Lock up your mates! Confessions of a friendjacker

Like many bad habits, it started in childhood. I was seven and my next-door neighbour, Jenny Carter, had joined our primary school half-way through term. She appeared one morning at assembly, trailing an exotic cloud of glamour and a SuperTed pencil case. But Jenny didn’t know anyone apart from me, so I generously introduced her to my best friend Sara. We all got along famously.

After a few weeks as a happy threesome, Jenny Carter staged a coup. One break-time, she brought in her collection of Care Bears and lured Sara over to play with her. When I tried to join in, they turned their backs. Before the week was out, they were new best friends and I was left scowling on my own by the swings.

It was my first experience of friendjacking: that unapologetically bold manoeuvre whereby two mutual friends you’ve introduced become independently close. At the age of seven, we referred to it as ‘taking away’ (as in: ‘Jenny’s taken Sara away from me’, as if Jenny Carter were an alien intent on abducting seven-year-olds). I was so upset that I’ve never looked at Care Bears the same way since.

But even at that age, I realised that if you can’t beat them, you might as well join them. And now, more than 25 years later, I have become an expert friendjacker myself.

It’s not intentional. Unlike Jenny Carter, I don’t set out to do it. I would never bring my Care Bears to the playground, so to speak. But on several occasions in adult life, I have found myself being invited to dinner by a dear friend, only to sit next to someone who I discover is a kindred spirit. Or I will go to the hen do of one of my closest university peers only to find that her bridesmaid, whom she has known since school, is the person I end up having the best conversations with. Or, as recently happened, I’ll need advice on where to stay in Barcelona, and my friend will introduce me via email to her cousin who lived there for a year and with whom, it turns out, I have much more in common than our mutual acquaintance.

The ensuing social etiquette is tricky. Most friendjackers don’t want to lose their original friends because they are driven by insecurity and neediness (if you look deep into our souls, you will see a small, lonely child at the core, desperate to be one of the gang). But this leads to all sorts of awkward situations.

There have been times when I have found myself pursuing new friendships with all the devious subterfuge of an extramarital affair. When Natalie, a colleague, introduced me to Helen, one of her oldest school friends, we bonded over a shared love of books and South London (and sometimes South London as featured in books). The two of us then met several times without inviting Natalie. It wasn’t that we didn’t like Natalie — we did! We adored her! — it was just that there was something so titillating, so refreshing about meeting someone entirely new, and I wanted to be able to talk freely without getting caught up in anecdotes about old Miss Jennings and her pudding-bowl haircut.

And, if we’re truly honest, perhaps there was a bit of us that wanted to gossip about Natalie herself who, wonderful as she is, does have a slight tendency to talk about nipple rash and baby massage. So Helen and I arranged to hook up surreptitiously without inviting Natalie. We kidded ourselves we were only doing so because we lived close to each other, agreed to meet in a South London café and sat at a discreet corner table to avoid being spotted by anyone we knew.

We spoke in low voices. Every now and then our eyes would dart furtively to the door as a new customer came in, just in case Natalie had somehow found us out and intended to confront us with evidence of our disgraceful behaviour. But she never did and as the evening wore on, Helen and I found ourselves enjoying it even more because of the added frisson of danger. On the third glass of wine, we discussed whether one of us should admit what we’d done to Natalie but neither of us was brave enough. We were worried she’d be offended. And we felt guilty, too.

Months passed. Our illicit rendezvous continued. Eventually, the pressure of living a double life became too much. I confessed to Natalie in a deliberately offhand way over the phone, almost as if I’d just bumped into Helen in passing. The strange thing was that Natalie was delighted. ‘I knew you’d love each other,’ she said. ‘It’s so lovely for me to think of two of my dearest friends getting on so well.’ Which made me feel liberated — and also a complete bitch for doubting her in the first place.