She smiles and goes back to her conversation. Once they have passed me and I am nearly at the exit, I look back. There is no sign of the figure in the black coat; no one there at all but the group of women, their laughter echoing around the tunnel.
Out on the street, I lean against a wall for a moment until my breath, which has been coming in panicky gasps, slows to something approaching normal. Out here in the street-lit world, full of people and cars and life, my fear seems suddenly out of proportion. What did I think was going to happen?
I force myself to check the map on my phone and start walking, legs still wobbly, in the direction of Sophie’s flat. Soon I find myself walking down a row of elegant, cream Georgian terraces fronted by black wrought iron railings and sporting carefully tended window boxes. Normally I would be peering enviously through the large sash windows at antique furniture and painstakingly restored fireplaces, my own flat seeming cramped and plain in comparison. Some of them are still one house, with the basement converted into a homely but expensive-looking kitchen with room for a squashy sofa as well as the obligatory kitchen island. Today, however, I can’t focus on anything except Maria.
Workers rush past me in their daytime uniforms, wrapped up against the freezing wind, hurrying home to hot baths, warm rooms, dinners cooked by loved ones. I pass a group of teenage girls dressed in onesies and sheepskin boots with their hair in enormous curlers. They are dancing along together, oblivious to the cold, arms linked, hysterical with laughter. I feel a twinge of envy laced with shame, and am filled with a sudden longing to be curled up on the sofa reading Henry a Thomas the Tank Engine story.
When I reach Sophie’s door, I glance up at the lighted windows behind the plantation shutters, firmly closed to keep out the darkness. I take a moment to compose myself, and then press the top buzzer. Seconds later there’s a pattering of feet, and a figure gradually takes shape, refracted through the stained-glass panels in the front door. And then the door is opening, and there she is. We look at each other for a couple of seconds, both of us seemingly unsure about how to play this. Then she breaks into a smile that lights up every corner of her lovely face.
‘Louise!’ She goes to kiss me on the cheek and then thinks better of it and pulls me into her, enveloping me in her arms, her perfume, her personality. I’m overwhelmed by memory, by sheer sensation. The intervening years, during which I have worked so hard at forgetting, melt away and for a moment I’m sixteen again – awkward, conflicted, intensely alive.
Close up she is not quite the glossy creature of her Facebook photos but she’s not far off. With a flagrant disregard for the inclement weather, she’s dressed in skinny jeans with bare feet and a silvery gossamer-light vest top accessorised with a chunky statement necklace. Her honey-streaked hair falls around her tanned shoulders and she is lightly but expertly made up. I was reasonably confident when I studied myself in the mirror before I left the house, but now I just feel frumpy.
‘Hi, hi!’ she exclaims. ‘It’s so good to see you!’
She even talks in exclamation marks.
‘You too,’ I manage. ‘You look great. How are you?’
‘Oh, I’m great, really well, really, really well,’ she gabbles, pulling me into the spacious tiled hallway, studying me with her head on one side. ‘Aw, you look exactly the same.’
Upstairs in her top-floor flat it is almost stiflingly warm, and I can feel sweat begin to soak into the fabric that presses into my armpits and pool between my breasts. I’d like to take my jumper off but I can’t risk Sophie seeing the dark circles under my arms.
Her flat is immaculate with airy, high-ceilinged rooms and solid wood floors, but it somehow manages to be cosy at the same time. An extravagant crystal chandelier hangs in the centre of the living room.
‘What a gorgeous flat,’ I say as I hand her the wine I brought.
‘Oh yeah, thanks. Come through to the kitchen.’
I follow her into a small but tasteful and expensively fitted-out kitchen, where she shoves my wine into the fridge and pours us both a glass from a different bottle.
‘Is it… just you here?’
There’s a pause.
‘Um… yeah.’ Her eyes flick to the fridge, which has photos and appointment cards stuck to it with magnets. She seems uneasy and I guess she’s unwilling to admit to being single. Even though I’m in the same position, there’s a tiny, secret, mean part of me that is glad she too is alone in her forties.
We take our wine back to the living room and she gestures to me to sit at one end of the purple velvet sofa, curling herself in the opposite corner like a cat. The sofa is so deep that if I want to keep my feet on the floor, I can’t rest against the back, so I balance on the edge, legs primly together, shifting my wine glass from hand to hand.
Despite her studied insouciance, I can tell she is nervous too, rattling off questions – what do I do for a living, do I enjoy my job, where do I live – leaving me little opportunity to ask any of my own.
‘And your parents, how are they?’ she asks when we’ve exhausted the other avenues.
‘They’re really well. Still living up in Manchester.’ There’s not much more to say. We haven’t fallen out exactly – I think you’d have to be closer than we are for that to be possible. It’s just that there’s a wedge between us, as there is between me and everyone who doesn’t know the real me, doesn’t know what I have done.
‘Do you get up there a lot?’ she goes on.
‘Not that much. It’s difficult, you know, with work and everything.’ It’s not that difficult really. Manchester’s not much more than a couple of hours on the train from London. The truth is that it’s an effort, spending any time with them. Our relationship is superficial, the conversation skating over the surface of life, never plumbing its depths. It’s a struggle to keep up the facade for longer than a few hours every now and then.
‘And your parents?’ I ask.
‘Oh, they both passed away. Dad when I was twenty-one, and then Mum a couple of years ago.’ Her tone doesn’t change from the bright cheeriness of a moment ago but I sense a brittleness behind her words.
‘I’m really sorry to hear that.’
‘Yeah, thanks.’ She dispatches my condolences neatly. ‘Sooo, tell me more about your work. Do you find it hard, working for yourself?’
I go on too long about the perils of setting up my own interior design business and the awards I’ve won, and after a while her eyes begin to glaze over. She does perk up a bit when I mention being featured in the local paper back in Sharne Bay when I won a design award, but only because she too has a story about being featured in the same paper when she ran a charity race.
‘And you?’ I ask eventually. ‘What do you do for work?’
‘I work in fashion.’
‘Oh, great. Doing what?’