Page 1 of The Friend Request

Chapter One

Something’s off this morning. I can feel it before I even open my eyes.

It’s nothing I can put my finger on. Just the weight of the duvet and the sound of Alex already moving around downstairs, the tap running and a cupboard door closing with that careful click he does when he’s trying not to wake me. Which is funny, because the trying not to wake me is what wakes me. Every time.

I lie still, listening. The house sounds ordinary. Kettle. Radio, low – he always turns it down when he’s the first one up, as if the newsreader might disturb the peace, but never thinks to put his shoes on before clomping across the kitchen tiles. I can hear him down there now, moving from fridge to worktop to table, and I know exactly what he’s doing without needing to see it. Bowl for Olivia’s cereal. His coffee in the blue mug, black, no sugar. My tea left on the worktop going cold because he made it when he got up rather than when I came down, which means by the time I reach it the milk will have formed that skin I can’t stand.

He thinks making it early is thoughtful. I think it’s a way of ticking a box without having to be in the room when I drink it.

I push the duvet back and swing my legs out of the bed. The floorboards are cold. The heating hasn’t kicked in yet, and outside the window the sky is grey, one of those mornings in autumn where the light barely commits to arriving. I can see the rooftops of the houses opposite and the bins someone hasn’t wheeled back in from collection day. A pigeon sits on the neighbour’s satellite dish, puffed and miserable.

Welcome to another Monday.

I pull on my dressing gown and check my phone. Nothing urgent. A notification from the school app about a bake sale I’ll forget to contribute to, and a text from my mum asking if Olivia wants to come for lunch on Saturday. I type I’ll ask her and leave it at that, because if I ring my mum now she’ll want twenty minutes and I haven’t even brushed my teeth.

The bathroom mirror is still fogged from Alex’s shower. I wipe a streak across it with my sleeve, and my face stares back at me, bloated, hair flat on one side. I’m half-asleep. I look like I went to bed at ten and still didn’t get enough rest.

I look like someone who’s been tired for thirteen years.

Downstairs, the kitchen is warm and bright, and Alex is standing at the island in his work shirt, scrolling through his phone with one hand and holding his coffee in the other. He glances up when I come in.

‘Morning,’ he says.

‘Morning.’

And that’s us. That’s the whole exchange. He goes back to his phone, and I go to the kettle and switch it on again because the tea he made me is, as predicted, cold and skin-topped and sitting in my favourite mug like a small act of passive aggression.

I pour it down the sink and start afresh. He doesn’t notice, or if he does, he doesn’t say anything, and I don’t know which is worse.

The thing is, we’re not at war. That’s what I’d say if anyone asked, and nobody does, because we don’t come across as a couple in trouble. We seem fine. We’re like every other pair of parents on Olivia’s school run – a bit tired, a bit distracted, getting on with it. And most of the time we are getting on with it. We cook dinner, watch TV, talk about the mortgage and whether the car needs a service, and who’s picking Olivia up from netball on Thursday. We don’t shout. We don’t slam doors.

We just don’t quite touch any more.

I’m not even sure when it happened. There wasn’t a row, a betrayal, a single awful evening I can point to and say there, that’s when it changed. It just – thinned. Like paint that’s been spread too far. The colour’s still there if you squint, but the coverage isn’t what it used to be.

‘Olivia up?’ I ask, stirring my fresh tea.

‘Haven’t heard her.’ He checks his watch. ‘She needs to leave in forty minutes.’

‘I know when she needs to be out of the door, Alex.’

He holds up one hand, palm flat. ‘I’m just saying.’

‘And I’m just saying I know.’

He nods once, takes his coffee, and walks out of the kitchen towards the hallway. I hear him call up the stairs – ‘Liv? Time to get moving’ – and then the muffled groan of a teenager who considers seven-fifteen a crime against humanity.

I lean against the worktop, blow on my tea, and tell myself that was fine. That was normal. Two parents managing a morning. No raised voices, no nastiness, just the ordinary running of a household where everyone has somewhere to be and nobody wants to be the first one to say, Can we talk about the fact that we’ve been room-mates since Easter?

I sip my tea. It’s too hot.

Everything’s fine.

Olivia appears ten minutes later in half her uniform, her tie hanging loose and her hair in a ponytail that suggests she stood in front of the mirror for thirty seconds and gave up. She drops into a chair, pulls the cereal bowl towards her, and starts scrolling through her phone.

‘Good morning to you, too,’ I say.

She grunts. I sit opposite her and watch her eat, which she hates, so I look at my phone instead and pretend I’m reading something important. She’s at that stage where my presence in the room is either invisible or mortifying, depending on whether her friends are nearby, and I try not to take it personally. I try.