Friend Request Read online

  ‘I know, but they all seem to love them so I thought you might give yourself more of a chance if you said you did.’

  ‘Right, OK… and delicious food? Won’t they think that’s a way of warning them that I’m really fat?’

  ‘They’ll be able to see your photo, so they’ll know you’re not. Look.’ She clicks on the photo. She’s used one I’ve never seen before, taken at a barbecue at her and Aaron’s last summer. I’m wearing a bright print cotton dress and sunglasses, holding a glass of wine and laughing. I look happy and carefree. I don’t look like me.

  ‘So?’ says Polly hopefully. ‘Can I upload it?’

  ‘Oh God, go on then.’ She’s never going to let this go, and I suppose there’s no harm in putting myself on the site. I don’t have to go on any dates, after all.

  ‘Yay!’ says Polly, clicking away happily. ‘Right, you get changed. I’ll do this then I’ll go and play with Henry. I’ve set you up a new email address for all the replies, OK? So you can keep it separate. I’ll send the details to your normal email address.’

  I try on about five of my ‘best’ outfits, but I look overdressed and try-hard in all of them, so in the end I aim for casual but funky in a denim skirt, leggings and roll-neck jumper. Henry and Polly are absorbed in a train-crash drama when I pop my head into the sitting room to say goodbye, but Henry tears himself away to give our parting the gravity he feels is its due. Farewells are a serious matter for him, not to be taken lightly.

  As I walk towards Crystal Palace station, my phone vibrates in my pocket. I pull it out, and see with trepidation that I have a Facebook notification. When I click on it, though, it’s only a status update from Polly. Having fun matchmaking and living vicariously through Louise Williams on matchmymate.com, she’s written, tagging me so that it will appear on my page too. Thanks for letting everyone know I reply, adding a smiley face so she knows I’m not pissed off. Everyone and their dog seems to do internet dating these days, so I don’t mind my friends knowing. I think with a smile of the reaction some of them will have to Polly’s post, already looking forward to the comments, and I realise with a jolt that I’ve been looking for a way back into my life. Maybe this is it.

  Chapter 5

  2016

  I’m rummaging in my handbag for my Oyster card when I first get the feeling someone is watching me.

  There’s nothing specific that I can put my finger on, just an awareness, a prickling on the back of my neck. I glance around, but the station is busy with a mix of commuters on their way home and locals on their way into central London for a night out. I try and force myself to breathe evenly: I’m overreacting, letting my imagination run away with me. But my fingers stab uselessly inside my bag, the tension from them running all the way up to my shoulders, which are hunched as if in readiness for an attack.

  I look around, my eyes sliding unseeing over the men to search out women of my age. Could that be her, that woman in the expensive-looking camel wool coat standing by the entrance? She pulls a compact from her bag and turns towards me slightly as she checks her make-up under the harsh fluorescent light. No, it’s definitely not her, but it strikes me what a futile exercise this is. My mental image of Maria is decades out of date anyway, and who knows what blows life has dealt her if she has somehow survived? My chances of recognising her are slim to none, yet still my eyes sweep the ticket hall: not her… not her… not her.

  I move swiftly through the barriers and half-run down the stairs, trying to look as if I’m hurrying to catch a train, not running from something, or someone. I arrive breathless on the platform, more so than the run warrants, and push my way through the waiting passengers to the far end. My ragged breath is visible in the dark air before me, but a line of sweat trickles down my back. There’s still five minutes to wait for the train, so I stand close to the back wall, my bag gathered to me, eyes scanning the busy platform. When the train arrives, I get on and walk quickly down the first carriage, slipping into the second and pausing in the vestibule next to the toilet. I stand there a moment, trying to slow my breathing, but then the electronic door to the toilet slides open to reveal a young man vomiting into the toilet. I wince and walk down into the second carriage, taking a seat by the window. I rest my head against the glass, closing my eyes for a second against the houses that flash past with their glimpses of cosy family life through the lighted windows. I jerk round when I feel someone slip into the seat beside me, but it’s a young girl, talking very fast and angrily on her phone. She doesn’t take the slightest bit of notice of me.

  At Victoria I cross the concourse, trying to keep my eyes ahead, telling myself I’m being absurd. Even if someone were following me, I’m in a crowded station. I am safe. I join the crowds surging down into the Underground and stand on the platform. We are packed in so tightly that I can only see those people closest to me, everyone else just a sea of hot bodies, cheeks still red and cold from the freezing air outside, sweating in their winter coats. There’s no way anyone could still be watching me now; it’s too busy.

  By the time the tube pulls into South Kensington, I’ve convinced myself that I was being paranoid. I’ve allowed the fear I felt when I first got Maria’s friend request to overlay my life like an Instagram filter, turning everything a shade darker. No one is following me. I walk evenly up the steps from the platform, the knot in my stomach easing a little. The easiest route to Sophie’s flat, and the one I planned when I looked up her address earlier, is through the tunnel which runs under the roads to the museums. During the day it’s thronged with people – families going to see the dinosaurs in the Natural History Museum, tourists on their way to the V&A, but now although it’s not deserted, it’s quiet. I consider carrying straight on with the majority of people as they stream out of the main entrance, but then I give myself a mental shake. I’ve allowed myself to become cowed, afraid. I’m being ridiculous. I turn down the tunnel.

  I’m about halfway along when I hear the footsteps. I can see a man about fifty yards ahead of me, but otherwise I am alone, apart from whoever is behind me. I speed up just a fraction, I hope not enough for anyone to notice, but I’m sure the footsteps speed up too. They echo around the tunnel; proper shoes, not trainers. I speed up a bit more; so do the shoes. I risk a glance behind me and I can see a figure in a black coat, hood up. I daren’t look for long and I can’t tell at this distance whether it’s a man or a woman. I’m not far from the end of the tunnel now and I am filled with a need to be outside where there are cars and people. I start to run, and so does the figure behind me. My handbag is flying up and down and the carrier bag in my hand containing a bottle of wine that I spent forty minutes choosing in the supermarket last night bangs against my leg with every stride. Blood roars in my head and my chest starts to burn, and then finally I see the exit, and a group of women in suits coming towards me, chatting and laughing. I slow my pace, breathing heavily. One of the women looks at me with concern.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  I force a smile. ‘Yes, I’m fine. Just… in a hurry.’

  She smiles and goes back to her conversation. Once they have passed me and I am nearly at the exit, I look back. There is no sign of the figure in the black coat; no one there at all but the group of women, their laughter echoing around the tunnel.

  Out on the street, I lean against a wall for a moment until my breath, which has been coming in panicky gasps, slows to something approaching normal. Out here in the street-lit world, full of people and cars and life, my fear seems suddenly out of proportion. What did I think was going to happen?

  I force myself to check the map on my phone and start walking, legs still wobbly, in the direction of Sophie’s flat. Soon I find myself walking down a row of elegant, cream Georgian terraces fronted by black wrought iron railings and sporting carefully tended window boxes. Normally I would be peering enviously through the large sash windows at antique furniture and painstakingly restored fireplaces, my own flat seeming cramped and plain in comparison. Some of the
m are still one house, with the basement converted into a homely but expensive-looking kitchen with room for a squashy sofa as well as the obligatory kitchen island. Today, however, I can’t focus on anything except Maria.

  Workers rush past me in their daytime uniforms, wrapped up against the freezing wind, hurrying home to hot baths, warm rooms, dinners cooked by loved ones. I pass a group of teenage girls dressed in onesies and sheepskin boots with their hair in enormous curlers. They are dancing along together, oblivious to the cold, arms linked, hysterical with laughter. I feel a twinge of envy laced with shame, and am filled with a sudden longing to be curled up on the sofa reading Henry a Thomas the Tank Engine story.

  When I reach Sophie’s door, I glance up at the lighted windows behind the plantation shutters, firmly closed to keep out the darkness. I take a moment to compose myself, and then press the top buzzer. Seconds later there’s a pattering of feet, and a figure gradually takes shape, refracted through the stained-glass panels in the front door. And then the door is opening, and there she is. We look at each other for a couple of seconds, both of us seemingly unsure about how to play this. Then she breaks into a smile that lights up every corner of her lovely face.

  ‘Louise!’ She goes to kiss me on the cheek and then thinks better of it and pulls me into her, enveloping me in her arms, her perfume, her personality. I’m overwhelmed by memory, by sheer sensation. The intervening years, during which I have worked so hard at forgetting, melt away and for a moment I’m sixteen again – awkward, conflicted, intensely alive.

  Close up she is not quite the glossy creature of her Facebook photos but she’s not far off. With a flagrant disregard for the inclement weather, she’s dressed in skinny jeans with bare feet and a silvery gossamer-light vest top accessorised with a chunky statement necklace. Her honey-streaked hair falls around her tanned shoulders and she is lightly but expertly made up. I was reasonably confident when I studied myself in the mirror before I left the house, but now I just feel frumpy.

  ‘Hi, hi!’ she exclaims. ‘It’s so good to see you!’

  She even talks in exclamation marks.

  ‘You too,’ I manage. ‘You look great. How are you?’

  ‘Oh, I’m great, really well, really, really well,’ she gabbles, pulling me into the spacious tiled hallway, studying me with her head on one side. ‘Aw, you look exactly the same.’

  Upstairs in her top-floor flat it is almost stiflingly warm, and I can feel sweat begin to soak into the fabric that presses into my armpits and pool between my breasts. I’d like to take my jumper off but I can’t risk Sophie seeing the dark circles under my arms.

  Her flat is immaculate with airy, high-ceilinged rooms and solid wood floors, but it somehow manages to be cosy at the same time. An extravagant crystal chandelier hangs in the centre of the living room.

  ‘What a gorgeous flat,’ I say as I hand her the wine I brought.

  ‘Oh yeah, thanks. Come through to the kitchen.’

  I follow her into a small but tasteful and expensively fitted-out kitchen, where she shoves my wine into the fridge and pours us both a glass from a different bottle.

  ‘Is it… just you here?’

  There’s a pause.

  ‘Um… yeah.’ Her eyes flick to the fridge, which has photos and appointment cards stuck to it with magnets. She seems uneasy and I guess she’s unwilling to admit to being single. Even though I’m in the same position, there’s a tiny, secret, mean part of me that is glad she too is alone in her forties.

  We take our wine back to the living room and she gestures to me to sit at one end of the purple velvet sofa, curling herself in the opposite corner like a cat. The sofa is so deep that if I want to keep my feet on the floor, I can’t rest against the back, so I balance on the edge, legs primly together, shifting my wine glass from hand to hand.

  Despite her studied insouciance, I can tell she is nervous too, rattling off questions – what do I do for a living, do I enjoy my job, where do I live – leaving me little opportunity to ask any of my own.

  ‘And your parents, how are they?’ she asks when we’ve exhausted the other avenues.

  ‘They’re really well. Still living up in Manchester.’ There’s not much more to say. We haven’t fallen out exactly – I think you’d have to be closer than we are for that to be possible. It’s just that there’s a wedge between us, as there is between me and everyone who doesn’t know the real me, doesn’t know what I have done.

  ‘Do you get up there a lot?’ she goes on.

  ‘Not that much. It’s difficult, you know, with work and everything.’ It’s not that difficult really. Manchester’s not much more than a couple of hours on the train from London. The truth is that it’s an effort, spending any time with them. Our relationship is superficial, the conversation skating over the surface of life, never plumbing its depths. It’s a struggle to keep up the facade for longer than a few hours every now and then.

  ‘And your parents?’ I ask.

  ‘Oh, they both passed away. Dad when I was twenty-one, and then Mum a couple of years ago.’ Her tone doesn’t change from the bright cheeriness of a moment ago but I sense a brittleness behind her words.

  ‘I’m really sorry to hear that.’

  ‘Yeah, thanks.’ She dispatches my condolences neatly. ‘Sooo, tell me more about your work. Do you find it hard, working for yourself?’

  I go on too long about the perils of setting up my own interior design business and the awards I’ve won, and after a while her eyes begin to glaze over. She does perk up a bit when I mention being featured in the local paper back in Sharne Bay when I won a design award, but only because she too has a story about being featured in the same paper when she ran a charity race.

  ‘And you?’ I ask eventually. ‘What do you do for work?’

  ‘I work in fashion.’

  ‘Oh, great. Doing what?’

  ‘Oh, bits and bobs, you know. Sales, marketing. This and that.’

  I sense that for some reason she’s being deliberately obscure, so I don’t ask any more. I notice that she doesn’t ask me about a partner, or children. Is that because she knows about me and Sam, or because she doesn’t want to talk about her own relationship situation? She seems edgy, as if her incessant questioning is a way of keeping the conversation on the track she wants it on. When she finally runs out of questions, silence falls, and I rack my brains for a new topic. Sophie looks down, fiddling with her glass, uncharacteristically uncertain.

  ‘It’s so good to see you, Louise,’ she says. ‘You know, you were really important to me. You were the one I could… talk to, I suppose. You seemed to properly care about me, not like some of the others.’

  I am verging on speechless. Surely I was the one who had gained from our friendship at school, not her? She was my pass to the other world, the one who kept me from being Esther Harcourt. Looking back, I suppose I provided the uncritical, adoring acolyte she so desperately needed, but at the time I was so desperate to keep her that I never thought to wonder what was in it for her.

  I start to reply, but she cuts in, as if already regretting what she’s just said. ‘Soooo… excited about the reunion?’ She smiles, giving the distinct impression that she is well aware that I only found out about it recently. How very Sophie. The conversation has swung so swiftly back onto the regular track that I wonder if I imagined that lowering of her guard.

  ‘Yes, yes. Should be great,’ I reply. ‘Can’t wait.’

  ‘You do know Sam’s going? I heard about you two, such a shame.’ So she does know. Does she genuinely think it’s a shame? I was never entirely sure whether anything had happened between her and Sam when we were at school, and a ridiculous teenage part of me pulses with jealousy. She regards me soulfully from under her eyelashes, concern oozing from every pore. ‘Will it be a bit awkward, d’you think?’

  ‘No, it’ll be fine. It was very amicable,’ I say, as if reading from a script. I could call it My Life As I Want It To Be. Hearing his name from her
lips, with the past draped heavy around me, makes the weight on my shoulders press down just that little bit harder. ‘How did you hear?’

  ‘Oh, you know how these things get around,’ she says. ‘I still see a few of the old gang – Matt, Claire. People talk. I think it was Matt who told me actually – he came to your wedding, didn’t he?’

  He came alone, standing awkwardly around in his work suit, not knowing anyone. I remember Polly talking to him, saying afterwards that he was nice. I think she fancied him a bit. Before she was married, obviously.

  What did he say to Sophie about Sam and me, I wonder? There’s nobody who knows the intimate details of our relationship. Nobody who knows how we used to spend whole weekends in bed, totally absorbed in each other, turning down invitations to see friends, being everything to each other.

  ‘You had a baby too, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say through gritted teeth. ‘We had a baby. Although he’s not a baby any more; he’s four now.’ I suddenly wish desperately that I was at home, peering in through the gap of Henry’s door to check if he’s asleep, going in to kiss him, to breathe in the sleeping scent of him.