Page 4 of The Friend Request

‘Liv. Come on.’

She groans.

‘School. Up. Now.’

‘Five minutes.’

‘Your alarm has been going off for longer than five minutes.’

She rolls over and squints at me with one eye, her hair a disaster, her face creased with sleep. She looks so young when she’s like this. Younger than thirteen, younger than the stroppy, careful version of herself she puts on downstairs. I smooth her hair back, and she lets me, just for a second, before she bats my hand away and sits up.

‘I’m up,’ she says. ‘Stop hovering.’

I go downstairs and make breakfast. Toast for Olivia, cereal she won’t eat, juice she’ll complain about. Coffee for me, strong, no sugar, the mug with the chipped handle I keep meaning to throw away but never do. I stand at the kitchen worktop and drink it while the toast pops and the house fills with the sounds of Alex’s shoes on the stairs, Olivia’s door banging, the shower starting up.

My phone is still upstairs. Face down. Screen dark.

I tell myself I’m not thinking about it and carry on making the packed lunch.

Alex appears in the kitchen in his work suit, knotting his tie with one hand, checking his watch with the other. He takes a banana from the fruit bowl and leans against the worktop.

‘Olivia’s got the dentist this afternoon,’ I say. ‘Half three.’

He frowns. ‘Today?’

‘I told you last week. It’s been in the calendar for a month.’

‘I can’t do half three,’ he says. ‘I’ve got a meeting that’ll run till five at least. Can you take her?’

I stare at him. ‘I’ve got a deadline. I told you that as well.’

‘Can you move it?’

‘Can you move your meeting?’

He gives me that look – patient, tired, slightly above it all – and I hate it. I hate how reasonable he makes himself sound, how the logistics always fall on me, how every conversation about who does what ends with me doing it because Alex’s work is real work with a salary and mine is just something I fit in around the edges of everyone else’s life.

‘Kim, I really can’t,’ he says. ‘It’s the Goldberg case. I’ve got three people flying in from London.’

‘Fine.’

‘Don’t say fine like that.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like I’ve done something wrong. I’m not trying to⁠—’

‘I said fine, Alex. I’ll take her.’

He opens his mouth, thinks better of it, and picks up his briefcase. He kisses the top of my head on his way past, a gesture so automatic it barely registers as affection, and I hear the front door close behind him.

I stand in the kitchen with my coffee going cold, my chest tight, and a dull, heavy resentment settling somewhere behind my ribs.

He didn’t do anything wrong. That’s what makes it worse. He didn’t shout, didn’t refuse, didn’t say my work doesn’t matter. He just made it obvious, again, without saying the actual words, that when something needs doing, it’s my name on the rota, every time, no questions asked. I’m the one who rearranges. I’m the one who shifts her deadlines and cancels her plans and sits in the waiting room with a magazine from 2019 while Olivia gets her teeth checked, because Alex has a meeting and three people flying in from London and a career that apparently can’t bend.

I rinse my mug and leave it in the sink.

Upstairs, I pick up my phone. The screen lights up, and there it is – the little red dot, the notification, the name.