The Pinky Promises

PROLOGUE

Lily was eight years old the afternoon her father left.

She had watched him go from the window, a suitcase in one hand, the car door closing with a sound that was much too small for what it meant. Her mother said he was not coming home anymore. Lily did not understand how a person could simply decide to stop coming home, but seeing how sad her mum was, she decided to keep that thought in. She went out and sat on the front steps with her knees tucked under her chin, and quietly cried until her eyes were red and her face ached.

"Why are you here alone?"

Emma stood on the path with two ice-creams, one in each hand. She was holding them a little away from her body, because they had already begun to drip.

Lily looked down at her shoes. "My daddy left. He didn't even look at me. Mum said he isn't coming home anymore."

Emma thought about this very seriously. Then she sat down beside her on the step and held out one of the ice creams. "Then you can come to my house whenever you want."

Lily wiped her cheek with the back of her hand. "Really?"

"Of course. We're best friends, remember?"

Lily managed a small smile, the first one that day. It did not feel like much. It felt like the edge of something. Lily held out her little finger, stuck straight up like a flag. "Promise we'll always be best friends?"

Emma hooked her finger around it. It was warm, and a little sticky.

"Promise. I'll never leave you." Emma said, smiling.

But they didn't know how heavy some promises are.

CHAPTER 1

Ten years later.

Both Lily and Emma had turned eighteen, ready to take their first steps into adulthood. They were still being really close with each other, considering each other sisters and sharing everything with each other.

They attended the same university, because of course they had. Emma had chosen Interior Design in the Architecture department and spent her days in a studio full of foam board and fabric swatches, arriving home with glue on her sleeves and a new opinion about everything. Lily had chosen Business. It was sensible, and it did not need explaining.

They lived together in a two-bedroom apartment off campus, with a shared bus route, a shared shelf in the fridge, and a way of finishing each other's sentences that other people found either charming or exhausting.

It was Lily's study group that changed things.

She was in a group of four, working on a case study in the back corner of the library. One of them was Noah. He was easy to like and a little hard to read, curly brown hair that never stayed where he put it, a family that owned a business he talked about with a shrug, and a habit of making the others laugh just when the work was going badly. Lily had like him at once, the way you like someone who calls you "mate" and means it. He teased her about her colour-coded notes. She called him a nepotism case to his face. They traded insults across the table like two people who had decided long ago that nothing could go wrong between them.

"You've highlighted the footnotes," Noah said one evening, holding the case paper up to the light.

"Someone has to read them."

"Nobody has to read them. That's the point of footnotes."

She was reaching to snatch the paper back when someone called her.

It was Emma. She had come to go home with her. She was still wearing her studio apron, and there was a smear of white paint on her jaw, and she had stopped just inside the door with her bag sliding down her arm. It took Lily a moment to see why. Emma was looking at Noah. Noah, who had half turned in his chair, was looking back.

It lasted perhaps three seconds, Lily wouldn't think of it again for a long time. All she could remember was the way Emma's whole face went bright, as if someone had switched on a lamp behind it.

"Hi," Emma said. "I'm Emma. I'm here for Lily. But also, are you free on Friday?"

The group went quiet. Someone coughed. Lily put her hand over her mouth to hide her grin, and Noah, who had gone slightly pink, said, "I can be."

"Great." Emma nodded once, as if signing a contract. "Eight o'clock. I'll pick the place."

That was how it began. After that came Fridays, and then every weekend, then every night, and then Noah's coat hanging on the hook beside the front door. He was good to her, Lily saw. He remembered her deadlines. He carried her enormous portfolios across campus without being asked. When Emma talked about mood boards and load-bearing walls and the exact shade of a cushion, he listened like it was the most interesting thing he had ever heard, and perhaps it was.

And he stayed Lily's friend. That was the thing she was proudest of, in the end. Nothing between the three of them was awkward. Noah still called her "mate", and she still told him he was impossible, and Emma watched the two of them trade insults across the table and laughed, because it made her feel she had gathered up everyone she loved in one room.

One evening in early autumn, Emma stood at the mirror in her bedroom, holding two pairs of earrings.

The window was the deep blue of dusk. A bed side lamp was lit, the fairy lights Emma had strung above the bed made small gold points in the glass, and the lo-fi music played softly in the room. Lily lay across the bed with a pillow under her chin.

"Which ones look better?"

"The silver ones."

"You always say silver!"

"Because you always ask when you've already decided!"

Emma burst out laughing and hit Lily with pillow and got one back from Lily. Their laughing sound filled the small bedroom so completely that for a moment neither of them heard the doorbell.

It rang again.

"That must be Noah!" Emma's whole face changed. She dropped the earrings onto the dresser and ran for the door. Lily sat up, straightened her sweater, turned off the music and the light, and followed Emma slowly to the living room, listening to her friend's bare feet on the floor.

"Noah! You're early!"

He stood on the threshold holding a cup tray with three cups of bubble tea. His hair was damp from the drizzle, and he was grinning the way he did when he had surprised somebody.

"Well, I thought you would like to have your favourite drink, so I bought it for you."

"You didn't!"

"I did. Taro, extra pearls."

She kissed him, quickly and without embarrassment, and took the cup he offered as if it were an enormous gift. Lily watched them from the couch and felt, she was sure, nothing but gladness. They looked good together. It felt so right.

"Hey, Lily," Noah said, stepping in and shaking the rain from his sleeves. "Yours is less sugar."

She blinked at the cup he held out. "Oh, you remember!"

"You always make a fuss about sugar."

"I never make a fuss!" She took the cup anyway. It was warm in her hands. "But, thank you."

"You're welcome, mate." He winked, and Lily threw a cushion at him, and he caught it one-handed without spilling a drop.

Emma watched the whole thing from behind. It made her laugh so hard she had to sit down.

They stayed like that for a while, the three of them, Noah on the couch with Emma curled against his side, Lily on the lounge chair with her feet tucked under her and the paper straw between her teeth.

The tea was exactly right. Rain ticked against the glass. It was the kind of evening that comforts people and makes them wish to live in that moment forever.

None of them imagined how complicated their lives would become.