By the time I arrived at work, R was already at her desk. Her back was hunched and I could hear the tapping of her fingernails on the keyboard. She wore an oversized black dress and white Adidas trainers. I was sweaty and flushed. She always got there first.

Her hair was cut to her chin, almost black with a blonde streak across her short fringe that she dyed herself every few months. Her complexion was pale, her cheeks smudged hastily with pink blusher, just because. She often wore red lipstick, which changed her entire face. She laughed that I carried five lipsticks in my bag.

"Depends what mood I'm in," I'd say.

Many faces felt comfortable for me.

Our friendship was intense from the day we met at a bar on the Southbank. We spent the night drinking and making plans like we'd known each other for years. Soon I quit my job and we set up a studio full time. Our lives moulded into each other – work, after work, holidays, evening messages, calling when we walked. Eventually she and her husband even bought a flat around the corner from us and our partners became good friends.

My friends were intrigued, amused, alienated. Her friends too. They didn't know what to make of our other, our closeness. It was unusual.

The light in the studio streamed through the paper blind that the studio next door had lent us while we got ourselves set up. It stopped the glare of the sun that shone down over the Victorian brick buildings outside—the offices of architects that we'd watch at their desks as we ate our lunch. Shadows collected on the light surface, rows of zigzags that merged with the rigid lines of the window frame. A geometric backdrop to our unified forms.

Four Tet hummed through her speakers.

"Alright?" I said, placing my coat over the back of my chair.

"Hey mate, yeah. Just replying to Hannah about that branding project. Does this sound okay?"

I read the email over her shoulder.

"Yeah, that's fine. I can't believe they expected that for free. I think change 'outcome' though. Maybe just remove it?"

"Oh yeah, cool. Thanks."

––

Parallel.

Two lines moving in the same direction.

Birds in flight.

Circuits that you learn about in school where one light stays on.

Parallelogram, a word I learnt to spell in Year 3 before anyone else in my class.

Never meeting or ending.

Two trees growing towards the sky, their branches sprawling outwards but their direction defined in space.

Yellow lines beside the kerb that my daughter steps on, leading into other roads before suddenly stopping.

Frames. Creating windows and doors. Holding moulds of air.

––

R stared at her screen.

"I think we should get an intern. Not for free, pay them properly, but get them to do all the rollout stuff, as it's literally taking up all of my time."

I wasn't sure. Changing our dynamic felt uncomfortable. I worried about how a new person would affect us.

Two felt balanced, harmonic and steady. Three was awkward. Lopsided. The corner of a star.

"I'm not sure. It might just end up being more work. And can we really afford it? We're only just paying ourselves."

We kept it how it was.

Every day we'd walk her pug in the park opposite the studio. In summer, people sat in small groups scattered across the grass. The architects in their crisp white shirts and jeans, released for an hour from their desks.

I watched her remove her jacket and hang it over her bag. I noticed how she tilted her chin up towards the sun with her eyes closed. I hoped someone thought of me like I did of her.

We'd let the dog off and he'd run about and sniff other dogs and then he'd shit on the floor and she'd pick it up.

Then we'd get lunch and go back to our desks.

One evening we went to dinner with some of her friends. One of them, J, took an instant dislike to me. R said she was jealous because of how quickly we'd got to know each other. Later on that evening J spoke about me to the group, whilst I was smoking a cigarette outside. R defended me. My husband was a witness. An almost sisterly bond had been formed.

I found myself accidentally mimicking her voice, her mannerisms. Our husbands remarked that we were morphing into one another. Was this a conscious decision? I'd done the same with boyfriends in the past. Somehow, impersonating another allowed me to loosen my grip on myself. To become, briefly, someone else.

She taught me how to present, to lead, she supported my ideas and encouraged me to write. She was unapologetically herself. Every day she surprised me.

We'd been running the studio side by side for nearly two years when it all changed.

She came into work subdued and flat. She thought she might be pregnant. We bought a test from Sainsbury's. She had to ask for it at the till and the lady serving us grinned.

"Good news, I hope."

R didn't reply. She tapped her card on the reader and we left.

At the traffic lights, I felt her sickness as she pushed her hair from her eye. Her eyebrows were clenched. She seemed weightless, gliding down the high street, the cars locked in traffic and revving their engines as we passed, the sirens appearing and trailing off like a whisper, leaving us behind them.

I couldn't see her. Her voice was muffled and deeper.

When we were back at the studio she disappeared into the toilet. I went to find her and heard her mumbling on the phone to her husband.

I knew what that meant.

My confused happiness for her was mistaken.

This was not the plan.

This was not just get on with it and it'll work out.

This was end end end.

Out out out.

She came out of the toilet in shock and completely rational.

"He's fine with it. He's actually okay with whatever I think. It's not the right time. It's barely anything. It says only three weeks. And work is going well. I'm not ready. It's fine you know, it's literally nothing and I'm not hurting it and I've got to make the right decision, you know, as it's a big one, so it's fine."

Fine.

Four letters with thin sounds. High vowels that melt into each other and mean nothing.

The word fine is like a tablecloth or eating toast.

An intense hum that falls and takes too long to end.

Fine.

When people say fine it means everything but fine.

It's that falling sensation in your stomach, a river flooding the inside of your throat, every ounce of your being moving away from you whilst you stay here and search for language to define how it feels.

We say fine because it's quick, easy and it will hurt nobody. We know how to be fine.

I nodded in agreement. I didn't ask questions. I just wanted her to be okay.

––

We had a paddling pool in our garden when I was six or seven. It was the width of the patio and the edge of it would hang over the pathway, which dropped about a foot, so we'd always have to avoid that side when my brother and I were playing.

It took ages to fill up and, when it was, you could lie down completely submerged in the water. You could actually swim in it.

The dog would tear holes in the bottom and my dad would patch it up with a puncture kit he kept in the shed.

It would stay up for weeks and the water would get warm, collecting flies, wasps, midges, dog hair, leaves and sticks, which would lie flat on the surface, suspended over days and nights.

We'd swim with the debris and push it to the side and it would stick to our pink, wet skin.

That pool was summer.

It was no school. My lime-green swimming costume and long, wavy blonde hair. Freckles forming and skin reddening.

It was also the summer after we lost our house and my dad was out of work.

It lit up our loss. Shimmering circles expanding between plastic edges.

I remember that time—the ease of it, the simplicity of memory—and I recognise my hopes of repeating that by having a family of my own.

I then realised that maybe she didn't have it quite the same and there was a chance I didn't know her quite so well.

That day I also took a pregnancy test.

I could be.

We had been trying for over a year and her action had prompted me to discover my own.

We had a meeting planned for the afternoon. It was a new pitch, a gallery that we'd been in touch with for months, and we had finally got a meeting.

We'd been nervous earlier, but now everything was flattened, grey and slightly blurred.

On our way to the station I bought a test from Sainsbury's, a different branch in the opposite direction, and we went into the pub next door.

The toilet was cramped and had pictures of old boxers scattered across its walls. They stared at me in black and white with huge gloves and swollen eyes. Their muscles made patterns on the ink, the spotlights casting white orbs on their skin.

Plus.

Plus minus.

A blue, faint cross in the window.

Baby boy blue on a white oval.

There was wee on the seat so I wiped it off with tissue.

I could feel her outside listening in, running water and then the deafening noise of the dryer.

Plus.

—

I watch clouds collecting on an August sky. Their blossoming fluff cascades upwards. My daughter lies on the mat looking up. I stare at her. I examine her eyelashes, her facial expressions, her tiny movements that define me. The sun is covered, visible only through squinted eyes. A white halo without edges.

That's the sky I saw when I heard my nan had died in her living room.

My mum found her body lying on carpet among the dust and the dog hair. The water still boiling on the stove, the thick summer air above her, the second hand on the clock still ticking.

—

She was happy for me and shocked that it had happened at the same time.

"We're in sync," she said as she nudged my elbow with hers.

Her eyes were sullen and smaller.

I felt full and grateful and naive.

It had finally happened.

I went from never thinking about my insides to suddenly caring for them, realising they were no longer entirely my own. It’s easy to be kind to another. Now my body was inhabited, I had something to nurture.

It felt like finding glitter on your skin.

Metal on the tip of your tongue.

We went to the meeting on the train.

We won the pitch.

We went to celebrate.

She drank a glass of red wine and I had an orange juice.

Things shifted after that.

I grew distracted, while uncertainty and anxiety took hold and twisted me into a new direction. I panicked over tests and heartbeats and what I could and couldn't eat.

At times when I was further along, she'd lie with me on the floor whilst I waited for movements.

Looking back, I regret not asking her more about it. She had gone to a clinic a week later with a friend. It should have been me. I didn't even go to visit after she was sent home. She kept it to herself. Maybe she didn't want to taint my experience. Maybe she just couldn't find the words.

Our paths had split and now our futures were different.

For so long our lives had moved alongside each other. Other friends sidelined and my best friend's name mistaken for hers.

Now our bodies were separated.

Hers longed to be fresh, to start anew, a platform to dive from.

Mine was a nest, to grow and make way for roots and stalks that would rise up, blocking my lungs and forcing my stomach forward.

At times I would panic in the night and forget how to breathe. I'd go downstairs and glimpse my reflection in the kitchen window. Full of darkness.

A new voice consumed me, with new language that altered my opinion on work and life.

Her narrative stayed the same.

In fact, it became deafening.

She drew up shareholder agreements and wrote me long emails. I cried in the car and argued with my husband.

Eventually I left the business. I sold her my shares and that was it. It was over. I was transformed into a single line gliding through space. With it I not only lost my job, but far more than that, I lost her, her voice, her company, and for a time, a small part of me disappeared too.

I bloomed and pushed and opened, and a screaming shape reduced me to milk and water.

She bought new trainers and oversized dresses that I liked on Instagram, whilst I was presented with a pack of muslins from M&S.

Our lives filled up on our new selves.

She hired an intern while I watched box sets and Whatsapped my new mum friends during feeding. She won more pitches whilst I stayed at home, forgetting to drink water and getting cramp in my lower back. We kept in touch but it was altered. Broken.

When the baby was a few weeks old she came over to meet her.

It was a dark November evening. Our living room was twinkling with fairy lights around the bay window and a low lamp on a side table let out a steady amber beam that radiated across the room. The baby was asleep in the corner in her wicker basket.

It was still and calm, like a set. A performance of order.

"Wanna tea or something, or prosecco?" my husband asked.

"Oh go on then, I'll have a prosecco," she said back in a whisper.

He brought three shining flutes in from the kitchen, the fairy lights reflected in the glass.

I took a sip and the fizzing bubbles hit the tip of my nose.

"We have to do a cheers," she said.

So we clinked and sipped and sipped again.

My husband disappeared back into the kitchen and it was us again.

It felt unfamiliar and new.

Our spirits weren't in sync anymore.

We were two plus one.

A triangle.

We made small talk about sleep and breastfeeding and I made a joke about the size of my nipples, and we spoke about the birth and how it happened and how long it took and what it felt like.

I was showing her a new language, that others had taught me, passing it on.

She was interested and listened.

But her roots already ran deep.

January crept in through December, emerging slowly from layers of mud and rotten leaves, like it had always been there.

Its newness was dull.

A flat landscape. Empty football pitches and steamed-up windscreens.

I'd walk a lot with a baby tied to me. It was the only place she would sleep.

Our bodies melted into each other. The mist from my breath seeping into her as wet heat. My thick red scarf a cord holding us together.

Sometimes I'd go out early when the sky was still emerging from night.

I'd feel vulnerable and regretful, full of terror, carefully examining every person through stern eyebrows. A lioness pacing and panting into foggy air.

"You know you shouldn't have a baby out in this cold," an old woman said to me as I crossed at the traffic lights.

I swelled up inside and my teeth clenched.

I wanted to rip her old skin.

I muttered obscenities under my breath and imagined her dead. Rage flooded in, poison, doubt, and then shame as she was probably right.

A tear gathered in the corner of my eye and a lump formed behind my tongue.

I drew a breath and the freezing air flew in through my nose.

Out.

Out.

Out.

A vertex is where two points meet.

The point furthest away from the base of the original figure.

Edges meeting. A movement towards another. A shift in direction. Crossing into new territory.

We'd walk in a square from my house. Down the streets, around the corner and back up through the high street. We walked it daily.

The route was patterned with shadows that peered in like secret messengers from a distant past.

In the morning mine was thin and long, looking up at the world. At midday it became short and fragmented and disappeared when you looked at it. In the evenings, when the light was changing, it was long and full of her gestures and it was so much bigger than me.

I hoped she looked for hers when she walked in the park with the dog. I hoped she remembered how it had been before it changed. I see it now: her outline making soft shapes in the grass, blending with the oak leaves that flicker in the breeze, with glimpses of me behind her.