It hasn’t been like this forever. Even as recently as her party, she was at least speaking to me still. Rather, it’s as though ever since that night in Amsterdam, her opinion of me has deteriorated little by little, day by day. It started with her taking longer to reply to my texts. Then she stopped returning my calls altogether. She would mysteriously vanish whenever I contributed to the group chat, only to reappear when I’d left the conversation. She was hopelessly busy whenever I attempted to make plans.

The worst part is, I don’t entirely understand why. If she had cut me off in one fell swoop after Amsterdam, I wouldn’t have been surprised in the slightest. This gradual fading to nothingness, though? It’s bewildering. It doesn’t seem to matter if I press her for an explanation, or speak to her warmly as though I haven’t caught her withdrawal, or give her the space to come to me—and I have attempted each of the above—the result is the same.

She’s shedding our friendship like snakeskin, and there doesn’t seem to be a thing I can do to prevent it.

For just a flash, something akin to despair wrenches at the pit of my stomach, and I take a slow breath and focus on keeping my expression even so no one around me notices. Then, viciously, I jump on that feeling, pressing it down further and further until the emotion is compacted into a tiny pebble, so small I can’t feel it at all. And, to my relief, I’m no longer pretending not to be devastated. I’m simply not. For now, it’s as though I never had a friend called Molly.

As today’s soup—a thick, velvety pumpkin—is placed in the center of the table in a steel tureen, I take a bowl from the stack being passed down the line and turn my attention to Danni, whose eyes are darting around nervously to confirm what everyone else is doing.

On either side of me, Molly and Harriet speak to Danni at the exact same moment.

“Are you having soup?”

“So, how does Bramppath compare to your old school?”

The latter question, asked by Harriet, is far louder, so Danni turns to her. Harriet leans forward and to the side, all but shoving me out of the way. I give a grunt of annoyance at the invasion of personal space, but Harriet doesn’t clock on. At least she pretends not to.

I spoon some soup into a bowl, and pass the ladle to Molly. She takes it from me silently, and I feel nothing.

“It’s different,” Danni says to Harriet. “I’ll have to get used to all the religious stuff. Like the prayers. I don’t know what to say most of the time.”