newly critical gaze it looks like the photo of a person selfconsciously trying to look ‘fun’. I am leaning forward on the table in a short-sleeved top and you can see the unattractive bulge of my upper arms, in grim contrast to the gym-toned, honey-coloured limbs on display in Sophie’s photo. My mousy brown hair looks lank and my make-up is smudged.

My cover photo is one of Henry taken last month on his first day at school. He’s standing in the kitchen, his uniform box-fresh but marginally too big, looking heart-wrenchingly proud. Only I had known his private worries, confided to me last thing at night from deep beneath his duvet: ‘What if no one wants to play with me, Mummy?’; ‘What if I miss you too much?’; ‘What will I do if I need a cuddle?’ I had reassured him as best I could, but I didn’t know the answers to those questions either. He had seemed too small to be going off on his own into the world, out there where I couldn’t protect him. I wonder briefly if Sophie knows that Sam and I have a child, or even that we were married. I push down the thought of Henry, trying not to think about what he might be doing at Sam’s tonight, trying not to worry about him; it’s like trying not to breathe.