Friend Request(52)
‘Oh, for God’s sake, you don’t need to follow me round like a… like a fucking puppy. Just fucking grow a pair.’
She flounces off, stumbling on her heels, making a beeline for Sam on the other side of the hall.
Pete’s face is transformed, pale and angry. ‘Nice friends you’ve got.’
‘You’re the one who’s on a date with her,’ I say crossly. There’s a beat of silence and then we both start to laugh. It’s as if all the tension bound up in the evening has been released in one steady stream of pure mirth, which goes on and on, longer than the joke requires, until gradually we stop, gasping, him pinching the bridge of his nose, me wiping mascara from under my eyes.
‘So I guess there’s not going to be a fourth date?’ I say, when I can speak again.
‘Oh yes, I thought I might take her to a wedding next. She can meet my parents, I can show her off to all my friends.’
‘Sounds delightful. Or how about a work do, something to impress your colleagues?’
‘Ooh great idea. I can tell them all about her job in “fashion”.’ He does ironic quote marks with his fingers.
‘What do you mean? She does work in fashion, doesn’t she?’
He snorts. ‘Well, if you call working as a sales assistant in a clothes shop “fashion”, then yes, I suppose she does. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I don’t care what anyone does for a living, it’s just the pretence that gets to me. She wouldn’t even have told me; it was just a slip of the tongue on her part when she was talking about meeting me after work.’
‘But that flat in Kensington… how does she afford that if she works in a clothes shop? It must be worth millions.’
He looks at me strangely. ‘You don’t know her very well, do you?’
‘Of course I don’t,’ I say, surprised. ‘I hadn’t seen her for over twenty-five years until the other week.’
‘Aah,’ he breathes. ‘She didn’t tell me that. She implied that you were old friends who were still in regular touch.’
‘No, not at all.’ Why would Sophie have wanted to give Pete that impression? ‘So how does she afford it?’
‘Simple. It’s not hers,’ Pete says. ‘Belongs to some friend of hers who really does have a high-flying job, works away a lot in Hong Kong. Sophie house-sits for her when she’s away.’
‘Ohhh.’ The note of glee in my own voice makes me uneasy. I take a glug of warm wine to try and keep the schadenfreude at bay, but it stings as it fizzes down my throat and sits burning in my stomach. So all is not as it seems in Sophie’s world. No wonder she looked so shifty when I asked her if she lived there alone.
‘I wonder why she told you,’ I say.
‘Well, once she’d made the slip-up about her job, she could hardly claim to be able to afford that place. And I think maybe…’ he trails off, his cheeks reddening.
‘Maybe what?’
‘Well, if she thought there was a future for us, she wouldn’t have been able to sustain the lie, would she? Her friend’s due home from Hong Kong next week so she’ll be back to her one-bed flat in Croydon.’
I half-laugh, not because there’s anything particularly wrong with Croydon, but because of the contrast it presents with the elegant Georgian facades of South Kensington. I’m about to ask more when I feel a hand on my elbow, and turn to see Sam. The smile fades from my face. Up until now I’ve been feeling quite proud of how I coped with seeing him, but his fingers are a red-hot poker on my skin and I step back, folding my arms across my body.
Sam smiles at Pete. ‘I’m so sorry, can I borrow her for a minute?’
Pete can offer no defence against the charm offensive that is Sam Parker.
‘Oh, sure, OK.’ He walks off stiffly, having no option but to head back to Sophie.
Sam turns back to me, and my confidence oozes away with every second that passes. I’m drunk now, my defences lower, and I’m struggling to maintain a calm exterior, desperate not to let him see the effect he can still have on me. I try to relax, deliberately allowing my arm to return to my side; take a slow sip of my drink. I can feel the heat and hustle of the crowd around me, but it’s all at a slight remove. The room has shrunk to the two of us, held in our own private atmosphere where the air is cooler and the silences longer, and what we don’t say has more power than our spoken words.
‘So you know then.’ I force myself to speak normally. ‘About this Maria thing.’
‘Yes.’ He looks at me, puzzled. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? You knew, didn’t you, when you dropped Henry off on Saturday?’
‘Sophie said you knew then as well. She said she’d already phoned you,’ I say, knowing I sound like a petulant child.
‘Yes, I did, but I thought if you didn’t want to talk to me about it I should respect that. It must have been horrible for you.’
He looks genuinely troubled and upset for me and with a stab of pain I remember the other side of him, how kind he can be. In many ways I am stronger and even happier without him, and I’ve coped better than I ever imagined I would on my own; but there are times when it would be wonderful not to be responsible for everything, when I would give up all I’ve gained just to have someone to take the burden of everyday life from me. Sometimes I’m not even sure if what I remember of our relationship is the truth, or whether time and distance has warped my perception. I don’t even know if there is such a thing as the truth when it comes to relationships, or only versions of it, shaped by love and fear and the way we lie to ourselves and others.