I hung up again. I had no idea what else to say.
Back outside the library, my phone started to ring, but it was only Jason.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked. ‘I’m at the theatre and no one else is here except Sunil.’
‘Rooney’s gone.’
‘What do you mean gone?’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll find her.’
‘Georgia –’
I hung up and tried Rooney a third time.
‘Maybe the you from Freshers’ Week would have left us. But not now. Not after everything.’ I felt a tightness in my throat. ‘You wouldn’t have left me.’
When I hung up that time, I realised my phone only had five per cent battery left, because I’d failed to put it on charge last night.
The wind whipped around me on the street.
Should I call the police?
I started walking back towards the town centre, all the ‘what if’s circling around my head. What if she’d gone home? What if she’d fallen in the river and died?
I stopped in the middle of the pavement, a memory suddenly flashing in my mind so hard I felt like I got whiplash.
On that first night out in town, Rooney had put herself on Find My Friends on my phone. I hadn’t used it at all in the end, but … would it work now?
I nearly dropped my phone in my haste to get it out and check, and sure enough, there on the map was a little circle with Rooney’s face in it.
She was, apparently, in a field, by the river, maybe a kilometre away in the countryside.
I didn’t even let myself think why. I just started running again.
I hadn’t thought about what Durham might be like outside the city centre. All I’d known for the past six months was university buildings, cobbled streets and tiny cafés.
But it only took ten minutes for me to find myself in big, endless greenery. Long fields stretched out ahead as I followed the small, worn footpaths and tracked the little Rooney dot on my phone, until my phone screen went black and I couldn’t any more.
By that point, I didn’t need it. The dot had been by the river, next to a bridge. I just needed to get to the bridge.
It took another fifteen minutes. At one point I was scared I was truly lost, with no Google Maps to help me, but I just kept going, following the river, until I saw it. The bridge.
The bridge was empty.
The surrounding footpaths and fields were too.
I just stood there and looked for a moment. Then I walked across the bridge and back, like Rooney might be sleeping down on the riverbank or I might see the back of her head bobbing in the water, but I didn’t.
Instead, when I reached the footpath again, I saw light glint off something on the grass.
It was Rooney’s phone.
I picked it up and turned the screen on. All of my missed calls were on there. Lots from Pip too, and even a couple from Jason.
I sat down on the grass.
And I just cried. From exhaustion, from confusion, from fear. I just sat in a field with Rooney’s phone and cried.
Even after everything, I couldn’t help her.
I couldn’t be a good friend to her.
I couldn’t make her feel like she mattered in my life.
‘GEORGIA.’
A voice. I looked up.
For a moment I thought I might be dreaming. Whether she was a projection from my mind of what I wished was happening right now.
But she was real.
Rooney was running across the bridge to me, a Starbucks in one hand and a bunch of flowers in the other.
‘Oh my God, Georgia, why are you – what’s wrong?’
Rooney collapsed on to her knees in front of me and stared at the tears flowing out of my eyes.
Pip had cried in front of me dozens of times. It didn’t take much to set her off. Often it had been warranted, but sometimes she cried just because she was tired. Or that one time she cried because she made a lasagne and then dropped it on the floor.
Jason had cried in front of me a few times. Only when really bad things happened, like when he realised how horrible Aimee was to him, or we watched really sad movies about old people, like The Notebook and Pixar’s Up.
Rooney had cried in front of me a few times too. When she first told me about her ex. Outside Pip’s door. And when we moved the beds together.
I’d never cried in front of her.
I’d never cried in front of anyone.
‘Why … are you … here …？’ I managed to stammer out in between heaving breaths. I didn’t want her to see me like this. God, I didn’t want anyone to see me.
‘I could ask you the same thing!’ She dropped the flowers on the ground and placed her Starbucks cup carefully on the footpath, then sat down next to me on the grass. I realised she was wearing different clothes from last night – she was now in different leggings and a sweatshirt. When had she gone back to our room to change? Had I slept through her coming back?