Free The Playdate by Louise Millar Page B

uncomfortable to leave anyone out. The thought that Rae might invite the whole class to her party and find no one wants to come apart from Henry, and maybe Hannah, is too painful to contemplate. “Let’s see how we get on, but it’s nice of you to think about doing that. I hope your friends realize how lucky they are to have such a generous girl in their class.”
    I take her into the kitchen to get a drink, then put her in front of a DVD. Back in my bedroom I look at myself again in the mirror.
    I can’t stop staring. If I subtract the wan, tired woman in the dark clothes from this shining, made-up woman I am now in the mirror, I am left with five years of loss. That’s what the difference is. Five years of lost everything.
    I hear the Somali woman padding about above my head.
    Idly, I pick up my address book and flick through it again, trying to remember. Wasn’t friendship easy before Rae, evolving gently and meaningfully out of one moment of laughter at school, a long talk in the pub after college, or a shared moment of late-night drama at work?
    Now, it simply doesn’t exist. On any level. Apart from with Suzy.
    I’ve been thinking a lot about Suzy this past week.
    Sometimes, in the dead of night, I feel bad. One of the reasons I feel bad is that I have always known something about Suzy that I have told no one. It became clear to me after those first few flurried, intense weeks when we met that, apart from babies and children, we had nothing else in common. A cursory glance at each other’s CDs, and music was never discussed. There are no books to share. Suzy owns none, apart from London guides and baby books. Even the wide-open spaces that we both experienced growing up as children—the ones she still craves—are the very ones that I ran away from when I came to London. So we talk about me and my problems. And we talk about her latest purchase from Heal’s or her new car. And we talk about school corridors and park swings, fish fingers and period pains, and make jokes about a relationship that is never going to happen with Matt, the Hot Dude That Callie Must Get It On With, because it would take Matt precisely one evening of chat to realize that I am an empty husk inside with nothing to offer. Eaten up by myself. Incapable of a normal relationship even with my so-called best friend.
    I have been pretending for a long time that it is OK for me to depend on Suzy, to allow her to believe we are so close. But in the black of the night, I know it is not right. Our friendship is not a friendship of choice, but one of need. An American stranger in London and a lonely single mum stuck together. It’s wrong to rely on her so heavily when I am not honest with her about who I really am; to allow the truth to stay hidden in a dark corner, like a ghoul, waiting. But I carry on because I need Suzy. I can’t survive without her. Not yet.
    And what makes it worse is that she appears to have no idea. Crucial elements are missing from our friendship, but she doesn’t even seem to notice. She seems happy just the way we are.
    Yes. Some nights, I feel very guilty indeed about Suzy.
    I look in the mirror some more.
    Rae is right. There is something about this dress. The iridescent sheen seems to be lighting me up. Charging me up. Giving me power to return, finally, after five years, to the world outside.
    I need this. I need to get back to Rocket. I need this to make things right.
    Nerves shoot through my stomach with such intensity, I get up and go to find some food.

12
Debs
    The children had been screaming for an hour now.
    Debs checked the old clock in the hallway. Nearly seven o’clock. What time did those boys go to bed on a Sunday night? Didn’t they have school tomorrow?
    “Don’t want my hair washed!” she heard the older one scream, followed by a long, agonized cry like he was being tortured.
    “Hold still, hon!” she heard the American woman shout. “Nearly done.”
    By the sound of it they were all having