‘You look nice today,’ I tell her once we’ve relocated. I usually greet people with a compliment, but today it isn’t an automatic response pulled from my mental library at random.
Becca grins back at me. ‘Thanks! I’m feeling great, too.’
I can’t help smiling with her. If happiness is a disease, it’s about time Becca caught it. For a long time I thought her lousy ex had inoculated her against it. ‘I take it things are going well with the new man?’
‘Pretty good,’ she says, and orders a coffee from a passing waiter. It’s very odd. Becca used to gush endlessly about her latest squeeze when we were younger, but she’s being a bit cagey about this one. The only thing I can think of is that it’s because this is the first proper romance since her divorce. ‘We might get away for a weekend soon. If he can work out getting time away from … I mean, getting time off.’ She looks down at the table again, but I see her secret smile.
‘It sounds as if it’s getting serious.’
Becca flushes. ‘I know. Ridiculous, really. I mean, it’s early days and we’ve only been seeing each other a couple of months and I really should be dating and having fun, but he’s just so amazing.’
I want to jump in and tell her that, while I understand how wonderful this is for her, how I’m truly pleased she’s happy again, maybe she shouldn’t leap into this relationship quite as hard and quite as fast as she has done all her others – but the words keep tumbling out of her in a breathless stream, as if, instead of filing up neatly behind one another to make sensible sentences, they’re all racing each other to see who can get out first, and I can’t get a word in edgewise.
The gushing carries on as we leave the cafe. She instinctively heads in the direction of her favourite shops and I trail along with her while my shower curtain gets heavier and heavier. I mention this after we’ve dropped off both her returns.
‘Of course,’ she responds, but then, when we’ve turned tail and are heading back towards John Lewis, we pass Hobbs. She gives me a sugary smile. ‘You don’t mind if we pop in here, do you? It’ll only take a minute, and they had this gorgeous blouse that’d be perfect for work now the weather’s finally turned warmer …’
I shake my head, but after Hobbs it’s Laura Ashley and then it’s Massimo Dutti.
I honestly don’t know if she does this on purpose, or whether her memory is really goldfish-short. There are times at the end of our shopping trips where Becca has had to dash off again and I’ve had to stay behind to do the essential errand she promised we’d get round to an hour earlier.
This makes her sound like a horrible friend, but really she isn’t. She’s had a tough time in the last couple of years. Her ex, Grant, turned out to be a manipulative, controlling creep. I always worried he hit her, but she always denied it. Even so, it took her far too long to muster up the courage to leave him, which she did eighteen months ago.
He hardly let her out his sight, our shopping trips being one of the few exceptions, and the least I could do then was to let her have some power and control over what she did for a few hours. I suppose we’ve just fallen into a pattern now, one that’s hard for me to change without bringing it up and sounding whiney.
Becca is a theatre manager now and as we shop she gives me an in-depth report on the antics of a well-known soap star who was appearing in the play that was on last week. My shoulder develops a nagging little niggle from the weight of my John Lewis carrier bag.
At first I’m nodding and smiling at her blow-by-blow account of his excessive vodka-drinking to get over his opening-night nerves but, funny as it is, after a while, I start to tune out. I mean, we’ve been talking about her stuff since we sat down for cappuccinos and it hasn’t even occurred to her to ask if anything much is going on in my life, even if I do usually just wave the question away and say, ‘Oh, just the same old same old …’
But today I do have something to say. Something big. Or at least I think I might. I really can’t work out if I’m just being silly, and I could do with a friend to help me sift through the facts and sort out the truth from the muddy paranoia.
But Becca is too full of ‘glow’ to notice the worry in my eyes. She just barrels on. It’s only after I’ve hauled my shower curtain onto the sales desk in John Lewis’s homeware department (and almost kissed the sales lady for taking it off my hands), and completed the transaction, that she finds a new topic.
‘Did you see that thing on Facebook?
I’m tucking my returns receipt back into my purse. When I finish I look at her, frowning slightly. ‘What thing?’
‘The reunion. Oaklands College. Some of the guys are planning a get-together, seeing as it’s twenty-five years since we graduated.’
Even though, logically, I know this is how long it’s been since I left university, the fact slaps me in the face, waking me up. Twenty-five years … a rapid slideshow of my life starts to play inside my head. I’m horrified to see how many slots are filled with black and white images of my routine suburban life or – even worse – empty.
‘Where is it? Who’s going?’ I ask, feeling slightly dazed.
‘On campus, I think someone said, and only a few people have responded so far. The post only went up yesterday.’
I nod. There’s not much else I’ve got to say on the subject.
Becca leads the way back out of the shop and turns in the direction of the food court. I’m pretty sure that’s where she’s heading, even though she hasn’t said anything. Shopping always makes her hungry.
As we walk she turns to look at me carefully. ‘Do you think you’ll go?’
I shrug. ‘Probably not.’
‘Really? I thought it’d be fun to see the old crowd.’
Of course you would, I say in my head. You’re happy. You look great. You’re glowing. Even if I’m curious about what everyone looks like and what they are doing now, I’m not sure I want that same inquisitiveness directed back at me.
What will they see? I haven’t become anything interesting or ‘grown into’ myself with age. If anything, I feel all that potential and passion I’d had in my twenties has been slowly diluted until I’m now a watery version of who I once was. I don’t want to turn up, have to chat to people with a plastic goblet full of warm sauvignon, and see the look of vague recognition in my university mates’ eyes before they smile nicely and move on to someone more interesting.
I shake my head. ‘Oh, I don’t know. It seems like such a lot of effort for something that was such a long time ago.’
‘You’re not even curious about Jude Hansen?’
At the mention of that name my pulse jumps. I make very sure it doesn’t show on my face. I pretend I’m too busy navigating round a young mum dawdling with a pushchair to answer.
Becca, however, doesn’t seem to want to let it go, which is odd, as she never really liked Jude. ‘Word is he’s done very well for himself.’
I straighten my spine and keep looking straight ahead. ‘I really wouldn’t know.’
There’s a part of me that wants to turn and scream at her to shut up, but there’s also another contrary part that is willing her to keep talking. It’s like a scab that’s not quite ripe for picking. I know I should leave it alone, that it’ll only sting and bleed, but part of me wants both the pain and the satisfaction of pulling it off and knowing what’s really underneath.
I deliberately haven’t thought of Jude Hansen for more than twenty-four years. I looked at myself in the mirror the morning of my wedding day and told myself that door was