The Spreadsheet of Honour

There is a spreadsheet, and Nadia has named the spreadsheet, and the name of the spreadsheet is The Spreadsheet of Honour, and Theo has been laughing about it for forty minutes. "It's a wedding-planning document," he says. "It has a tab called Logistics. Logistics, Nadia. You've put a wedding in a tab called Logistics." "Where would you put a wedding." "I wouldn't put a wedding anywhere. I'm the best man. The best man's whole job is to hold one ring and one speech and otherwise lower the tone." "And my job," says Nadia, "as maid of honour, is to do everything else, which is why there is a spreadsheet, and why you are going to help me with it, because Priya and Sam asked us both, and Priya specifically said and tell Theo it's not optional." They are sitting on Nadia's floor with a takeaway between them, which is where roughly forty percent of their friendship has taken place over the last nine years. Nine years. Nadia did the maths once, late at night, and then closed the calculator app fast like it had shown her something rude. Nine years of floors and takeaways and being the person the other one calls. Theo has been at every birthday she's had since she was twenty-three. He knows she cries at adverts and pretends it's hayfever. She knows he can't sleep the night before a flight and texts her instead, and she always texts back, every time, because that is the deal, that has always been the deal. Best friends. That is the official, agreed, load-bearing word for it. Nadia has said it to a hundred people. This is Theo, my best friend. She has said it so many times it has worn smooth, like a coin. The trouble is that lately she has started to hear it when she says it. Started to notice the small specific lie folded up inside it. And she suspects — she has no proof, she has only nine years of evidence — that Theo has started to hear it too. "Right," she says, pulling the laptop closer, pretending to be a person thinking only about logistics. "Tab two. The venue's two hours away, so the wedding party's all staying at the hotel the night before. Priya's done the room list." "How many rooms did she book." "That's — okay, so. There's a thing about the rooms." Nadia keeps her eyes on the screen. "The hotel's small. It's that converted mill, it's gorgeous, it's tiny. Priya got everyone in but it meant doubling up. The maid of honour and the best man are down for a room together. To, quote, save a room for Sam's nan." The takeaway containers sit between them. The flat is very quiet in the way a flat gets when one sentence has used up all the air. "A room," Theo says. "A room." "With." "Don't make me say it." "With how many beds, Nadia." Nadia looks at the spreadsheet. The spreadsheet, which she trusts, which has never let her down, says, in cell D12, in her own neat type, one (1) double. "It's fine," she says, too fast. "It's completely fine. We've shared before. We shared a tent at Sam's stupid camping birthday. We shared the sofa-bed thing at my cousin's. We're — this is the most normal thing in the world for two best friends, it's not even a —" "Nadia." She stops. She makes herself look up, away from the safe glowing rectangle of the spreadsheet, and at Theo, who is her best friend, who has been her best friend for nine years, and who is looking at her right now with an expression that is not the laughing one from forty minutes ago. It is a careful expression. It is the expression of a person standing at the top of something. "The tent was four years ago," he says quietly. "The sofa-bed was before — before things were. You know things are. I know you know things are. We've been doing this very impressive thing for about a year now where we both clearly know things are, and we both keep saying best friend like it's a spell that'll hold the roof up." He turns one of the takeaway containers around, not eating, just needing his hands to do something. "And now there's a spreadsheet with our names in a room with one bed in it, and I think — I think the spreadsheet might be braver than us, Nadia. I think your own spreadsheet just called us cowards." Nadia's heart is doing something completely unprofessional. Nine years. Every floor, every takeaway, every advert-cry, every night-before-a-flight text. She had always told herself that the friendship was the safe option — the thing you didn't risk, the thing that survived precisely because nobody ever put it in a room with one bed and made it say what it was. And she looks at Theo, holding a container of cooling noodles like a man holding the edge of a diving board, and she understands that the safe option was never safe. It was just slow. It was just nine years of the long way round. "The wedding's in six weeks," she hears herself say. "I know." "So we've got six weeks," Nadia says, "and one bed, and a spreadsheet that thinks we're cowards." She closes the laptop. The flat goes warmer in the lamplight without the screen. "Theo. I think we should talk about cell D12."