She Got the Job. Her Best Friend of Fifteen Years Never Called Again.

They had been friends since their first week at university in 2006. Shared a flat for three years, then separate flats on the same street in South London. They knew each other’s families by name, had strong opinions about each other’s partners, had been through things they never told anyone else.

In the spring of 2022, they both applied for the same senior position at the company where they worked. Kezia did not know Diane had applied until they were both shortlisted. They laughed about it over lunch. Made a joke of it. Said whoever got it would buy dinner.

Kezia got it.

Diane sent a text that said “Congrats! So deserved.” Then she went quiet.

The calls got shorter. The gaps between them longer. Kezia told herself Diane needed space and that space was a reasonable thing to need. She sent a message in July asking if everything was okay. Diane said she was just really busy, she’d be in touch soon.

That was almost eighteen months ago. She has not been in touch.

Kezia does not know what to do with the friendship now. She has thought about calling. About writing a proper message. About asking Diane directly what happened. Every time she gets close, she stops. She does not want to say the words out loud. She does not want to make it a thing that cannot be taken back.

The part that sits with her most is that she does not know if she did something wrong. She applied for a job she was qualified for. She got it. That is all she did. But she also knows that things between them had been slightly off for a year or so before that — nothing she could name exactly, just a faint shift in frequency, the way a radio sounds when you are not quite tuned in.

She still has Diane in her phone. Still sends a birthday message in November. Diane replies with a thumbs up.

Fifteen years. And they got to a thumbs up.

Kezia does not think about it every day. But sometimes she does, usually when something good happens and her first instinct is to tell Diane about it — and then she remembers, and puts her phone back down.