Melissa herself didn’t appear in any of the images. As a result, the dinner party depicted in the photographs bore only an oblique relationship to the one we had actually attended. In reality, all our conversation had orbited around Melissa. She had prompted our various expressions of uncertainty or admiration. She was the one whose jokes we were always laughing at. Without her in the images, the dinner seemed to take on a different character, to go spinning off in subtle and strange directions. The relationships of the people who appeared in the photographs, without Melissa, became unclear.
In my favourite picture, I was looking straight into the lens with a dreamy expression, and Nick was looking at me as if waiting for me to say something. His mouth was a little open. It looked like he hadn’t seen the camera. It was a good photograph, but of course I had really been looking up at Melissa at the time, and Nick simply hadn’t seen her come through the doorway. It captured something intimate that had never really happened, something elliptical and somehow fraught. I saved it to my Downloads folder to look at later on.
Bobbi messaged me about an hour after the photographs arrived.
Bobbi: how good do we look though?
Bobbi: i wonder if we can use these as facebook profilers.
me: no
Bobbi: she says the piece won’t be out till september apparently?
me: who says
Bobbi: melissa
Bobbi: do you want to hang out tonight?
Bobbi: and watch a film or something
Bobbi wanted me to know that she had been in touch with Melissa when I hadn’t. It did impress me, which she wanted it to, but I also felt bad. I knew Melissa liked Bobbi more than she liked me, and I didn’t know how to join in their new friendship without debasing myself for their attention. I had wanted Melissa to take an interest in me, because we were both writers, but instead she didn’t seem to like me and I wasn’t even sure I liked her. I didn’t have the option not to take her seriously, because she had published a book, which proved that lots of other people took her seriously even if I didn’t. At twenty-one, I had no achievements or possessions that proved I was a serious person.
I’d told Nick that everyone preferred Bobbi to me, but that wasn’t really true. Bobbi could be abrasive and unrestrained in a way that made people uncomfortable, while I tended to be encouragingly polite. Mothers always liked me a lot, for example. And because Bobbi mostly treated men with amusement or contempt, men usually ended up liking me better too. Of course, Bobbi made fun of me about this. She once emailed me a picture of Angela Lansbury with the subject heading: your core demographic.
Bobbi did come over that night, though she didn’t mention Melissa at all. I knew that she was being strategic, and that she wanted me to ask, so I didn’t. This sounds more passive-aggressive than it really was. Actually we had a nice evening. We stayed up talking and Bobbi went to sleep on the mattress in my room.
*
That night I woke up sweating underneath the duvet. At first it felt like a dream or maybe a film. I found the orientation of my room confusing, as if I was further from the window and door than I should have been. I tried to sit up and then felt a strange, wrenching pain in my pelvis, which made me gasp out loud.
Bobbi? I said.
She rolled over. I tried to reach out of the bed to shake her shoulder, but I couldn’t, and I felt exhausted by the effort. At the same time I was exhilarated by the seriousness of my pain, like it might change my life in an unforeseen way.
Bobbi, I said. Bobbi, wake up.
She didn’t wake up. I moved my legs off the bed and managed to stand. The pain was more bearable if I hunched my body over and held onto my abdomen tightly. I went around her mattress and out to the bathroom. It was raining loudly onto the glazed plastic wall vent. I sat on the side of the bath. I was bleeding. It was just period pain. I put my face in my hands. My fingers were trembling. Then I got down onto the floor and put my face onto the cool rim of the bath.
After a while Bobbi knocked on the door.
What’s up? she said from outside. Are you okay?
Just period pain.
Oh. You have painkillers in there?
No, I said.
I’ll get you some.
Her footsteps went away. I hit my forehead against the side of the bath to distract myself from the pain in my pelvis. It was a hot pain, like all my insides were contracting into one little knot. The footsteps came back and the bathroom door opened an inch. She slid through a packet of ibuprofen. I crawled over and took them, and she went away.
Eventually it got light outside. Bobbi woke up and came in to help me onto the couch in the living room. She made me a cup of peppermint tea and I sat slouched holding the cup against my T-shirt, just above my pubic bone, until it started to scald me.