The Reunion (26 page)

‘Then she took my pen out of my hand,’ Andrew went on, ‘and scrawled her room number in large print, all over my neat and detailed notes, then she leaned forward and gave me a kiss on the cheek, then hopped off the desk and walked away,
strutted
away, and left me there, speechless, breathless.’ He raised his wine glass, inclining his head a little. ‘And you would have thought that after all this time, after four years, I might have got used to it, but she can still do it. She can still leave me breathless.’

Conor and Dan rolled their eyes exaggeratedly, they made fake gagging noises, but they raised their glasses too, they all did. ‘Andrew and Lilah,’ they chorused, and Natalie brushed the heel of her hand across her cheek bone.

‘Oh my God, you’re actually crying,’ Lilah was laughing at her. ‘You are the sappiest, sappiest…’ but she couldn’t finish her sentence because she was too busy kissing Natalie on the mouth.

They were sitting around the dinner table in Andrew’s living room, which had recently become Andrew and Lilah’s living room, as her unpacked boxes strewn around the place testified. It was their moving-in-slash-fourth anniversary celebration, a lazy Sunday lunch on a dark and bone-chilling November day. They were already three and a half bottles of red down and they had no intention of stopping.

‘OK, Lilah’s turn,’ Conor said, topping up their glasses. ‘What are your earliest memories of the great man?’

‘Oh, God. I don’t know.’ She shook her head. ‘He was just this hot guy that Karen Samuels fancied and I couldn’t bear her, she was just so impossibly vain…’ There was uproarious laughter from Conor and Dan, which Lilah ignored: ‘And so I decided that I was going to thwart her.’ She smiled sweetly at Andrew over her glass. ‘And it was the best thwarting I ever did.’

She leaned forward and gave him a kiss and Natalie got up to go to the loo because she felt as though she might start crying again.

As she was washing her hands, she looked at herself in the mirror and noticed the flush in her cheeks, the pink stain of her lips, not just from the wine. It was one of those days, one of those rare moments when you’re not just happy, but you catch yourself feeling happy, when you acknowledge it, and she almost felt afraid, as though if she weren’t careful, her happiness might slip away from her. It was painful, too, an exquisite sort of agony, but she chose to ignore that, because admitting to it was dangerous, and in any case, what good could it do? There was a gulf, a yawning chasm, between what she wanted for herself and what she wanted for her closest friend, and it could not be bridged.

Back in the living room, they’d cleared away the plates and Andrew was opening another bottle and Conor was telling the story of the first time he’d met Dan, at a party in the first year.

‘I’d gone into the kitchen to get drinks and I literally can’t have been more than three minutes, tops, and when I get back there he is, he’s moved in, he’s got Jen cornered, the bastard, I’m gone three minutes and he’s hitting on my girl, and she was enjoying it!’

‘I was not!’

‘You’re a liar, Jennifer, I remember it well, you were all enchanted with whatever patter he was giving you, you were twirling your hair around your finger, the way you do…’ Jen was laughing and blushing and Dan just shaking his head.

‘It’s all lies. It’s all lies,’ he was saying. ‘She was the one came on to me, wouldn’t leave me alone…’

They pushed the dining-room table back against the wall and sat around the fake fire. Dan put on
Automatic for the People
and he grabbed Nat’s hand and pulled her closer to him on the sofa. Lilah was lying on the floor, her head in Andrew’s lap, asking to hear the Jen and Conor story again.

‘Go on, I love the Jen and Conor story.’

So Jen told it, how the summer she turned sixteen she’d been sent to stay with her Aunt Ruth in Baltimore, West Cork and how, in her second week, she and her cousin, Kay, had dared each other to go skinny dipping in a sheltered little cove a mile or two from the town.

‘So we decided to have a race to this buoy which was, I don’t know, a hundred metres or so from the beach, and when we got there and turned around, we realised there were people on the beach. And it was like, the horror, the horror! We were just bobbing around out there, and Kay’s saying, don’t worry, they’re just going for a walk, they’ll be gone by the time we get back. So we swam back, slowly, slowly, and it was bloody freezing, I was desperate to get out, and the closer we got we realised that it was two blokes and they weren’t going anywhere. They were sitting down. About ten metres from where our clothes were.’ She passed her hand over her eyes. ‘God, it was a nightmare, we were just getting colder and colder and it wasn’t bloody funny any longer, I could see Kay’s lips going blue, so I just thought, fuck it, and I ran, as fast as I could, out of the surf and up the beach…’ she was laughing, shaking her head.

‘And I was sitting there,’ Conor took up the story, ‘with my brother, Ronan, and he sees this girl and he’s like, bloody hell, she’s starkers, and he’s just pissing himself laughing but Jesus, I was just sat there, mouth open, my eyes out on stalks. Couldn’t believe it. Never seen anything so gorgeous in my whole life.’ He was grinning at Jen, she had her hands over her face. ‘And the next day, I saw her in the town and she saw me, and she blushed, deep red – the colour she is now, actually. And that was it. I was in love.’

Lilah and Andrew slow-danced to ‘Nightswimming’ while Conor and Jen snogged like teenagers on the sofa, so Natalie and Dan found themselves in the kitchen, doing the washing up.

‘I hope they’re not going to be at it all the time when I’m staying with them,’ he said, jerking his head back in Conor and Jen’s direction.

‘Oh, is that happening? I thought Jen had vetoed.’

Dan raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh. Well, as far as I know, it’s happening. Con said it would be OK. She’ll get used to me,’ he said giving Natalie a wink. ‘I can be quite loveable when I try.’

‘Of course you can, sweetie,’ she said, proffering her cheek, not her lips, when he bent down to give her a kiss.

‘Is he hitting on you again?’ Andrew was standing in the doorway watching them, his dance over. ‘Honestly, can’t leave you alone for a second.’

‘No, you can’t. Here,’ Dan threw his dishcloth at Andrew’s head. ‘You’d better take over, I need to change the music.’

Andrew stood at her side. ‘Don’t do it all,’ he said, ‘I’ll finish up later.’

‘Don’t be silly, I’m here now.’

He slipped his arm around her. ‘What would I do without you?’ he said, giving her a squeeze.

‘All the washing up, probably, because I don’t think you’ll catch Lilah with a pair of Marigolds.’

His arm still draped around her shoulder, she felt it again: happiness, and the faintest shadow of fear.

‘We need to hang out more, you and I. I miss the talks we had, on our walks in France.’

‘Yeah, I miss them too.’ She looked up at him and he smiled at her and she felt tears sting the backs of her eyes.

‘Oi!’ Lilah came bouncing into the room, two shot glasses in hand. ‘Here. Tequila!’

‘I’m working tomorrow, Lilo,’ Natalie said.

‘We’re all working!’ She pressed the glass into Natalie’s hand. ‘Come on. You have to. It’s my anniversary.’

‘Our anniversary, actually,’ Andrew said.

‘Yeah yeah, whatever. Drink.’

Natalie took the glass and downed its contents, swallowing as fast as possible, pulling a face. ‘Bleugh.’

Lilah gave her a kiss on the cheek and grabbed her soapy hand. ‘Come on, Drew can finish that. Come dance with me.’ She pulled Natalie into the living room and they leapt around the room, Dan, Conor, Jen, Lilah and Natalie, to ‘Disco 2000’.

December 1995

‘
HE’S DRIVING ME
mental. MENTAL,’ Jen said, suddenly aware that she was talking rather loudly and that the people on the next table were looking. She’d almost finished her third gin and tonic and they’d only been there an hour. She really ought to eat something. The bar, dimly lit and heaving, did not look a likely place to get a snack.

‘He’ll be gone in a week or so, won’t he?’ Lilah asked, scanning the room. ‘At least you’re not stuck with him.’ Jen looked at her quizzically.

‘Not Dan,’ Nat said, rolling her eyes. ‘Aren’t you listening? She’s talking about Conor.’

‘Oh. Well, then you are stuck with him. As I am with Drew. Jesus Christ! Living together is not what I expected. It’s so much less… It’s just
less
, don’t you think? Less going out, less presents, less sex, less fun.’

‘Fewer presents,’ Natalie said.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Are you correcting my grammar, Natalie?’ Lilah threw a piece of lemon rind at her. ‘I’ve warned you about that. God, have you seen that one? At the bar, dark hair, jeans, black T-shirt, right over there, at the end? Oh my word, I
so
would.’

‘Lilah!’ Natalie threw the lemon rind back.

Jen’s head was swimming a little, due to gin combined with Lilah’s peripatetic conversational style.

‘I’m only joking. I would though, honestly. Look at his arse. There’s this guy at work who has the most amazing body I’ve ever seen. Seriously. I could spend all day looking at him. But… what was I saying? Oh yeah. Living together is kind of shit, isn’t it? I don’t know, I just feel like the fun’s been sucked out of everything and we argue now. So much. Like, all the time. Do you argue all the time?’ Jen opened her mouth to answer but Lilah wasn’t listening. ‘I’m seriously considering moving back in with Mum. That’s how crazy Drew is making me at the moment. Crazy enough to make me consider living with my
mother
.’

‘Your mother’s great, though,’ Natalie said wistfully. ‘Living with your mother would be like living with Marianne Faithfull or Greta Garbo; she’d be able to give you sage advice about men and what to wear. Living with my mother is like living with Felicity Kendal.’

Jen and Conor weren’t arguing. Not much. Not
all the time
, anyway. She was happy living with Conor. Very happy. It wasn’t exactly how she thought it would be, Lilah was right: they did go out less, but that was a good thing, because neither of them had money to burn, and London was so expensive. And, yeah, OK, apart from the first few weeks, they did have sex less often than before, but that was probably just because they felt awkward with Dan sleeping downstairs and they were always both knackered anyway because they weren’t used to having to work for a living.

So, he got on her nerves a little more than he used to. That was normal, wasn’t it? She’d shared a house with Lilah in the second year of university, and there were plenty of occasions, daily occasions, on which she’d wanted to kill her with her bare hands. To say Conor was driving her mental was a bit strong. It was just… different to what she’d expected. But it was fine. It was better than fine, it was good.

‘We don’t argue all the time,’ Jen said softly, speaking to the dregs of her gin and tonic, but the others weren’t really listening.

Lilah was back on the guy at work with the great body.

‘He’s not my boss as such, but he is senior to me in the company, obviously – everyone is senior to me because I’ve only been there five minutes. So it wouldn’t be, like, a problem from a sexual harassment point of view or anything like that…’

‘Lilah, why are you even talking about this? You’re not actually considering this, I know you’re not. So just stop it, because it isn’t funny.’ Natalie’s face had reddened, she wasn’t joking around any longer.

‘Oh, Nat!’

‘She’s right, Lilah, it isn’t funny. Andrew’s our friend, he’s my boyfriend’s best friend and it really isn’t cool to go on and on about how you want to cheat on him all the time.’

‘Oh girls!’ Lilah got to her feet and hugged each of them, long and hard. ‘You know I’m joking! Fuck! Aren’t we here to get pissed and talk rubbish? I just like to look, that’s all.’ She pouted at them, looking up from beneath lowered lashes, couldn’t hold the pose for more than a second or two before starting to giggle. ‘I’m off to the loo. And when I come back I want you both to have chilled the fuck out.’

They watched her weave her way towards the ladies, turning heads as she went. Natalie and Jen looked at each other, indulgent smiles on their lips.

‘Is she OK, you think?’ Jen asked.

‘A bit all over the place. Andrew says she’s caning it pretty hard with people from work.’

‘She’ll be all right,’ Jen said. ‘She’ll settle down. It’s an adjustment period, that’s all. That’s what Conor keeps telling me. An adjustment period. If he says it one more time I think I’ll beat him to death with a frying pan.’ Natalie giggled. ‘How are
you
anyway, Nat? God, you haven’t got a word in for all our whingeing. How’s work? How’s your love life?’

‘B plus for the former, D minus for the latter,’ Nat said with a laugh. ‘Andrew tried to fix me up with this guy from his work last week but it was pretty disastrous.’ Her laughter had turned brittle: she looked down at the table and then away. Jen felt a pang for her, reached over and squeezed her hand. The elephant wasn’t so much in the room as sitting right there with them at the table. Jen thought about saying something, tried to think of something she could say, something that wouldn’t sound patronising, that wouldn’t embarrass her. She tried and failed, and then Lilah reappeared with more drinks, so she changed the subject.