Friend Request(50)

‘I’m fine,’ I whispered.

‘OK, I’ll see you later, yeah?’

And with that he was gone, leaving me alone in the semi-darkness. I drew a long, shaky breath, only now feeling the coldness of the wall seeping into my back. How could I have been so stupid? Wasn’t this what I wanted, what I’d been dreaming about for God knows how long? And what if he told Matt, who might tell Sophie?

I touched the package in my bra, small and unnoticeable to anyone but me. My resolve hardened. I wouldn’t let this night be about what had just happened – or not happened – with Sam. This night would be about something else, something so big that no one would remember anything else about it.

Chapter 20

2016
The night wears on. The volume rises. There is laughter, lots of it. There are the promised eighties tunes and bad dancing. I find that there are people here that I know, or knew. Sophie, Maria, Sam, Matt – they’ve all loomed so large in my mind that I had forgotten that I did have some other friends, especially before that last year at school. Sam has disappeared, swallowed up by the crowd. I’ve done my bit, had a civil conversation with him. Hopefully I can avoid him for the rest of the night.

The mood in the hall is a potent cocktail of nerves and excitement; as the alcohol levels in our collective bloodstream rise, you can feel everyone slipping back into their teenage selves, as if their adult personas were only something they had been trying on for size.

Despite an ever-present watchfulness in my core, I’m actually having fun, and when Lorna Sixsmith goes off to the bar to get us more drinks so she can carry on telling me about her divorce, I am totally comfortable on my own. I look around the room, smiling in an alcoholic fug, wondering who else the evening will throw my way. A dark-haired woman in a blue linen dress smiles in friendly recognition across the hall and I wave back. I’m so glad I came now. Maybe this is exactly what I needed. Exorcise those demons.

Two women are heading my way, one tall with short blonde hair, expensively highlighted, one short and dark. I don’t recognise them at first, but as they draw closer, smiling, the penny drops. It’s Claire Barnes and Joanne Kirby.

‘Oh my God, Louise!’ says Claire, giving me a hug.

I hug her back and Joanne embraces me in turn.

‘You look great,’ says Joanne.

‘Thanks, so do you both,’ I say automatically.

‘Isn’t this weird?’ says Claire. ‘God, I was so nervous about coming.’

‘Me too,’ Joanne says fervently. ‘Especially since… you know, being back here, where it happened. Maria, I mean.’

It’s the first time I’ve heard her name mentioned tonight. I had thought that seeing as we were back here, gathered together in the place she was last seen, that she would be on people’s minds, but it seems they have short memories. Not these two though.

‘I’ve always felt so bad about her. I thought about not coming actually,’ says Claire. ‘It just didn’t seem right, you know?’

For a minute I am confused. Claire and Joanne don’t know what I did at the leavers’ party, do they?

But then Joanne adds, ‘I know. We were so mean to her. What shits we were.’

I realise she is talking about our daily campaign of isolation, rather than any particular incident.

‘I’ve got teenage girls now myself,’ says Claire. ‘I’m always on the watch for anything like this. They get sick of me going on and on about it. If they ever say anything even slightly unkind about another girl, I jump down their throats.’

I tell them about Polly and Phoebe, and how upset Polly is, and they are sympathetic, suggesting more strategies that Phoebe could use to deflect this girl who is making her life a misery. They are kind, decent women, and I can imagine myself being friends with both of them if I’d met them as adults. We exchange promises to keep in touch, and I actually think we might.

I’m about to go and speak to the woman in the blue dress (Katie, it’s Katie Barr, the Neneh Cherry fan) when Matt Lewis pops up beside me. I feel a wave of affection. Matt was always nice to me, wasn’t he? He even tried to stop me following through with the plan at the leavers’ party.

‘Hey, you,’ I say. Even in my drunken state it doesn’t sound natural. I never say ‘hey, you’. In fact no one says ‘hey, you’ apart from in American movies.

Matt doesn’t smile; in fact he looks fairly grim.

‘I’ve just been talking to Sophie. She told me about the Facebook thing. What the fuck, Louise?’

I look desperately round. Where is Lorna with those drinks? I spy her over by the bar; she’s been waylaid by someone on her way back, laughing and chatting. She doesn’t seem in any hurry. The bubble I’ve been floating around in is abruptly popped.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Who else knows? Who have you told, Louise?’

Despite the music, he’s speaking quietly, so close that I can smell his slightly sour breath, see the pores in his skin.

‘I don’t know who knows… I haven’t told anyone, but maybe Sophie did, back then…’

‘We were all involved, Louise, and somebody knows. Think. Who have you told? Who else might know what we did?’

‘I swear, I’ve never told anyone about what really happened. God, I don’t want it to come out any more than you do. I was the one that… you know… you didn’t do anything…’