Page 17 of The Friend Request

‘Well, I wasn’t. Are you going to eat your eggs or interrogate me?’

He holds up one hand in surrender, sits, and starts eating. Olivia glances between us and says nothing, her eyes studying the situation and committing it to memory. One more odd moment to add to whatever quiet tally she keeps in her head about the state of her parents’ marriage.

I sit down with my own plate and pick up my fork. The eggs taste of nothing. I eat them anyway.

‘Olivia, have you got everything for today?’ Alex asks, shifting the conversation. ‘What about that PE kit – did you wash it?’

‘Mum washed it.’

‘Did I?’ I say, and then I remember. I did. Last Thursday. It’s in the airing cupboard. ‘Yes. Yes, I did. It’s upstairs.’

‘Are you all right?’ Alex says, looking at me.

‘I’m fine.’

‘You seem distracted.’

‘I’m not distracted. I’m tired. I was out late and I got up early to make breakfast, and now nobody seems to want it, so forgive me if I’m not firing on all cylinders.’

He lets it go. He reaches across the table for the jam and spreads it on his toast, and Olivia asks him something about a school trip consent form she needs signed. Alex says he’ll do it tonight, and the conversation moves on to packed lunches and hockey fixtures and whether Olivia’s friend Mia is allowed to come for tea on Friday. The kitchen fills up with the sounds of family life – cutlery, chewing, half-finished sentences, the hum of the fridge – and from the outside, we must look fine.

Better than fine. We must look like one of those families in a Sunday supplement – the nice house, the good school, the home-made breakfast with juice in actual glasses. A mother who cares enough to set the table. A father who asks the right questions. A daughter who is healthy and bright and hasn’t yet worked out that her parents are only pretending.

The thought makes me want to cry.

I clear the plates while Olivia goes upstairs to find her PE kit, and Alex stands by the sink finishing his coffee. He’s close enough that I can smell his aftershave, and something that might be love and might be grief stabs me, but I can’t tell the difference this morning.

‘Kim,’ he says.

‘What?’

‘Is something wrong?’

I rinse a plate under the tap and put it in the rack. ‘No. Why would there be?’

‘You’re being very… attentive.’

‘Is that a complaint?’

‘It’s an observation.’

‘Well, stop observing and drink your coffee. You’ll be late.’

He watches me for a moment longer, and the pressure of his attention, his concern, the way he tries to read me when he thinks something is off, weighs me down. Alex isn’t stupid. He’s a solicitor. He notices contradictions and inconsistencies and things that don’t add up, and a wife who is suddenly making eggs at seven in the morning after claiming to have been at a work party until half ten is a contradiction he hasn’t missed.

But he doesn’t push. That’s Alex. He’ll notice, and he’ll wait, because pushing isn’t his way. He gives people enough rope and sees what they do with it.

I’m currently wrapping mine into a noose.

‘Right,’ he says, putting his mug in the sink. ‘I’ve got a meeting at nine. I’ll be back by six, maybe half past. Shall we do something this weekend? Take Olivia out somewhere?’

‘Like where?’

‘I don’t know. Lunch? A walk? That place in Bath she likes, with the milkshakes?’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘That sounds nice.’

‘Good.’