Friend Request(78)

‘I came to see you, not Henry. I wanted someone to talk to, I suppose. About Sophie and everything. It’s all so awful.’

He looks genuinely upset and I feel myself softening.

‘I know. It’s so hideous. Have you spoken to the police?’

‘Yes, they were trying to make something of the fact that Soph spent a lot of time talking to me and Matt. I mean, she was one of my best friends at school, of course I was speaking to her.’

‘Was she really? One of your best friends?’ When I think of my friends at school, I never consider any boys as part of that group. There were boys, of course, but in my sixteen-year-old head, boys couldn’t be friends. There was always a difference, an edge, whether you fancied them or not.

‘Not best friends maybe, but part of the gang. You know.’ I suppose I do. My feelings about that time, about Sophie, Sam, Maria, they’re so complicated. And now it’s all got mixed up with the Facebook request, and what’s happened to Sophie. I’m in a hall of mirrors, full of distorted reflections and false endings. I’ve lost track of which way I came in and I have no idea how to get out.

‘Did you… mention the Facebook thing? Maria?’

He looks uneasy. ‘No. I knew you didn’t want the police to know and… well…’

‘You got us the E,’ I finish the sentence for him.

He twiddles the stem of his wine glass.

‘It’s made me think, you know?’ he says.

‘About what?’

‘Oh, you know, the past. That kind of thing. You know what I mean?’

I raise my eyebrows, determined not to make this easy for him.

‘You and I, we’ve got all this history together. It makes things easy between us, doesn’t it?’

‘Does it?’ Things don’t feel very easy right now. The air is thick with the unsaid.

‘Oh, Lou. I know you’re still angry with me, and you have every right to be. I hurt you and I handled things badly. I am so sorry for that, I really am. But I hoped that maybe we could be friends. I thought… that you might need a friend at the moment, one who understands. Who knows what really happened. I know I do.’

He’s right, of course, that is what I desperately need. What I don’t need is to get entangled with him again, to allow him to weave himself back into the fabric of my life. But he’s the only one now who understands. He’s standing below me with his arms outstretched and it’s so tempting to let myself fall.

‘Have you heard any more from… whoever’s behind this page?’ he asks. I realise that he doesn’t know there have been more messages. I daren’t tell him about the one mentioning Henry. He’ll be furious with me for not telling him at the time. Instead I answer him with a question of my own.

‘Sam, do you think it’s possible… that Maria’s still alive?’ I am suddenly close to tears. ‘What if the request really is from her? She must have worked out that she’d been given something. Or someone else has.’

He takes my hand and despite myself, my fingers curl around his.

‘No, Louise. I don’t think it’s possible, honestly. Not after all this time. Whoever’s doing this is just some sicko trying to scare you.’

‘But Esther… she’s been getting presents from Maria on her birthday every year since she disappeared.’

‘What?’

‘She gets presents in the post, they say they’re from Maria.’

Sam frowns, and I can almost see the wheels in his mind turning, trying to process this information.

‘Sorry, who’s getting these presents?’

‘Esther Harcourt. From our year at school? I was talking to her quite a bit at the reunion?’

‘I don’t remember her.’ He shrugs, and that one little gesture encapsulates the tragedy of the teenage years: the difference between the haves and the have-nots. Of course he doesn’t remember Esther. She simply never crossed his radar, being neither attractive nor popular. I wouldn’t have crossed it either if it hadn’t been for my association with Sophie. I am overtaken by a desperate wish that I had never become friends with Sophie, that I had been brave and stuck with Esther. It’s my own cowardice, my own craven desire for acceptance, for popularity that has led me here.

‘It must be the same person who’s put up the Facebook page,’ he goes on. ‘Like I said, some sicko. Do the police know?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t told them, but maybe Esther has. I know she went to the police when she first started getting them, but they weren’t interested.’

He sits back in his chair, releasing my hand.

‘Will you tell me what happens, next time you speak to the police?’ he says.

‘Yes, of course.’

‘And you’ll tell me if you get any messages on Facebook?’

I promise but I know it’s a promise I won’t keep. I am as alone as I’ve always been with all this. Polly still hasn’t been in contact since I told her about Maria, and I can’t let Sam in enough for him to help me. I don’t want it to be the way he slips back in. I pour myself another glass of wine and he pushes his own towards me hopefully. I fill it. What difference does it make?

‘So, how’s everything else anyway?’ he asks. ‘Work?’