Page 41 of The Friend Request

‘Debatable.’

But she links her arm through mine for about three seconds as we cross the road, which in thirteen-year-old terms is practically a declaration of love. I store the moment away like a photograph.

Olivia takes her hot chocolate to a seat by the window and pulls out her phone. I stand at the counter waiting for change, and that’s when I see a familiar face through the glass.

Lisa Drewett.

She’s coming out of the chemist across the street with a paper bag in one hand, her car keys in the other, and she looks exactly the way I remember her but slightly weathered, the way we all are now – practical coat, sensible haircut, tired around the eyes. She turns her head and sees me through the café window at almost the same moment I see her, and there’s a flicker of something across her face – surprise, or maybe something closer to panic – before she rearranges it into a smile and pushes open the door.

‘Kim! God, I haven’t seen you in ages.’

My stomach drops. Not because of Lisa herself, but because of what she represents. The past. Ross. The version of myself I’ve spent the best part of a week trying to pack into a box and shove under the bed.

‘Lisa, hi.’ I manage a smile. ‘How are you?’

‘Good, yeah. Busy. You know how it is.’ She glances across at the window seat. ‘God, is that Olivia? She’s so grown-up.’

‘She’d be thrilled to hear you say that.’

Lisa laughs, but there’s something behind it – a tightness, a hesitation, the way someone acts when they’ve got words queued up and they’re trying to find the right gap to push them through.

‘She looks like you,’ she says.

‘Poor kid.’

‘Oh, shut up.’ She shifts her weight. Glances at the counter, at the door, at her keys. ‘Listen. Are you in a rush?’

‘Not really. We were just heading back.’

‘Could I buy you a coffee? There’s something that’s come up lately, and we need to talk.’

The words are light enough. Friendly, even. But my pulse picks up immediately because I know Lisa, or I knew her, and she was never the sort of person who mentally rehearsed conversations in advance. She was a blurt-it-out, say-it-and-regret-it, deal-with-the-fallout-later kind of person.

There is only one thing Lisa Drewett and I have in common that would need rehearsing.

‘Sure,’ I say. My voice comes out steady, which is a small miracle. ‘Olivia, do you mind waiting in the car for a few minutes?’

Olivia looks up. ‘How many minutes?’

‘Ten. Fifteen at the most.’

She sighs like I’ve asked her to carry the car home on her back. ‘Can I have the keys?’

I hand them over, and she wanders off with her hot chocolate. I watch her go and think about how easy it was. Five days of pretending the past didn’t exist, of being a good wife – a present mother, and a person with a clean, simple life – and how all it took was bumping into one person on the high street to feel the whole thing start to slide.

Lisa orders two flat whites without asking what I want, which is fine because I couldn’t focus on a menu right now if my life depended on it. We sit at a table near the back. The café is warm and crowded, spoons clinking against mugs, the coffee machine grinding away behind the counter. I’m glad of the noise because it means nobody else is going to hear this conversation, whatever it turns out to be.

Lisa wraps both hands around her mug. She looks at me, and I can see her deciding where to begin, the way you watch someone standing at the edge of a swimming pool trying to convince themselves to jump.

‘This is going to sound strange,’ she says.

‘All right.’

‘And I don’t want you to think I’m stirring things up, because I’m not. I swear I’m not. I just—’ She stops. Takes a breath. Presses her lips together. ‘I think you need to hear this, and I’d rather it was me than someone else.’

My mouth goes dry. I take a sip of coffee that I can barely taste and set the mug down and wait, because there’s nothing I can say to that. No way to prepare for whatever is about to come out of her mouth. I just sit there with my hands flat on the table, my heart hammering against my ribs, and I think about Alex squeezing my hand across the dinner table two nights ago, Olivia rolling her eyes at us, the cover design on my desk, and the text that said Hope today’s a good one x. All the small things I’ve been building back up brick by brick over five careful, hopeful, borrowed days.

Lisa opens her mouth.