Friend Request Page 10

  ‘No, actually. Henry had it. He was taking it to Sam’s. He said he misses me when he’s there.’

  ‘Oh, poor H.’ Polly puts a hand to her chest in anguished sympathy.

  ‘I know. Let’s not talk about it, I can’t bear it.’

  By the time the pie is ready, we’ve worked our way through all the crisps and made a start on a second bottle. She’s been regaling me with tales of her sister’s love life, as well as filling me in on bits of news about my old colleagues at Blue Door. She is going to the drinks thing that I was havering about when she arrived and she’s adamant that I have to come. She hasn’t mentioned her girls yet, nor asked about Henry. Although she adores Henry, and I love Maya and Phoebe too, we don’t talk about them that much. I do have friends that I made through Henry with whom the conversation nearly always revolves around fussy eaters, managing behaviour or the pros and cons of swimming lessons, but I love that that’s not the case with me and Polly. She’s a proper friend.

  As I spoon the meagre pie out of its tin-foil dish onto two plates, adding several slices of French bread and a handful of salad, I ask how the girls are.

  ‘They’re OK. Well, Maya is.’

  Maya is a robust and lively eight-year-old with an astonishing and enviable disregard for the opinions of others, whereas her sister at twelve grows quieter and more withdrawn every time I see her. I’d assumed this was the usual march of adolescence, the inevitable desire for independence, otherness, and the subsequent drawing away from one’s parents and any adults associated with them.

  ‘And Phoebe?’

  ‘She’s been having some trouble at school. With the other girls.’

  An icy finger curls around my stomach, taking away my appetite.

  ‘You mean – she’s being bullied?’

  ‘I’m not sure you’d call it bullying. It’s so… subtle. Girls this age – they can be so vile.’

  Don’t I know it.

  ‘What have they been doing?’

  In some ways I don’t want to know. I find this a difficult topic at the best of times, but right now I don’t know if I will be able to keep my composure.

  ‘It’s hard to quantify. Leaving her out of stuff, not telling her about things until it’s too late for her to go, undermining her confidence in the way she looks. I don’t think she even tells me all of it. This new girl started halfway through term and she’s thrown everything out of whack. She’s turned Phoebe’s best friend against her. She’s a real alpha female.’ She pauses. ‘Actually, what she is is a fucking little bitch.’

  The venom in Polly’s voice shocks me. I’ve hardly ever even heard her swear, let alone speak so viciously about a child.

  ‘Phoebe’s always been so funny, so sparky, and now it’s like she’s shrinking. She’s fading away, that person she used to be. And of course I knew she would change as she got older, grow away from me, but I thought that the essence of her, what makes her who she is, would still be there. But it’s going; she’s losing it. This girl, she’s taking it away, she’s taking Phoebe away.’

  Polly is trying very hard not to cry. I am desperately sorry for her, but it’s incredibly hard for me to respond in a normal way. This is such an emotive subject for me that I don’t know what the normal response is. The only experience I have of it as a mother is Henry telling me that Jasper and Dylan wouldn’t play trains with him in choosing time, which although it hurt my heart beyond measure, is hardly the same.

  ‘Have you been into the school?’ I manage.

  ‘Oh yes, several times. They’re doing their best, but like I said, it’s subtle. There’s only so much they can do. Friendship issues, they call it. Funny kind of friendship.’

  She looks down at her barely touched plate. I want so badly for her to know that I understand, to offer some comfort.

  ‘I had… something similar when I was at school,’ I say haltingly.

  ‘Really?’ Polly looks up. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Oh, I won’t go into it all now, but… I do understand. I remember what it’s like to be a teenage girl.’

  ‘Oh Lou, would you speak to her? She looks up to you.’

  I must look sceptical because she goes on, ‘No, she really does. She thinks you’re so cool with your own creative business, and bringing Henry up on your own.’

  ‘I don’t know, Polly. I’m not sure I’d be able to say anything useful…’

  Oh God, what have I got myself into?

  ‘Of course you would. You just said you had something similar happen to you. Even hearing that would help her. Please.’

  Of course that’s not exactly what I said, but I can’t tell her that in fact I experienced it from the other side.

  ‘OK, I’ll give her a ring tomorrow.’ What else can I say?

  ‘Thank you. I really appreciate it.’ She touches my arm lightly. ‘Anyway, enough about that. I’m sick to death of thinking about it, to be honest. Let’s talk about you – you haven’t said much. Is anything up?’

  It’s my turn to look down, flattening the mashed potato with my fork. There’s a part of me that longs to confide in her, to unburden myself to someone who genuinely cares about me and has nothing to do with the past. I am just so tired. Tired of keeping it all inside me, of never being able to fully let go.

  ‘No… not really.’

  ‘I knew it! What is it? Have you met someone? Oh my God, is it someone from the website?’

  She looks so hopeful that I am tempted to make something up, but I don’t.

  ‘No, nothing like that. I haven’t even checked the email address you set up, to be honest. I don’t know if my heart’s in it, Poll.’

  ‘OK, we’ll do that in a minute. Tell me what’s up first.’

  I decide to go for a heavily watered-down version of the truth.

  ‘I was contacted on Facebook by someone I was at school with.’

  ‘Yes, that girl you went to see last Friday. Sophie, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, this was someone else. I’ve never told you about this, but at the end of my last year at school, a girl died at a party in the school hall.’

  ‘What, she died right there in the hall?’

  ‘No. She – they think… well, they think she must have been drunk or something. Our school was close to the cliffs at Sharne Bay. The last time anyone saw Maria she was wandering off in that direction. She was never seen again.’

  I’m painfully aware of the huge holes in my story, the dark spaces that gape like missing teeth between my words. Polly, however, is agog.

  ‘So they didn’t find her body?’

  ‘No, but that’s not unusual, there’ve been several cases over the years where people jumped and their bodies were never found. It became a bit like Beachy Head, sort of a famous suicide spot. It depends on all sorts of things – the tides, the weather – whether bodies get washed up or not.’

  ‘So who was the message from?’

  ‘That’s the thing. It was from her. From Maria.’

  ‘From the dead girl?’ Polly’s fork stops halfway between the plate and her mouth. ‘But how horrible, that’s sick. Who on earth would do that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘And why to you? Was she a particular friend of yours?’

  I don’t know how to answer this question. Apart from my parents (with whom my relationship is muddied by duty, guilt and prevarication) and Henry (who is biologically compelled) Polly is the only person in the world who loves me. I’d never been really close to my parents like some children are, but after Maria disappeared, our lack of communication became even more marked. It happened at that critical time in the mid-teens when children separate from their parents anyway. I was already drawing away from them towards my friends, my ‘real’ life. I suppose in the normal course of things I would have become closer to them again as I grew into adulthood, but Maria’s death caused a schism between us so great that it was impossible to cross. I could never tell them what I had done, why I withdrew from them so c
ompletely. And they in their turn were baffled as to why the disappearance of a girl who, as far as they were concerned, I barely knew, had such a catastrophic effect on me.

  Polly saw me at my lowest ebb when Sam left. I may not have told her the whole story, but she knows more than anyone else does. She picked me up and set me back on my feet when I thought I was never going to be able to get up again. In all my life I’ve never had anyone who was in my corner like she is, and I can’t bear to risk losing that. I can’t risk showing her who I really am, particularly in light of what’s happened to Phoebe.

  ‘Sort of,’ I say. ‘But not so much by the time she died. It wasn’t just me anyway, another girl I was at school with got the same request. The one I saw last week when you babysat. And there’s something else.’ I take a breath. ‘That night when I went to Sophie’s, I think someone was following me.’

  ‘What? Why on earth would anyone be following you?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly… but this request, then the photo going missing…’

  ‘But Henry had the photo, you just told me.’

  ‘I know, I know. But I swear there was someone behind me in the tunnel at South Ken, and when I started running, so did they.’ The footsteps clipping, keeping pace with mine, the burning in my chest, the bottle banging against my legs. ‘And then I got another message from Maria’s account. It said, “Run as fast as you like, Louise. You’ll never escape from me.” She was following me, she must have been.’

  ‘That could just be a figure of speech though, couldn’t it? It doesn’t mean that anyone was actually following you that night.’

  She doesn’t believe me, and I don’t blame her. Without the context of what I did to Maria, my story loses its power, but of course that’s the bit I can’t tell Polly. But someone has set up a Facebook page for Maria Weston, and someone followed me all the way from Crystal Palace station to South Kensington. I know it.

  ‘This Facebook page though,’ Polly says, echoing my thoughts, ‘that is weird. Do you not have any idea who could have done it?’

  ‘There’s a school reunion next weekend, I thought I might go, see if – I don’t know, if anyone else has had anything similar, I suppose?’

  She regards me sternly. ‘A school reunion? Seriously? Will Sam be there?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say, eyes glued to the bottom of my wine glass and thinking of the event page on Facebook that told me exactly who was going to be there.

  ‘Hadn’t you better try and find out before you go? I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to see him socially, do you?’

  Sometimes I wish I hadn’t confided in Polly at all when Sam left me. She’s not the sort of friend who forgets things, or allows you to do so. I love how fiercely protective she is of me, how angry she is at Sam on my behalf, but I can’t allow her to stop me from doing this.

  ‘Look,’ I say, ‘I’ll try and find out who’s going – there’s probably someone I can ask, or maybe there’s a Facebook page or something. I won’t go if it looks like he’s going to be there.’

  I hate lying to Polly but I don’t want to argue with her, I need her to be OK with me. She’s right, of course. It’s not a good idea for me to be in a relaxed, social environment with him, one full of drinking and reminiscing and heightened emotions, and Polly knows exactly why. I made the mistake of telling her that there was one time, not long after he left me, where he came round in the evening after Henry was asleep. I’d been drinking alone, so I poured a glass for him and he sat down with me, and for an hour or so it was as if he’d never left. There was a moment where he leaned over me to open the drawer where I still keep the corkscrew and time stood still, just for a second. He was so close that his features softened hazily, leaving only the feeling of his breath on my cheek, and a hot, melting sensation low in my stomach. I stood up quickly, my legs shaking and crossed the room, pretended to remember an early start, asked him to leave. Despite everything he had done to me, I still felt a pull to him. Part of me still does.

  ‘Hmm… OK,’ she says, seemingly mollified. ‘Right, let’s have a look at this email account, see if you’ve got any interest.’

  I pass her the laptop and she logs in to the email account she set up for me.

  ‘Oooh, there’s quite a few!’

  I scooch my chair round so I can see the screen, and she starts opening the emails.

  ‘Oh,’ she says. The first one makes lewd reference to the fact that Polly said I was interested in ‘nights in and out’. ‘“I will go in and out all night if you want me to.” OK, delete and on to the next.’

  The next one goes into even more detail about exactly what it is he would like to go in and out of, and how he would feel about that.

  ‘Oh dear. I think I should have phrased that differently,’ says Polly, crestfallen. ‘It was my first foray into the world of online dating. We should have got a teenager to do it for you. They’re much more savvy.’

  Most of the messages are variations on this theme, with a few genuine responses mixed in, all of whom seem to have taken my love of country walks and run with it. They are rock climbers, triathletes, iron men.

  ‘I can’t date any of these men,’ I say. ‘I get palpitations going outside the M25.’

  ‘Hang on,’ says Polly. ‘We have a live one. “Hi there,” it says. Well, that’s friendly isn’t it, a good start? “I must confess I’m not a huge fan of country walks, but I love to eat out and wondered if I could take you out for dinner?” There you go! He doesn’t like country walks either!’

  ‘That’s not exactly the strongest basis for going out with someone, is it?’

  ‘No, I know, but you never know. Let’s have a look at his profile.’

  Greg is 42 years old, and handsome in a non-threatening way. He’s laughing in the photo, and looking at something over the photographer’s shoulder.

  ‘Lovely shirt,’ says Polly.

  ‘Again, Poll, not necessarily the criteria on which a lifetime’s happiness is built.’

  ‘Oh, stop creating obstacles. Let’s reply.’

  I sigh, but to be fair he is handsome and seems normal, as far as you can tell with these things, which is not very far at all; so I allow her to craft a reply, which she sends via the messaging function on the site. He must be online because a reply pings back straight away, and before I even have time to protest or think about it, Polly has arranged a date for me with Greg at 7pm tomorrow in a bar in central London. On her instigation, we are just going for a drink. She says that way if I need to get out of it I can do so after one drink without awkwardness, and if it’s going well, then we can always go for dinner anyway. I can’t imagine for a minute that it will go well if Greg is as nice and normal as he looks. It’s years since I’ve been on a date, I’m bound to stuff it up.

  When Polly has gone, I pour the dregs of the second bottle of wine into my glass and flip open my laptop. Facebook is still open from where I was checking it earlier and I see that I have a new message. My evening with Polly has dulled my fears a little and I assume it’s the latest in the lengthy exchange of messages from my old colleagues about this night out, so I click on it with no trepidation.

  What I see makes the blood drain from my face. The message is from Maria Weston, and it says:

  Did you enjoy your trip to Norfolk? I haven’t forgotten what you did, Louise. I’m always watching you. I will never let you go.

  Chapter 13

  1989

  Maria didn’t stay much longer at the party. Sophie sat me down in the kitchen, gave me a glass of water and sat beside me stroking my hair. After about ten minutes, Tim came in and rummaged in a huge pile of coats on the kitchen floor. As he left the room with Maria’s denim jacket, he looked back briefly over his shoulder and his eyes bored into mine, full of hatred and accusation. The intensity of his gaze frightened me and I looked away. From my position near the corner of the table I could see into the hallway. Maria stood by the newel post with her head down, her face shielded b
y a curtain of hair. She allowed Tim to help her into her jacket as you would a small child, and when he had done so he stroked her hair back from her face, saying something to her in a low voice that I couldn’t hear. Then he steered her out of the front door, his arm wrapped protectively around her.

  The party was brilliant after they left, one of the best nights of my life. I started to feel better so I had some more vodka and I actually danced, and for the first time ever it was OK. Sophie tried to get me to do an E but I was too scared and she was so sweet about it, said she understood, that she had felt the same before she tried it, that there was no pressure. Later, part of me wished I had just done it.

  We went for a walk together at about four in the morning, all round Matt’s estate. The streetlights were on, and in the half-light the houses looked like mini-castles. I’d never known such silence, broken only by the sound of our footsteps and Sophie’s soft voice, telling me things I never knew about her, letting me in.