'The knowledge that you could accidentally make a friend think so badly of you that their only recourse was to vanish from your life with no explanation was shattering.'
About a year after returning to London from LA, I was walking home from the tube one night when one of my closest friends blanked me in the street. It was as I waited at the traffic lights, thinking about what I’d buy from the Co-op for dinner, that I saw her. Becca was coming down the street towards me, on the other side of the road. She was dressed in her trademark, white vest-top, ripped jeans and Doc Marten boots. She had dyed a streak of her fringe bright pink.
We hadn’t seen each other for a while. I wasn’t sure why but Becca had started ignoring my texts and emails. At first, she’d reply with a few non-committal words when I suggested meeting for coffee. A birthday message I’d sent had been curtly received. It was weird. It wasn’t like her. It wasn’t. But, I reasoned, maybe she needed space. There had always been something unknowable about Becca, an unreachable quality that meant when she bestowed on you the gift of her attention, you felt special.
“I was so shocked, I actually laughed. Her blanking of me had been so nakedly deliberate, and I wasn’t sure how to react.” We got closer and closer. Although we were on different sides of the road, I could quite clearly see her turn her head and clock me. There was a flicker of recognition in the way she tilted her face. She didn’t smile. I caught myself in the act of raising my hand to wave: an automatic reflex. Embarrassed, I brought my arm back down by my side. Becca carried on walking.
I was so shocked, I actually laughed. Her blanking of me had been so nakedly deliberate, and I wasn’t sure how to react. I failed to say anything in the moment. I couldn’t reach for the right words. In place of where there should have been the shared vocabulary of our friendship, there was instead an all-encompassing shame. I felt humiliated. My internal logic decreed that I must have committed some terrible error.
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