Vodka Espresso

2. espresso

October, 2008

"No fucking way..."

Ingrid froze mid-chow and watched Sienna stand up. She twisted in her chair to see what her flatmate was staring so intently at.

"Rose!" Sienna cupped her mouth and shouted. "Rose Simmons!"

Ingrid swallowed her food and scoured the canteen for whoever answered to that name. Not far off, a group of three girls had stopped in their tracks and one of them, tall and pale, advanced a few paces in their direction.

"Who's that?" Ingrid asked.

Sienna only grinned and ran off towards the group. She immediately seemed to befriend all of them, a skill which had enabled her to adopt Ingrid into her circle from the moment they met on the first day of orientation week. Once acquainted, Sienna returned to their table with the three girls in tow. Ingrid scuttled over, smiling, to make room for three more trays.

"Ingrid," Sienna began, "meet Rose, my long-lost childhood friend."

The tall girl held out her hand and Ingrid stood up to shake it.

"Pleased to meet you, Rose."

Rose introduced her two companions—Liz, the slim, dreadlocked girl, adorned with accessories, and bespectacled, broad-shouldered Freddie. They were French citizens of Algerian descent, freshers like Ingrid and Sienna, and still a bit timid. Ingrid exchanged pleasantries with both, then they all sat down to eat.

"What were the bloody odds?" Sienna gushed, her arm linked with Rose's. "I did think of you when I came out here, you know? Rose and I grew up together," Sienna faced Ingrid to explain, "but then she moved abroad and I kept getting postcards, until my mum told me the Simmonses had settled down in London couple of years back. Then the postcards stopped—"

"Sorry about that," Rose cut in sheepishly.

"—so I had no way to find her, even though she was so close, and I thought I'd lost her, but here we are!"

Sienna squished the poor girl into a fierce side hug, grinning from ear to ear.

"How did you all meet?" Ingrid collectively addressed the newcomers.

"Oh, Rose and I are classmates," Liz answered, "and Freddie lives in my building."

"Funny story, that," Freddie added.

Liz replied in French, apologised and shook her head on a chuckle.

"Well, you have to tell it now!" Sienna insisted.

Freddie took up the challenge and recounted with self-deprecating humour how she could smell Algerian food cooking as she approached her building, figured out which floor it came from, then made it into that flat and stormed their kitchen. It broke the figurative ice and set their laughter loose.

"So, um, Ingrid," Rose ventured, once the merriment had died down, "what about you? Where are you from?"

May, 2017

Ingrid held up the vodka bottle to her face and snapped a selfie as she kissed it.

Just unboxed this baby, she wrote to Dale, I have a feeling we're about to become best friends. Dale replied with a string of laughing emoticons. They chatted for the rest of the evening, exchanging anecdotes and funny pictures until Ingrid's yawns occurred less than two minutes apart and she had to call it a day.

After she tasted the vodka, she put some of it in a flask she had, a precious present from a friend in Copenhagen, and tucked it in her purse.

On her way to work the next morning, instead of making a whiskey latte to-go, she stopped at a small café near her office building, which was pretty much deserted at that time of day. It had only just opened and people were rushing to work—many dropped by to pick up coffees for the office, but few stayed to drink them.