Friend Request(47)

‘So,’ I say, ‘did you grow up somewhere like this? A small town in nowheresville?’

‘No,’ he says. ‘I’m London born and bred. Places like this give me the heebie-jeebies.’

‘Have you ever been to a school reunion? Your own, I mean, rather than some random woman’s you met on the internet.’

‘God, no. Can’t think of anything worse.’

‘Oh, OK,’ I say, stung.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean that other people shouldn’t go to theirs, but it’s not for me, that’s all. I didn’t have the greatest time at school. Bit of a loner, I suppose.’

‘It’s OK,’ I say, thawing. ‘It is kind of a weird thing to do. I mean if it wasn’t for social media, nobody would know anything about the people they went to school with. We’d all just be getting on with our lives. I’ve actually heard of cases where people have got back in touch with their childhood sweethearts on Facebook and ended their marriages, gone back to their first loves.’

‘I stay right away from the whole thing,’ he says. ‘Apart from anything else, it just seems to me like a colossal waste of time.’

‘Yes, you’re probably right.’ There’s a silence, and I wonder whether if I wasn’t on Facebook, Maria would have found another way to reach out to me, to make me pay for what I have done. I’ve made it easier for her by putting myself out there, but it’s hard to hide nowadays, to stay completely off-grid. I take a long drag of my cigarette, and as the smoke burns fiercely down into my lungs, the fleeting sense of relaxation I’ve been feeling out here in the dark is replaced by a familiar unease, my shoulders hunching in response to it.

‘So,’ says Pete, with the air of a man deliberately changing the subject, ‘you were about to tell me in there who you used to work for.’

We’re obviously destined never to finish this conversation, however, because our attention is distracted by the sound of a man raising his voice at the top of the school drive. It’s not a long drive, and there’s a streetlamp right at the top of it. With a feeling of sick dread, I realise that standing under it and facing towards us is Tim Weston, gesturing and remonstrating with someone. The other person has their back to us and is wearing a black coat with the hood up. I can’t tell from here whether it’s a man or a woman, and although we can hear Tim’s voice, the wind makes it impossible to make out what he is saying. Pete and I stand and peer up the drive, he presumably with prurient interest, me with rising fear, both of us straining but failing to hear. The freezing wind seems to be seeping into me, drilling right down to the bone. I squint my eyes, trying to make the shadowy figure into an adult Maria. Could it possibly be her, back here where it all began? Is that what this whole night has been about? I realise that I have no idea who organised the reunion, and haven’t yet spoken to anyone who does. I take an unsteady step forward, narrowing my eyes, but as I do, Tim puts his arm around the other person and they leave, walking in the direction of the town centre. I sink back down onto the wall, all the breath punched out of my body.

‘Wonder what all that was about,’ says Pete. ‘It’s awful but I love seeing other people having arguments. Everyone’s always so keen to show their best face to the world – you know, look at my perfect life, my wonderful family, this elaborate cake I’ve baked. I find it kind of reassuring to know I’m not the only one fucking things up.’

I force my mouth into a smile, but disquiet bubbles under my skin like a blister. I take a final, shuddering drag of my cigarette, stand up and grind the butt under my heel with unnecessary force.

‘Once more unto the breach?’ Pete says, standing up too.

We walk back towards the main doors together, and in spite of the cold, I can feel the warmth from him, our arms almost but not quite touching.

Chapter 19

1989
The evening started so well. Sophie brought round several dresses for me to try on, including the one that’s now lying scrunched up on the floor beside me. It’s a full-length emerald satin sheath (‘I’ll never wear it,’ Sophie had said. ‘It’s so unflattering on me, it hangs off me in all the wrong places’), unlike anything I’d ever worn before: low cut, pulled in at the waist and off the shoulder, emphasising my curves and making me feel unexpectedly sexy and daring. I added some vertiginous black heels (again Sophie’s cast-offs) and a diamond pendant necklace that my parents had given me for my sixteenth birthday, which glinted invitingly millimetres above my cleavage.

I sat doll-like on the edge of my bed whilst Sophie performed her magic. First she smoothed most of my hair back into a ponytail, which she twisted and secured with a diamante clip, expertly pulling a few tendrils free around my face.

Next she methodically layered foundation, powder, bronzer and blusher before applying the glittery green eyeshadow I’d bought that week in Woolworths. She added black liquid eyeliner along my top lids with a cat-like flick at the outer corner of each eye, and finished with a slick of mascara to my upper and lower lashes. Ignoring Just Seventeen’s advice to do either dramatic eyes or lips, but not both, she added a deep plum lipstick that made my lips shine like fat, black cherries.

I couldn’t see in the mirror from the bed, so when I stood up to view the finished effect, the stranger who looked back at me took my breath away. There was only the merest of hints, a barely perceptible uncertainty in my eyes, of the dumpy girl with the mousy brown hair who had started the process an hour before. I stood up straighter, pulling in my stomach and pushing my shoulders back. The mousy-haired girl shrank even further away as I took in my newly created hourglass figure, my glittering feline eyes, the diamond twinkling at my throat in the lamplight.