Page 45 of The Friend Request

I sit there for another thirty seconds, which feels like thirty minutes, and then I do the thing you’re not supposed to do. The thing that every woman watching a thriller shouts at the screen about. I get out of the car, walk up the front path, and let myself in.

The hallway is dark. I can hear something – a low murmur, a rustle, the creak of a floorboard – and my whole body goes tight with fear that doesn’t let you think, just react. I put my keys between my fingers the way they tell you to online, push open the living room door, and⁠—

‘SURPRISE!’

The noise hits me like a wall. Lights come on, curtains fly open, and suddenly there are people everywhere – laughing, clapping, pouring out of the kitchen and the dining room and from behind the sofa, holding glasses and party poppers and a banner that reads HAPPY BIRTHDAY KIM in wobbly gold letters that Olivia has clearly made herself because the M is upside-down.

I drop my keys. They clatter on to the wooden floor, and I stand there with my mouth open and my hand still raised in front of me like I’m about to fight someone. The whole room laughs, and Alex pushes through the crowd with the biggest grin I’ve seen on his face in months.

‘Got you,’ he says.

‘I thought—’ My voice cracks. ‘I thought someone had broken in.’

‘I know. Your face.’ He draws me into a hug, tight and warm.

I press my face into his shoulder and let out a breath that feels like it’s been trapped inside me for a week.

‘Happy birthday, love,’ he says.

My birthday isn’t until tomorrow. I’d been expecting a restaurant booking, a card from Olivia, and the usual quiet celebration that comes with turning thirty-eight when you’ve got a teenager, a mortgage, and no particular desire to be reminded. But Alex has done this – pulled it together early to catch me off guard, roped in half the people I know, and kept it a secret from a woman who has spent the last month on high alert for secrets.

The man is either brilliant or certifiably insane.

Olivia appears at my elbow. ‘Did you see the banner?’

‘I saw the banner. The M is upside-down.’

‘It’s artistic.’

‘It’s upside-down.’

She grins and hugs me, then vanishes into the kitchen where her friend, Phoebe, is apparently already raiding the snack table.

I move through the room, and it’s like stepping into a different version of my life – the version where I’m a normal woman at a normal party surrounded by people who like me and want to celebrate me. Sarah and Denise from Alex’s office are here, a couple of the mums from Olivia’s school, and my neighbour, Jackie, who I haven’t had a proper conversation with in months. They hug me and tell me I look well. As I smile and thank them and drink the wine Alex puts in my hand, I feel something I haven’t felt in weeks, which is safe.

Not just safe. Happy. Actually, properly happy, in a way that makes my eyes sting because I’d forgotten what it felt like.

Alex has thought of everything – food laid out on the dining table, a playlist coming through the speaker in the kitchen, the good glasses out, even candles on the windowsill. He keeps catching my eye across the room and smiling, and every time he does, I feel a pulse of gratitude. He did this because he loves me. Because he wants to fix what’s been broken. Because while I was drowning in Ross and the past and my own tangled head, Alex was planning something kind.

I don’t deserve him. I’m not being dramatic. I genuinely don’t.

An hour in, the party has settled into the comfortable noise of people who’ve had enough wine to stop being polite and start being funny. I’m in the kitchen refilling my glass when Alex comes up behind me and puts his hands on my shoulders.

‘Having a good time?’

‘The best.’ I turn around. ‘Thank you. Seriously. I can’t believe you did this.’

‘You needed it,’ he says. ‘We both did.’ He squeezes my shoulders, and then his expression flickers, half pleased, half nervous. ‘Oh, I forgot to tell you. I bumped into an old friend of yours in town the other day. Seemed like a nice bloke. I told him about tonight, and he said he’d love to come, so I invited him along. Hope that’s all right.’

My stomach folds in on itself.

‘What friend?’ I say. But I already know. I know before he answers, before he opens his mouth, before the words are even formed. I know the way you know a car is about to crash in the half-second before the impact, when your body understands what’s happening and your brain hasn’t caught up.

‘Ross something. Said he knew you from school.’ Alex smiles. ‘Seemed really pleased when I mentioned your name. Said you two were close back in the day.’

The kitchen tilts. I grip the edge of the worktop. The granite is cold against my palms, and I can feel my pulse in my fingertips, in my wrists, behind my eyes.

‘He’s here?’ I manage.