The Reunion (6 page)

Natalie felt the itch of salt water on her skin and realised that she had started to cry. She got to her feet, took her empty plate into the kitchen, her eyes taking a moment to readjust to the darkness. Through the back window she thought she saw movement outside in the courtyard and she gasped. There was someone there – she heard the noise of someone trying the door handle. A cry caught in her throat. The door opened, the light came on.

‘Jesus!’ Dan literally jumped into the air when he saw her. ‘What are you doing skulking around in the dark?’

‘I couldn’t sleep.’

‘You nearly gave me a heart attack.’

‘I didn’t realise you were out there. I thought…’ She stopped herself because it sounded too stupid to say out loud. She saw the shadow and she thought of Conor, thought of him creeping in late at night after he’d been out back, working in the shed.

‘I just fancied another beer. I’m not used to going to bed so early.’ It was just after two in the morning. Dan made his way over to the fridge, seeming a little unsteady on his feet, as though this beer might be the latest in a series. ‘Join me, Nat?’

She’d forgotten, in her fright, to be cross with him. Now, hearing him say her name, she remembered.

‘No, I won’t have a beer. I’ll leave you to it,’ she said.

‘Oh, come on Nat.’ He grinned at her, the cheeky boyish grin, coupled with the single raised eyebrow, that she remembered so well. He had used it, in the past, with considerable success.

Never on Natalie, though. She fixed him with a stern look. ‘Don’t. Don’t talk to me like we’re friends.’

‘Nat. Come on.’ He took two beers out of the fridge, held one out to her. ‘Please? Have a drink with me.’

Against her better judgement, she took it. They went into the living room and sat by the fire. Dan tried to make small talk.

‘How’re the kids, Nat? They getting on OK? How old are they now? Eight or nine, must be?’

‘They’re twelve.’

‘No. Really?’

‘Yes, Dan, really.’

‘Amazing.’ A pause. ‘So, you look well. Everything all right?’ It was painful. He started to babble on, apologising to her for not getting in touch for such a long time, for not coming to see them. He’d been very busy, working, travelling. Nat was only half listening. All she could think was, what was she doing there?

‘How many years has it been?’ Dan’s question caught her attention.

‘Seven.’

‘No. Really? Seven years? Amazing.’

‘We had dinner, remember? You took us to Nobu. You were with that actress, the Spanish one. Emaciated, coked-up. Can’t remember her name.’

‘Elena.’

‘That’s it.’

‘It was a good night, wasn’t it?’

‘No, Dan, it wasn’t. Your actress obviously thought Andrew and I were insufferably boring, talking about banalities like our kids and our jobs, you spent the night looking around the room to see if you could spot any of your famous friends, and Andrew ended up with food poisoning.’

‘Oh. I’m sorry.’ He looked hurt. ‘I remember us having a good time.’

‘You always were rather good at rewriting history.’

‘Ah, Nat.’

She knew what he was thinking, so she cut him off. ‘I’m not talking about the film. Forget the bloody film, I have. I’m talking about this—’ She gestured around her. ‘All this. What are we even doing here? I don’t understand why we’re trying to turn the clock back, this whole nostalgia trip. It’s about pretending we’re all still friends, isn’t it?’

‘We are still friends.’

‘No, we’re not. You can’t even remember the ages of my children. We’re not friends. And you know what, I’m not even sure we ever were. I was best friends with Lilah, who was going out with Andrew, who was Conor’s best friend, and Conor was going out with Jen. I’m not really sure how you came into it.’

As the words came out of her mouth she regretted them, even before she saw Dan wince.

‘That isn’t fair. You were very important to me, all of you. You were my family.’

Like a killer feeling the knife slide in, past the point of no return, she blundered on. ‘OK, at college, there was a kind of closeness, I admit that. You used to try to sleep with me, in between girlfriends, just because I wasn’t sleeping with anyone else. I think you might have pitied me.’

Dan shook his head. ‘That isn’t true,’ he said, ‘that is not true.’

‘But now? What are we now? Any of us? What’s left to hold us together? I’m no longer friends with Lilah, who’s no longer going out with Andrew, who has no best friend because Conor’s dead. So what’s left?’

Friday 19 July 1996

Dearest Jen,

I’m sending this to you care of your parents. I don’t know where you are. I don’t know whether they will pass this on to you.

I am so sorry.

The words seem as meaningless written down as they sound when I saw them. But you know, only you know, how sorry I am. He’s gone, three weeks and six days. It seems impossible.

My mother lost her father when she was just a teenager. She came to see me yesterday and told me that the hardest thing was this: once the funeral was over, and an ‘appropriate’ length of time had passed, people expect you to get on. Get up, get dressed, brush your teeth, go to work. It seems impossible.

My parents have been kind. I know they are disappointed, they are heartbroken, I know they are ashamed, desperately ashamed. They hide it well. I am going to go and stay with them, as soon as I get Lilah settled with her mother. I can’t leave her alone.

Ronan came to see me last weekend. He was very kind, too. He brought me some things – photographs, Conor’s collection of electro on vinyl, things he thought Conor might want me to have. It was unbearable. I wished, I longed for him to hit me, to ball his fists, to hit me and keep on hitting me, until there was nothing left.

We went for a pint at the Greyhound. When he left, he shook my hand, clapped me on the back, and said, ‘Will I be seeing you, then?’ If I’d closed my eyes at that moment, if I’d just listened to his voice, his intonation, I would have sworn it was Conor. Nothing on this earth could have persuaded me otherwise. I couldn’t say anything, I just walked away.

I replay it, in my head, every night. Everything I did, didn’t do, every wrong decision. I would give my life to take it back.

I don’t know where you are. Please come back.

I am so sorry.

With love,

Andrew

P.S. Nat is awake. She came out of the coma ten days ago, and is now speaking normally and there are no signs of brain damage. The doctors are still unsure about whether or not she will regain a full range of movement. She asks after you. She told me that she dreamed you came to see her. I said that you did, while she was unconscious. Perhaps you spoke to her? Perhaps she could hear you.

ANDREW LAY ON
his side, his eyes fixed on the group of freckles on Natalie’s neck, just below her hairline. His wife lay with her back to him, facing the window. The curtains were drawn, but a bright sliver of sunlight, slicing through a gap between the drapes, fell across the bed, across Natalie’s shoulder, illuminating the tip of the scar which started at the base of her neck and traced halfway down her back, running parallel to her spine. He wanted to touch her, but he daren’t. He didn’t want to wake her. Assuming she was still asleep – and he hoped, fervently hoped that she was still sleeping, although he doubted it was possible, what with all the noise.

On the other side of the wall behind their headboard, Lilah and her boyfriend were having loud and enthusiastic sex. They had been at it for some time now, and yet Andrew was pretty sure they still had a way to go. It may have been more than fifteen years since he’d last heard them, but Andrew remembered Lilah’s sex noises and he knew that she wasn’t quite there yet.

It didn’t help that, aside from Lilah’s ecstatic cries, the house was in perfect silence. No birdsong, no traffic, no aeroplanes overhead, no police sirens. The whole world muffled and muted by snow. Andrew desperately wanted to press his fingers into his ears to drown out the din, but he didn’t dare move because then Natalie would know for sure that he was awake and that the two of them had been lying there, listening to a kind of passion and excitement which they now seemed incapable of finding together, and he didn’t want to do that to her. He wanted her to be able to pretend that he was sleeping too.

But then the moaning started. It wasn’t Lilah, he was sure, it was the boyfriend, and that was even worse. It was horrible, a guttural, animal sound somewhere between pain and pleasure and Andrew couldn’t stand it for another second. He whipped the duvet back and jumped out of bed, grabbed his sweatshirt that for some reason was hanging over the chair next to the bedroom door, and made his exit as quickly as possible, without looking back at his wife.

Downstairs, Jennifer, wearing jeans and a voluminous poncho-type jumper thing with an apron on top, was standing next to the range oven, frying sausages, listening to the radio which was playing some kind of awful French pop. She was singing along, her voice soft and tuneless. For a moment he just stood at the foot of the stairs, watching her: her raven hair, long and lustrous, curling down her back, the line of her neck, her pale, creamy skin, as youthful as he remembered. She was still so lovely. She looked back at him over her shoulder and caught him staring.

‘Smells delicious,’ he said, striding into the kitchen.

Jen put down the fork she was holding and turned to greet him, cocking her head a little and giving him a smile, a deep dimple appearing in her left cheek. He wanted to give her a hug, but he didn’t, he just froze, overwhelmed by the most intense rush of happiness combined with a sense of regret so powerful it brought a lump to his throat. He had to turn away.

On the other side of the kitchen counter was a table, a square slab of pale ash, solid as a butcher’s block. He stared at it, took a step forward, traced his fingers along its smooth surface. He could feel Jen’s eyes on him. He turned back to her and they both smiled.

‘Hello, big brother,’ she said.

‘Hey, little sister.’

Jen wiped her hands on her apron and came over to him, wrapping her arms around him. They stood there, holding each other, for a long time. The brother/sister thing started at university, a silly joke, their way of mocking Conor’s briefly held fear that his best friend and his girlfriend had become a little too close.

She let him go.

‘You want coffee?’ she asked. ‘Eggs, sausages?’

‘Yes to all.’

‘Good. Still take your coffee black?’

‘Actually, I’m embarrassed to say that I’m more a herbal tea than a coffee person these days, but I’ll take it as it comes.’

She laughed. ‘Herbal tea? Good Lord, what has she done to you?’ Then he laughed too, but the silence that followed was awkward, the unnamed ‘she’ hanging in the air.

Jen placed the coffee on a coaster in front of him. He took a sip; it was strong and bitter, it sent a prickle over his skin. It tasted wonderful, like cigarettes and cheap red wine; it tasted of youth. He slipped his hand underneath the table, ran his finger along the ridges underneath, crisp carved lettering. He traced the grooves with his forefinger, spelling out a name. Jennifer. This was her spot.

‘What will you do,’ he asked, looking up at Jen, ‘with this? With all the furniture? When you sell?’

‘Depends on who I sell it to, I suppose. It’s most likely going to be a holiday home so I imagine they’ll want to keep quite a bit of it. The armchairs and the sofa are probably ready for a skip, though.’ She either didn’t realise what he was asking or was purposefully ignoring it.

‘Isn’t it hard,’ he asked, gentle still, tentative, moving around the subject, ‘to think of selling the place?’

‘It’s harder to live here.’ She stopped moving for a moment, put down her kitchen utensils, wiped her hands, the expression on her face intense. ‘I think, with time, I would grow to love it again. I think I would. But there are circumstances,’ she said mysteriously, ‘which prevent me from staying here long enough to find out.’

Andrew imagined for a moment something sinister, a
Jean de Florette
situation, someone attempting to drive away the pesky English interloper.

‘And I’m afraid. I feel afraid when I’m here.’

It was something sinister, he was sure of it.

‘Oh, don’t look like that!’ she said, smiling at him. ‘It’s nothing terrible. It’s just lonely up here. It’s creepy at night, when you’re all by yourself – everything creaks and the wind howls, and it’s just so isolated. I lie in bed thinking about how I might be chopped to bits with an axe and no one would hear me scream.’ She laughed again and he did too; it was impossible not to, her laugh was like music. ‘I think if I stayed here I’d end up turning into Jack Nicholson in
The Shining
, seeing creepy children everywhere.’

‘That was his son.’

‘Sorry?’

‘His son saw the creepy twins. He went nuts and tried to kill everyone. And wrote what can only be described as a very dull book.’