Friend Request Read online

  Hey! Great to hear from you!! Love to see you!! Are you coming to the reunion?

  Hope so! I type, my fingers slipping on the keys. Waiting to hear about a possible diary clash but would be great to see everyone!

  I’m conscious of the mismatch between the brightness of my tone and the confusion and distress I feel as I type. A voice inside my head (probably Polly’s) is telling me to stop, to ignore the reunion altogether, but I can’t do it.

  I know! Gonna be great!! she replies.

  My God, these exclamation marks are killing me. I can’t do this on email; I need to see her. I gather myself and begin to type.

  Be great to catch up properly before the big day – fancy meeting for a drink?

  I press send before I have a chance to change my mind. Up until now the messages have been flying back and forth like nobody’s business, but there’s a slightly longer hiatus after I send this one. I hold my breath.

  Sure, why not? Why don’t you come over to mine for a drink – how about this Friday?

  I exhale, shaking. I feel a bit strange about going to her house – I would have preferred somewhere neutral – but I can’t keep this up much longer so I agree. She gives me her address, a flat in Kensington, and we say goodbye with a flurry of kisses and smiley faces from her and a couple of self-conscious kisses from me.. Another notification pops up straight away. I’ve been tagged in a post by Sophie Hannigan: Looking forward to catching up with my old mate Louise Williams on Friday night! I click the like button with trembling hands. I am thankful that this first encounter with Sophie took place online, giving me time to compose myself privately afterwards. I’m an adult now, I think. I don’t need her approval, but I’m not even convincing myself.

  Outside, night is falling. I close the laptop and sit unmoving at my kitchen table for a long time. First the Facebook request, then the reunion, now this meeting with Sophie… I feel as though I’m on a ride, or a journey, that nobody asked me if I wanted to go on. Although I am profoundly shocked by the turn events have taken, at some level I’ve always been expecting this to happen, or something like it. I don’t know who is driving or where we are going, but wheels have been set in motion and I don’t know how to stop them.

  Chapter 4

  2016

  I notice the photo is missing just before the doorbell rings.

  It usually sits on top of the freestanding shelving unit next to the fridge: a selfie of me and Henry on the beach, framed by an unfeasibly blue sky, our eyes screwed up against the brightness of the sun. The unit also acts as a holding area for unpaid bills, letters from the school, shopping lists and scribbled reminders to myself about things I need to do. I knew that adjusting to life as a single, working mother would be hard emotionally, but the practicalities took me by surprise. Sometimes I feel that I am hanging on to life by my fingernails, always just seconds from falling.

  I leave Henry sitting at the table, painstakingly forking individual pieces of pasta into his mouth, and open the door.

  ‘You’re early.’

  ‘Yes, well, even though I have babysat for you a million times, I know there’s going to be a list of instructions as long as my arm: current favourite book, the precise angle he likes the door to be left open, the configuration and pecking order of the cuddly toys. These things take time. Can I come in then?’

  ‘Sorry.’ I step back and Polly whirls past me, divesting herself of an enormous striped scarf, which is practically the length of her entire body, and a Puffa coat, and unzipping knee-length leather boots to reveal greying leggings which don’t quite meet her mismatched socks, a stripe of unshaven leg visible in the gap between.

  ‘How’s things with you?’ I ask, hanging up her coat and scarf.

  ‘Oh, the usual. Work’s a nightmare; you were so right to get out of there, set up on your own.’

  She’s said this pretty much every time I’ve seen her since I left Blue Door Interior Design three years ago, but we both know she’d go crazy after just one day of sitting alone at home like I do, with only the odd meeting to break things up a bit. She thrives on the chat, the office gossip, the vibe that thrums between colleagues in a busy, demanding workplace. Whereas I don’t miss it one bit. I go out for occasional drinks with some of my old colleagues, but apart from Polly I wouldn’t describe any of them as friends.

  ‘I know, although sometimes I wish there was someone else to share the load,’ I say pointedly over my shoulder as we walk to the kitchen.

  Polly grins. I’m always trying to persuade her to leave Blue Door and come into business with me. We’d be able to take on some of the work I have to turn down.

  It was hard at first, going it alone, but it felt like the right time. Henry was almost one, and I was due back at Blue Door after taking the maximum maternity leave. The thought of going back to work full-time, being out of the house the whole time Henry was awake, alarmed me. Sam had been worried about how we would all cope when I was back at work – in fact, he was keen for me to give up work altogether but financially it wasn’t doable; and actually I was ready to get back to work again, just not to rejoin the rat race. I think we all thought it would make for an easier pace of life if I was working from home, building up the business slowly. It didn’t really work out like that though.

  I got in touch with someone I’d worked with years before, Rosemary Wright-Collins, and it turned out she was looking for someone to do the interiors for all her properties. Rosemary is a property developer with impeccable taste and a huge wallet, and it was a real coup to get her as my first client. The fact that I did, and that she is still using me for every new project she takes on, is a huge source of pride for me. She’s even written a glowing testimonial for my website. But it did mean that I had to hit the ground running, sort childcare for Henry, get straight back into professional mode.

  ‘Caro’s driving me insane,’ Polly goes on. ‘She’s got a new man again and she keeps phoning me what feels like every ten minutes to ask me what various text messages mean, what she should wear, whether she should shave her whatsit. I do not know what I did to deserve such a sister. I mean, for God’s sake, how am I to know if women these days are shaving their whatsits? Aaron would be so delighted if I ever wanted to have sex that I don’t think he’d care if I was covered in a fine down from head to toe… Henry! How’s my favourite boy?’

  She swoops down and kisses his head.

  He smiles through the tomato sauce.

  ‘Hello, Polly.’

  ‘He’s been looking forward to you coming all day,’ I say. ‘Apparently you read more stories than me.’

  ‘Well, Thomas the Tank’s all new to me, the girls were never interested. You got any new ones, H?’

  His face lights up.

  ‘Yes! Daddy got me three new Thomas books: Charlie, Arthur and Diesel. Will you read them to me?’

  ‘Of course! That’s what I’m here for!’

  ‘Mummy? Can I go and get them?’

  ‘Yes, if you’ve had enough pasta. Just let me have a chat with Polly though, and then when I’ve gone she’ll read them all to you.’

  ‘Tell you what, H, why don’t you go and make a start on a massive train track while I talk to Mummy, and then I’ll come and play with it when she’s gone out. Deal?’

  ‘Deal!’ says Henry, visibly bursting with joy at the prospect and scurrying out of the kitchen, already mentally constructing the track.

  Polly sits down at the table and pops a piece of cold pasta from Henry’s plate into her mouth. I kneel on the floor by the shelving unit, and pull it away from the wall slightly, its contents wobbling precariously on their shelves. I run my hand along on the floor behind it just to be sure, but there’s nothing there.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I keep a photo on here usually – you know, that lovely one of me and Henry on the beach.’

  ‘Oh yes, I know. And…?’ She gestures to me on the floor.

  ‘It’s gone.’

  ‘Wha
t do you mean, gone?’

  ‘Well, I haven’t moved it, and it’s not there. It’s always there.’

  ‘Maybe you were dusting it, and you got distracted and put it somewhere else? You know what you’re like.’

  ‘But where? It’s not exactly huge in here.’ There are units down either side of the galley, and then the room opens out slightly at the end, with just enough space for a small dining table by the patio doors. The photo is nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Or Henry’s moved it?’

  ‘Yes, maybe. Henry!’ He comes in, a wooden bridge in one hand and a plastic elephant about twice the size of the bridge in the other.

  ‘Have you seen the photo of me and you? The one that’s normally on the shelf there?’

  He shrugs. ‘No. Can I go back to my track?’

  ‘Yes, OK.’ I turn to Polly. ‘Well, where is it, then?’ Maria’s friend request hums in the background of my thoughts all the time, colouring my view of the world. A few days ago, I wouldn’t have given the missing photo a second thought, and even now the rational part of me says I’m being ridiculous; but in a small, scared corner of my mind, I can’t help but wonder: has someone been in my flat?

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, it’ll turn up. It’s got to be somewhere. So, who’s this old school friend you’re going to see tonight?’ asks Polly.

  I fill the kettle with water, playing for time, anxiety about the missing photo still playing at the edges of my mind. I’m unsure how much I want to share with Polly. I’ve never spoken to her (or anyone, in fact) about what happened with Maria. It’s too big, too unwieldy. I don’t know how to configure my tongue into the right shapes to explain it. That was one of the reasons it was such a relief to be with Sam. I never had to explain it to him because he was there. Sometimes I wonder if I would have put up with so much for so long if it hadn’t been for the fact that he was one of the only people who knew what I had done. He had seen the very worst of me and yet he still loved me, in his own way.

  ‘Oh, just a girl who I lost touch with years ago. She contacted me on Facebook, thought it would be nice to meet for a catch-up,’ I say, trying to keep my voice light. Tonight’s not the time to go into it; if I start explaining what happened to Maria, even the heavily edited version that I would have to tell Polly, we’ll be here all night, and I haven’t even figured out what I’m going to wear yet. I can’t ask Polly for help with that, much as I’d like to, because then I’d have to explain why it matters so much to me to look good tonight.

  ‘That’s great,’ says Polly. She’s always on at me to go out more, see my other friends. She thinks, and she’s probably right, that I’ve neglected them in my eagerness to focus on Henry in the wake of the split from Sam. The only one who hasn’t dropped away is her, because she refuses to.

  ‘So she would have known Sam too, this girl you’re going to see?’ Polly goes on, frowning.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Does she know that he’s left you for that… that… floozy?’ Polly’s fury at Sam’s treatment of me, and her contempt for Catherine, his new, younger wife, knows no bounds.

  I feel a fierce pang of love for her. She and Aaron and Sam and I never really progressed as a foursome, beyond the occasional dinner together. I used to wish that we were more of a gang, like some of the other couples that I knew who holidayed together, but I’m glad now that Polly stayed so very much mine, and that Aaron and Sam never gelled.

  ‘I don’t even know if she knows that Sam and I were married,’ I say. ‘Although I wouldn’t be surprised if she knows the whole story; she always knew all the gossip at school.’ Well, not the whole story. No one knows that. Not even Polly.

  ‘Hmm, OK. Now,’ Polly says, and I can tell that whatever’s coming next, it’s something she’s planned to say to me before she arrived, ‘have you thought any more about what I said? About internet dating?’

  ‘I don’t know, Polly. I’m not sure I’m ready to meet anyone.’ I spend longer than necessary looking for teabags in the cupboard. ‘You know I need to concentrate on Henry, and work. I don’t have a lot of time for anything else.’ It’s not time that’s the problem. It’s me. I think I might be broken. After all those years with Sam, I wouldn’t have a clue how to go about conducting a new relationship.

  ‘That’s exactly why you should do it! You need something else, something that’s just for you. I totally understand why you’ve had to devote all your energy to Henry, especially with him starting school this year, but it’s been two years since Sam left. That’s a long time, Lou.’

  It feels like yesterday. The pain has dulled a little, but it’s still there, like a gap where a tooth has been extracted. Some days I can leave it alone, but others I can’t help probing it with my tongue to see how much it still hurts. No matter how things were at the end, I can’t forget how we felt like one person rather than two separate beings, how we were swallowed up into each other, the times I saw myself reflected in his eyes looking better than I had ever looked. How we used to be everything to each other, not needing anyone else. I drag my thoughts away from him, back to Polly.

  ‘I know,’ I say reluctantly. ‘You’re probably right. I’m OK on my own though. Better, even.’

  ‘Well you’re certainly better off on your own than being with him. But you could be more than OK, you could be happy. You deserve some fun, and to be with someone who will treat you well, put you first. Look after you.’

  ‘Sam did all that,’ I say defensively. Sometimes I think Polly forgets how happy Sam and I were until a few years ago when things started to go wrong. How much he loved me, needed me even. At sixteen he hadn’t seemed to need anybody. He was so sure of himself, verging on arrogant, although I never would have said so at the time. I kept my devotion to him a secret back then because I feared he would scorn such puppyish emotion. But when we met again ten years later, he was different: a little softer, a little more vulnerable. Something in him responded to and was grateful for the uncritical, teenage adoration I still felt for him.

  ‘Oh my God!’ says Polly. ‘Why are you still defending him? What he did to you was so wrong.’

  ‘Yes, I know. But it wasn’t all his fault.’

  ‘Yes it was! It was totally all his fault!’ Polly pulls her unruly hair into a ponytail and twists it around in frustration. This is a conversation we’ve had many times before and both of us know it’s never going to end in agreement, so I pull her back.

  ‘So… this online dating thing, what would I even say about myself?’

  ‘Aha! That’s where you don’t need to worry.’ Polly smiles with the air of a poker player pulling out a trump card. One of the many things I love about her is her inability to hold a grudge. She can be really cross with you about something one minute, but make her laugh and it’s all forgotten. ‘There’s this site where your friend puts up your profile – they write it, say what kind of man you’re looking for, everything. You just sit back and wait for the offers to come rolling in.’

  ‘And this friend would be…?’ I smile, squishing the teabags against the inside of the mugs and adding milk.

  ‘Ta-dah!’ Polly does jazz hands around her face. ‘Seriously though, what have you got to lose?’

  It’s not so much what I’ve got to lose as what I could potentially gain. Do I really want to open myself up to the possibility of hurt again? I’ve worked so hard to get to where I am today – independent, self-sufficient, just me and Henry, happy in our little bubble. Making sure that Henry is OK has been my only concern apart from my work, and although there are days when I wish I could turn the clock back, actually I’m OK: healthier, happier. In fact I can’t imagine ever being with anyone else. I’m scared that I’m spoiled. A phrase I heard my mother use when I was a child echoes in my head: damaged goods.

  ‘OK, don’t be cross,’ Polly goes on, ‘but I’ve set you up a profile on the site. Why don’t you have a look and see what you think?’ She pulls my laptop towards her from the other side of the table.
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  ‘Wait!’ I jump forward and snatch it from her. Maria’s Facebook page is open on there.

  Polly draws her hand back in confusion. ‘The profile’s not live yet, I set it up so you can check it before I upload it.’

  ‘Oh, no, sorry, it’s not that,’ I say, opening up the lid, hoping she doesn’t notice the barely perceptible tremor in my hands. ‘It’s just that my laptop’s password protected. I’ll do it.’

  I hit a few random keys as if typing in a password, then close down Facebook and hand the laptop over to Polly. She opens a new window and taps away for a few seconds.

  ‘OK, here you are: Independent, funny female seeks similar male, 35–50, for country walks, delicious food, and nights in and out.’

  ‘I hate country walks.’