Debatable Space by Philip Palmer Page A

our dangerous game is complete.

I have had three best friends in the course of my whole life.
I wish it had been more.
    My first best friend was Carla. When I was seven years old we played together every day. We made up worlds and stories. I
     was Ebony, an African princess. She was Melissa, the Queen of our Queendom, the fabulous country of Alchemy.
    Carla had beautiful blonde hair, a button nose, and a great stare. But I had all the ideas. I made up the stories, I made
     up the maps. I created costumes for us both. I painted my bedroom in black and gold to make it a suitable Queen’s Throne Room
     for Queen Melissa. And whatever I said or did, whatever brave or original idea I came up with, Carla always nodded, very seriously,
     and stared her formidable stare. So I would know that every idea I had was actually
her
idea, every thought was her thought. I was her willing slave.
    When we were ten, we decided to hold a joint birthday party together, even though my birthday was in February and hers was
     in October. We wrote all the invitations, we used our pocket money to buy balloons, we made each other presents out of papier
     mâché and brightly coloured paper. We made fairy cakes with our mums and stole as many as we could. Then, on the day of our
     party, we both locked ourselves in my room and played with our imaginary guests and handed out imaginary party bags. We gorged
     ourselves on cake, and that night I was sick in bed. When Carla’s parents came to take her home, she had a wicked little smile
     on her face. They knew she’d been up to something, but they never knew that she’d just had her “official” birthday.
    We rarely quarrelled, and she only once really really lost her temper with me. It happened when I scored more baskets than
     her in basketball at playtime. I made two mistakes. First, I scored more baskets. And then I laughed, triumphantly. So Carla
     went very very quiet and didn’t speak to me for the whole rest of the week. We still met, and played together, but instead
     of speaking she would give messages to her blonde Bratz and ask the poor doll to pass them on. By the Friday of that week,
     I was devastated and I gave her all my pocket money to buy back her friendship.
    Carla never bullied me though. She never bossed me either. She just always got her way. It was easier, we both always knew
     what to do – namely, what
she
wanted. For otherwise, I feared, in my state of youthful existential panic, I might have had to
make my own mind up about things
. . .
    Then Carla’s parents decided to move abroad. Her dad had a job in Germany working on bridges or something. Her mum was part-German
     anyway. When Carla told me this news, I burst into tears. I begged her to stay, to join our family instead. Carla just stared
     at me, calmly, with that piecing stare. And she didn’t smile. Not once. Eventually, she calmly said, “Don’t make a fuss, Lena.”
     And I cried even more, for ages.
    I explained it all to my mother, how I wouldn’t be able to cope without Carla and how life was no longer worth living. But
     my mum just said, “Never mind, you’ll soon make new friends,” and I cried my eyes out again.
    I cried again on the day that Carla left. I was eleven by then. My mother was genuinely frightened at my behaviour. I was
     not just upset, I was hysterical.
    I met Carla years later at a friend’s dinner party, when we were both in our early thirties. She didn’t actually remember
     me. She was still very nice, but by that time the stare had worn off and she was a frazzled but cheerful mother of four. And
     she didn’t remember Princess Ebony, or the Queendom of Alchemy, or me.
    Some best friend.
    My second best friend was also a woman. She was called Helen Clarke, and we both studied History at university in Edinburgh.
     Neither of us was Scottish, neither of us was quite sure why we’d chosen a university so far away from our families and friends
     back home. But it was a magical