Page 32 of The Friend Request

‘We were, but Dad’s hip is playing up again, and he was being grumpy. Mum made a Victoria sponge to compensate. Standard.’ He unzips his jacket. ‘How was the deadline?’

‘Getting there,’ I say, which is a lie so smooth it frightens me. ‘Cup of tea?’

‘Go on then.’

He walks past me into the kitchen, and I stand in the hallway for a second, watching Olivia disappear upstairs with her rucksack. This is what normal looks like. The husband, the daughter, the overnight bag, the Tupperware, the jacket on the hook. This is the life I built and the life I’m about to blow apart, and right now, standing here with the chain off the door and the kettle still warm, I cannot tell whether I’m protecting it or destroying it by keeping my mouth shut.

The next hour is performance. Pure, exhausting performance.

I make tea and ask about Leicester. I listen to Olivia describe Grandma’s cabbage-scented farts, Grandad falling asleep in front of the football, and the boy next door who she says is annoying but mentions three times. I nod in the right places and laugh when she does an impression of Alex’s mum fussing over the sponge.

Alex is quiet. Not unusual – he’s often quiet after long drives, the solicitor in him needing half an hour to wind down from whatever he’s been turning over in his head – but tonight his quietness is different. He watches me across the kitchen table while Olivia talks, and twice I catch him eyeing me with an expression I can’t place. Not suspicious, not angry. Thoughtful. As though he’s working something out.

My stomach tightens.

‘Right,’ I say at nine o’clock, standing too quickly, smacking my hip on the table edge. ‘Liv, bed.’

‘It’s Saturday.’

‘It’s nine o’clock on a Saturday, and you’ve been in a car for three hours. Teeth, face, bed.’

‘Can I read?’

‘For twenty minutes.’

She goes, grumbling softly, knowing the argument is lost but wanting it on record that she objected. I hear her feet on the stairs, the bathroom door shutting, the tap running. Her bedroom door eventually closes.

The house settles.

Alex is sitting at the kitchen table with his hands around his mug, thumbs pressed against the ceramic. The Tupperware is still on the hall table. The overhead light is too bright, turning everything flat and clinical, and the clock on the wall above the cooker is loud – tick, tick, tick – marking time I’m running out of.

I sit opposite him. My mouth is dry. My hands are in my lap, pushed together, fingers laced tight.

‘Alex.’

He looks up.

‘I think we need to talk,’ I say.

His eyes hold mine. He doesn’t blink, doesn’t shift, doesn’t do any of the things I’d expected – the confused frown, the defensive straightening, the cautious ‘about what?’ that would give me space to steer the conversation. Instead, he puts his mug down slowly, both hands flat on the table, and nods.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I think we do.’

Four words, and the ground seems to open under me.

Because he doesn’t sound surprised.

Chapter Fourteen

He doesn’t sound surprised.

That’s the thing I can’t get past. I’ve been sitting here for less than ten seconds, and already the conversation has shifted beneath me, the ground tilting in a direction I didn’t plan for.

The question is: what does he think we’re talking about?

The kitchen clock ticks. The overhead light hums. Alex’s hands are still flat on the table, his mug between them, and he’s watching me with that patient expression he uses in professional settings when he’s letting someone speak before he responds. I’ve seen him do it a hundred times on the phone to clients – the silence that says I’m listening, go on, take your time – and it’s strange and horrible to have it turned on me.

I should speak first. The whole drive home, the whole sweating, pacing mess of the last hour, I’ve been rehearsing what to say – Ross’s name, the dinner, the walk, the kiss, the photo, the messages, the car park – turning the words over and over into a version of events that’s honest enough to count but vague enough to minimise hurt.