to Seoul and Shanghai, she didn’t cry or stay in bed for days eating ice cream like I would have. No, she took his credit card and booked a first-class flight to Mauritius where she spent a week at The Four Seasons, lying on a beach drinking cocktails and having wild sex with the pool boy, telling me afterwards that she was following the sage advice that the best way of getting over someone was by getting under someone else. No one in the world does depression better than Kate. In fact, I should probably learn from her, but my credit card has a much lower limit.
As I stare at her now in the golden glow of the sunset though, I wonder whether Kate is hiding the truth from me, and if all this time when I’ve thought she’s been doing fine, she’s actually been struggling. It would hardly be surprising given all she’s been through and, now I think about it, I realise I’m stupid not to have considered it before. The thing with Kate is that she’s one of those people who always seems so put together that you sometimes don’t spot the cracks hiding beneath the wallpaper.
Now I look closer, she does seem on edge. Beneath the make-up I notice there are shadows under her eyes as though she hasn’t been sleeping, and she was unusually quiet on the flight here. She’s bitten the skin around her thumbnails too – something she only does when she’s anxious.
It hits me then that I’ve been a totally shit friend. Once upon a time, Kate and I would tell each other everything. We were closer than sisters, definitely closer than I am to my own sister who lives in Ireland and who I rarely see. When I moved to London from Cork as an eager twenty-two-year-old, desperate to get the hell out of my small hometown, I moved into a flat-share in West Hampstead. That’s where I met Kate. She rented the other bedroom.
From the minute we met it was as if we’d known each other forever. We were both Sagittarians, we both had a dad who’d died when we were eight, we both loved Richard and Judy books and reading gossip magazines, and we both loved going out clubbing. On Wednesdays we’d celebrate making it halfway through the week in our crappy temping jobs by buying a four-quid bottle of Black Tower wine, which we’d fully decant into two enormous glasses in order to avoid having to get up from the sofa to refill them, and then we’d settle in for Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathons. We’re the kind of friends who interrupt each other constantly, talk faster than a bullet train to Busan, and can also communicate an entire conversation if we need to, purely with facial expressions.
We lived together for eight years until I finally moved in with Rob. And even after that we’d still see each other at least once or twice a week and speak on the phone all the days in between. But now I realise we go whole weeks without talking, and when we do speak I’m always distracted or having to hang up mid-sentence in order to deal with one baby-related crisis or another.
If I’m honest with myself though, I wasn’t a good friend before I had Marlow either. Three years of failed IVF turned me into a grumpy-sore-arse, as my brother liked to tell me. I was depressed, and probably more than a little self-absorbed. Kate tried to be sympathetic but I could tell she didn’t really understand, not wanting kids herself and therefore unable to fully get why I was so down about not being able to have any.
After Kate broke up with Toby six months ago, I did call her more often to check in, but Marlow was only a few months old and I was in the throes of breast-feeding and dealing with so many sleepless nights I felt like I was living at the bottom of a well. And besides, Kate acted so upbeat about the break-up that I honestly thought she was OK. She was doing a Kate – moving on, not looking back. But perhaps I failed to miss the fact it was all bluster – and maybe she isn’t doing as well as I had thought.
‘I’ve missed our girlie weekends,’ I say, linking my arm through hers.
She turns to me and smiles, the sadness vanishing in an instant, making me wonder if I imagined