What Friends Are For

We’d always looked out for each other. That was just how it was.

Not something we ever really talked about. It just… held. School, parents, partners, jobs — whatever it was, if one of us needed the other, we had each other’s back.

No questions.

He came in while I was halfway through my second drink.

The door opens straight onto the bar, so you notice people whether you mean to or not. He was hard to miss. Same coat, collar up like always, even though it wasn’t cold enough to justify it.

I lifted my glass a little. Just enough.

He looked right at me.

For a second I thought he’d come over, say something about me starting without him. That was usually how it went.

But he didn’t.

He just stood there for a moment. Not long. Just long enough that it felt… off, maybe.

Then he turned and walked straight back out.

I remember thinking it was odd, but not enough to get up. People do strange things. I took another drink and kept half an eye on the door, expecting him to come back in and make something of it.

He didn’t.

My phone buzzed a few minutes later.

I assumed it’d be him — some excuse, something about forgetting something, or not seeing me properly. Instead it just said:

If anyone asks, you haven’t seen me

I read it twice.

Nothing else. No explanation.

I started typing something back — what are you on about? — then stopped. It didn’t feel like a joke, exactly. But it didn’t feel serious either. More like… something familiar. The sort of thing we’d done before, just in different ways.

So I left it.

Turned the phone face down and finished my drink.

If you read the local news the next morning, there wasn’t much detail.

There never is.

Something about an incident not far from the high street. Police asking for information. Anyone who might have been in the area late the previous evening. Standard wording. Easy enough to skim past.

I probably would have, if not for the time.

I checked it once. Then again.

It overlapped. Not exactly, but close enough that it sat there at the back of my head, not quite settling. Like a word you can’t quite get to.

I told myself it didn’t mean anything.

People are always asking for witnesses. Most of them don’t have anything useful to say.

It came up again that afternoon.

Just in passing.

“Did you hear about it?” someone asked. “Down near that bar you go to.”

I shrugged, said I’d seen a headline but hadn’t really read it. Which was true, technically.

They filled in a few more details. Or half-details. The sort that sound definite but aren’t. A time window. Someone seen leaving the area.

I nodded in the right places.

Didn’t say anything else.

By the second day, it was harder to avoid.

They’d been in the bar that afternoon. Two of them—one in uniform, one not. Not making a big deal of it, just working their way round, asking the same questions in the same tone.

There were more questions. Broader, but pointed enough.

“Anyone you recognise?” they asked, holding up a grainy, blurred photograph.

“Anyone acting strange?”

I found it easier than I expected to answer.

“No.”

Not a lie, exactly. Not the way I said it.

I saw him again two nights later.

Same bar. Our bar.

He came in properly this time. Walked straight over, like nothing had happened, and took the seat opposite me.

“Alright?” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.

We didn’t mention the message. Or the other night. We talked about work, about people we both knew, about nothing in particular. It felt normal. Familiar.

Comfortable.

At one point he smiled and said, “Good to see you.”

I nodded.

“Yeah. You too.”

Later, when I was leaving, I saw one of the notices in the window. The sort that are quickly put up around town. A face, slightly blurred from being enlarged, with a line underneath asking for information.

I didn’t look at it for long.

Long enough to register the time again.

Long enough for that same small misalignment to settle back into place.

Behind me, he laughed at something the barman said. Easy. Untroubled.

Like nothing had changed.

On the way home, my phone buzzed.

Another message.

Thanks. I knew I could count on you.

I didn’t reply to that one either.

Just put the phone back in my pocket and kept walking, trying not to think about the door, and the way he’d looked at me before he turned and left.

Or why I’d just sat there and let him walk out like nothing really mattered.