Friend Request(44)

‘We didn’t get together when we were at school. We were twenty-six when we started going out.’

‘Yes, I know that, but you know what I mean. I was there when he left you, remember? I know what he’s like, what you went through. I don’t want you to end up back there.’

‘I know. Thanks Polly. But I’ll be fine, honestly.’

She reluctantly lets me go, extracting a meaningless promise from me that I’ll leave if anything happens or I start to feel upset. The roads are unexpectedly clear and the drive goes by in a dream. It seems as if hardly any time has passed until I am pulling up on the road outside the school. I had thought about parking at the Travelodge and getting a cab to the reunion, but I’ve decided to leave the car here. This way, if I decide to leave after one drink I can get straight in the car and drive back to Polly’s, and if I stay, I’ll get a taxi back here to my car in the morning.

I am unsure about parking in the car park so I find a space on the road. I pull down the visor to check my face one last time in the mirror. I can hardly meet my own eyes. I could still turn back. It’s not too late. I could go back to Polly’s and watch Strictly, or just hole up in my room at the Travelodge. I sit for a few minutes, phone in hand, Polly’s number up on the screen, thumb hovering. Two women I don’t recognise walk past the car, chatting, laughing, clearly keyed up. They turn into the school gate and one of them howls, ‘Oh my God!’, her friend giggling and shushing her. Who are they? And if I don’t even recognise them, what the hell am I doing here?

But then I see Sam, alone, walking easily and confidently into the grounds. My mouth feels dry and my tongue is taking up too much space in my mouth. For a minute I think I’m going to be sick, but it passes and the nausea is replaced by anger. Why should he get to waltz in there without a care, while I sit shivering and vacillating in a car that’s getting colder with every passing moment? This is just as much my past as it is his. I turn off my phone, get out of the car and march firmly towards the entrance.

I am surprised to recognise the teacher manning the door as Mr Jenkins. He doesn’t even look that old, and I suppose, although he seemed ancient at the time, he was probably only late twenties, making him early fifties now.

‘Ah, hello there!’ he says. ‘And you are…?’

‘Louise Williams,’ I say, my mouth dry with anticipation.

‘Ah yes,’ he says, clearly not remembering me in the slightest as he hands over my name badge. ‘Looking forward to seeing all the old faces?’ He smiles. ‘Some of them have hardly changed a bit!’

I spend an unnecessarily long time fastening the badge to my dress, but when I can’t spin it out any longer, I walk through the lobby into the hall, my fingers curled into my palms. It’s the smell that hits me first. Like all schools, it smells of rubbers and disinfectant with a hint of old sweat, but the familiarity of this particular odour is like a smack in the face. It throws up memories I didn’t know I had: queuing for chocolate in the tuck shop at break time, hot orange squash that scalded your fingers through the flimsy beige plastic cup from the vending machine, a game we used to play in the first year when we still called it playtime, called for some reason, now lost in the mists of time, ‘That Game’. Of course there’s also another memory, another night in this hall, this one not lost but branded onto my brain, leaving an ugly scar. I try to stem the images that flash through my mind, and the accompanying wash of shame: Maria, Esther, Sophie. Me.

With an anxiety bordering on panic, I realise I can’t see anyone else on their own. Little groups form and merge, people flitting from one cluster to another with shrieks of recognition and overblown hugs and kisses. I am the only one who has come without the security blanket of a friend. Sam is over at the bar with his back to me, but I can’t bear for him to be the first person I speak to. My eyes sweep the room, as they do everywhere I go now. There’s a woman on the other side of the hall with her back to me, her mid-brown hair swept up into a complicated chignon, and as she begins to turn her head to speak to the man at her side, my heart slows and the room swims before my eyes; but then she looks behind her, laughing at something the man has said, and I can see it’s not Maria at all. I recognise her, but like a lot of the people in the room, I struggle to put a name to her. Janine? No. Sarah? The two women who passed me in the car are whispering to each other and pointing in my direction, and for a horrible moment I think they are talking about me. But then I realise it’s someone else they are interested in, someone chestnut-haired and beautiful. She is with a tall, dazzlingly handsome man, who has his arm wrapped tightly around her. I’m staring at the man, thinking how rare it is to come across someone in real life who is properly handsome in that movie star way, when I realise that the woman at his side is Esther. I’m absurdly, pathetically pleased to see her, and rush over.

‘You said you weren’t coming!’ I want to hug her, but I know it will seem too much.

She looks embarrassed. ‘Turns out I’m human after all,’ she says, glancing at her husband. ‘You know what finally decided me? You looking so surprised when I said I was married. This is Brett, by the way. Brett, Louise.’

Still clasping Esther with one hand, he shakes my hand with the other. ‘Good to meet you, Louise. Can I get you a drink?’

‘Yes, white wine, please.’