Friend Request(45)

‘Same for you, darling?’ he asks Esther, who smiles her assent.

He releases his grip on her and goes off to the bar, and I turn to Esther.

‘What do you mean, you’re human after all?’

‘I didn’t think I cared what anyone here thought of me. Actually, I didn’t want to care what anyone thought of me.’ She’s so scrupulous with herself, so honest about her own motives. ‘But you know what? I’ve worked bloody hard to get where I am. I’ve got a great career, a gorgeous husband, two lovely children. I’m OK. I’m more than OK, in fact; I’m properly happy. And I’m afraid there’s a little part of me – or maybe not so little – that wants to show them, people that might still be laughing about me, or even worse pitying me in a corner of their minds.’

‘Well, I’m glad you’re here. Do you even recognise anyone?’

We look around. There are vaguely familiar faces, but none of them belong to anyone who I knew well, or was even in our class. There were four classes of thirty kids in our year so there were a lot of them I barely knew.

‘Ah. There’s someone we know,’ says Esther. There’s a commotion over by the entrance, someone being embraced and exclaimed over. A man stands back from the group surrounding the new arrival, holding a large white fur coat and looking embarrassed and out of place. I know his face, but it takes me a couple of minutes to realise he’s not an old school friend – it’s Pete, Sophie’s date from the night I went to her flat.

As I look over I catch Pete’s eye and smile at him. After a couple of seconds he smiles in grateful recognition and gives a half-wave. Sophie is now engaged in animated conversation with three identikit, Boden-clad blonde women. When it becomes apparent that she’s in no hurry to extricate herself, he comes over to Esther and me, and Brett, who is back from the bar with our drinks.

‘Hi – Louise, isn’t it?’ says Pete.

‘Yes, that’s right. Well remembered.’

‘Oh, I always remember names; it’s one of my things. I remember everything anyone ever says to me too. It’s a nightmare for my old friends, nothing gets forgotten.’

I turn to introduce Esther and Brett to Pete, but a woman I don’t recognise has come up and started talking to them, so I leave them to it. I notice that Brett never releases his hold on Esther, his arm tightly glued to her back at all times.

‘I didn’t realise you and Sophie were serious. How long have you been together?’ I ask Pete. I can’t put my finger on why, but I’d got the impression that night in her flat that this was a new relationship, if it was even a relationship at all. Until he turned up, Sophie hadn’t so much as mentioned his name.

‘We’re not really.’ Pete looks embarrassed. ‘This is our third date.’

‘Your third date? And you’re accompanying her to her school reunion? Jesus, that’s a heavy old third date.’

‘I know.’ Pete shakes his head despairingly. ‘I don’t know what I was thinking. Well, I do actually. I’ve got this… I suppose you’d call it a policy.’

‘Policy?’ This man is getting stranger by the minute. He seems a very unlikely match for Sophie from what I’ve seen of him so far.

‘Yes. I got divorced a couple of years ago, which was fairly horrendous.’

‘Oh, I know. Me too.’ I wish the admission didn’t make me feel such a failure still. Divorced by forty. I wouldn’t normally admit it to a near-stranger, but the fact that he went first bolstered me. I’m not going to tell him that my ex-husband is here though.

‘Really?’ His face softens. ‘You know then. So about a year ago I decided to get back out there. Put myself on a few online dating sites.’

‘You met Sophie online?’

He looks defensive. ‘Yes. Maybe it’s been a while since you were on the whole dating circuit – everybody meets everybody online now. There’s no stigma.’

‘Yes, I know that.’ Don’t I just. ‘It’s more that… it’s Sophie. I can’t imagine her doing it.’ Sophie, who used to have all the boys hanging from her every word.

‘Like I said, everybody does it. Anyway, when I first started, I was so quick to dismiss women – weird voice, nails too long, that sort of thing. My sister said I was deliberately picking holes in them to avoid getting involved. So I made up this rule for myself. If I go on a date with anyone, I have to go out with them at least three times – if they want to, obviously – and I have to say yes to whatever they suggest. As long as it’s not illegal, or dangerous.’

‘So you’ve ended up at someone else’s school reunion? Someone you hardly know?’

‘Yep. That’s why I was so happy to see you. You count as an old friend in this scenario.’

I laugh and sip my drink, casting about for something to say, falling back inevitably on the obvious. ‘What do you do?’

‘I’m an architect – at Foster and Lyme.’

‘Oh, I know them. They’ve put work my way in the past, when John Fuller was there?’

‘He was before my time, but I’ve heard of him. So you’re a…?’

‘Interior designer. Freelance now, although I used to work for Blue Door.’