The Address Book: A Story About Friendship

Rita held an old address book with a marbled beige and maroon border and the impression of pressed wild flowers on its front cover in her hands. She had found it while cleaning up a loft where she'd stored the belongings she no longer used in cardboard boxes. Initially, she'd used beer boxes that she'd got from a shop she often went to but when she began to be asked where she'd got them, she decided that it would be safer to start using other boxes instead, even if it was just to avoid the questions.The Middle Ages may have been long over, but that didn't stop wagging tongues from drawing uncomfortable inferences and she saw no reason to give them any more room for speculation than was necessary; not because she was intent on conforming to social rules but simply because she knew from experience that it was tiring to have to keep listening to what people thought if one didn't conform to them.

She hadn't seen the address book for years. The corners had frayed and the pages had yellowed slightly. Some of the entries inside that had been made with pencil were almost invisible. She'd bought the book in the last year of school, filled it up with the names and addresses of all her friends in those last few weeks of frenzied activity before the final school leaving examination, and had then promptly forgotten all about it. She'd kept in touch with her friends after school but she hadn't needed the address book to do that. Rita knew all their phone numbers by heart.

Over time she and her friends went into different lines of work. It hadn't taken long before she began to keep in touch with only a handful of them. She hadn't intentionally shut anyone out; it was just the way that it had happened. They, like her, were too busy to keep track of each other's lives.

She hardly ever thought of them. After school ambition had driven her to pursue degrees, a career, large pay packets: all the things that kept her life busy. Almost all of them had done the same. The old address book in her hands changed things though. She couldn't help but think of all her old school friends with their names in a list she held in her hands.