Cathy has to go home for her low-calorie meal, but Jack offers to stay and babysit Kate while Ruth is out. ‘We’ll get fish and chips,’ he says. Kate looks delighted.
‘Thank you,’ says Ruth. ‘I’ll drive you home when I get back.’ It’s a good excuse not to drink.
Alison says they’re meeting in a pub in Blackheath. ‘There’ll be a few people from our year. Paul Edwards. Dave Rutherford. Kelly Prentis. Kelly Sutherland as was.’
‘Is Fatima coming?’
‘She said she’d try but I think it’s hard. With work and the kids.’
Fatima was the third of their triumvirate at school. Ruth vaguely recognises the male names but she definitely remembers Kelly Sutherland, who was the acknowledged queen of their year, cool and fashionable with a boyfriend who waited for her outside the school gates on a motorbike. Ruth doesn’t think they ever exchanged more than two words together. Also, she still can’t understand why women change their names when they get married.
Alison, like Ruth, has never been married. At school, Ruth, Alison and Fatima were ‘the clever ones’, collecting prizes every year and studying in the library when their contemporaries were experimenting with drugs behind the gym. The Three Amigas, they called themselves. At a plate-glass comprehensive in the eighties, it wasn’t assumed that most people would go on to university. By the time they took their A levels, the three girls were part of an elite group who had special lessons on completing UCCA forms and applying for grants. Full grants still existed in the eighties; Ruth couldn’t have gone to university without one. Ruth and Alison had been at primary school together, Fatima joined them in the third year of secondary, noticeable for her elegance (which transcended her inevitable nickname, ‘Fatty’) and for being one of the only black students. Eltham was a multiracial area but this wasn’t yet evident in Ruth’s school. Eltham was later to become infamous for the murder of Stephen Lawrence, a young black man killed by white thugs as he waited for a bus, but, even in the early eighties, there was a racist undertone to daily life that Ruth might not have noticed if it hadn’t been for Fatima. ‘They mean eloquent for a black person,’ Fatima explained when collecting a debating prize. ‘They’re surprised I’m not speaking patois.’ In fact, Fatima’s father, Reginald, had the poshest voice Ruth had ever heard. He was a doctor, something that even impressed Ruth’s mother.
Ruth went to UCL to study archaeology, Alison to Bristol to study English and Fatima to Edinburgh to study medicine. Ruth and Alison both won prizes at the final assembly but it was Fatima who was Student of the Year in 1986. Fatima is now a GP in north London, married with two children. Alison did a post-graduate degree at Columbia and lived in New York for over twenty years, teaching and working as a freelance journalist. She is now back in London, but Ruth hasn’t seen her since a hasty drink after Jean’s funeral. Ruth had been very touched when Alison turned up at the church.
Ruth finds a parking space near the pub. Alison says she’ll meet her outside. ‘It’s awful going into a bar on your own.’ Ruth had thanked her but she thought that, if Alison really feels self-conscious about going into a south London pub, then she must have changed. This was the woman who had lived on her own in Manhattan, after all.
When Ruth first sees Alison, standing huddled in a red, fake-fur jacket under the twinkly fairy lights of the Black Lion, she thinks that her friend hasn’t changed at all. Same short hair, same glasses, although these have trendy black frames, unlike the battered specs of childhood. They hug and go into the pub. The Eltham Park reunion is in a private room upstairs and Alison says she needs a drink first. It’s only when Ali takes off her coat that Ruth realises that she has changed. She looks diminished somehow and, close up, her face is gaunt and lined. Was Ali always this small? Ruth is only five foot five, yet she seems to dwarf the figure beside her.
Ruth buys red wine for Alison and lime and soda for herself.
‘To us.’ They clink glasses.
‘You look well, Ruth.’ Ruth feels underdressed. She didn’t bring any smart clothes with her so is wearing jeans and a blue jumper that’s slightly too big for her. She did wash her hair though; it’s still damp at the back.
‘So do you,’ she says.
‘Thank you,’ says Alison. Then, ‘I’ve lost quite a lot of weight.’
So that’s it. Alison isn’t shorter, she’s thinner. Without the coat, she is twig-like, her head with its oversized glasses almost too big for her body.
‘I went to Lean Zone,’ says Alison. ‘I lost three stone.’
‘Great!’ says Ruth. She knows this is what you are meant to say when someone has lost weight. After all, ‘Have you lost weight?’ is universally considered to be a great compliment. Ruth never feels that it is, though. Partly it’s the word ‘weight’, so solid and uncompromising. Also it’s the implication that the speaker feels that this diminution is devoutly to be wished, if not long overdue.
‘I just wanted to feel healthier,’ says Alison, almost defensively.
‘That’s great,’ says Ruth again. ‘I really must lose some weight.’
‘I’ll send you a link to the website,’ says Alison. Which wasn’t the answer Ruth wanted.
‘Shall we go and join the reunion?’ she says.
For one panicky moment, Ruth thinks that she doesn’t know anyone in the room. There seem to be middle-aged men everywhere, grey-haired or balding. To her surprise one of these old men – these dads – immediately comes up to talk to them.
‘Ruth?’
Ruth still doesn’t recognise him. It’s Alison who says, ‘Daniel? Daniel Breakspeare?’
‘Danny. Yes.’
Ruth looks dumbly at the bald man in a suit. In the sixth form Daniel Breakspeare had been her boyfriend. They went out together for almost a year. Her mother had liked him and never failed to tell Ruth that he’d ‘done very well for himself’ since school. He’s a plumber, Ruth seems to remember, and now runs his own company. That explains the suit and the Rolex watch protruding subtly, but not modestly, from Danny’s shirt cuff. Ruth wouldn’t have been able to pick him out in a police line-up.
‘How are you, Ruth? I didn’t know you were back in London.’
‘I’m just here for the weekend. Do you live in London?’
‘Yes. In Blackheath. Just around the corner from here.’
Jean would be very impressed. For most people living in Eltham, Blackheath is the promised land. Alison says that she’s living in Clapham after years in the States. She and Daniel chat about New York (‘one of my favourite cities’ says Daniel) and Ruth finishes her lime and soda with an embarrassing sucking noise.
It’s a couple of seconds before Ruth realises that Daniel has left Manhattan and is addressing her. Alison has drifted away to talk to another grey-haired group.
‘Are you married, Ruth?’
‘No, but I’ve got an eleven-year-old daughter.’
‘Lovely age. I’ve got two grown-up daughters and now I’ve got a baby. It’s a nightmare going through all those sleepless nights again.’
The grown-up daughters and the new baby remind Ruth of Nelson but she’s willing to bet that Daniel’s new baby is the result of a new marriage. Sure enough, Daniel says that he met Ruby a few years ago and it was a ‘whirlwind romance’. The name alone tells Ruth that she’s in her twenties. Or her eighties.
‘I met your mum in Waitrose a few years back,’ says Daniel. ‘Actually, it must be six or seven years ago now. She said you were famous. Appearing on TV, writing books.’
Ruth loves the way Daniel name-checks the upmarket supermarket in case she should imagine he shops at Morrisons. But she’s touched to think that Jean stood next to the fresh sushi and the cheese of the week and showed off about her daughter.
‘I’m an archaeologist,’ she says. ‘I teach at a university in Norfolk and I’ve written books about bones. Nothing anyone would actually read.’
‘You always were clever, Ruth. You and Alison and . . .’
‘Fatima. She’s a doctor now. My mum told me that you were very successful too.’
Daniel laughs. ‘Mums, eh? How’s yours? I always liked her.’
‘She died five years ago.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ says Daniel. And he does sound it. He was always very kind, Ruth remembers. He hadn’t been bad-looking in the old days either. She would have slept with him if she hadn’t been terrified of getting pregnant and being trapped in Eltham. As it was, they had done what was euphemistically called ‘everything else’. She thinks of this now and knows that she is blushing. Luckily the upstairs room is very dark.
‘My dad died last year,’ says Daniel. ‘He was in his eighties but it was still a shock. I don’t think you can ever be prepared.’
‘I think that’s right,’ says Ruth. There’s a brief, but not uncomfortable, silence, as if they are both acknowledging the fact that they are older and their parents are dying.
‘That’s why I’m in London, really,’ says Ruth. ‘I’ve been sorting out my mum’s stuff. My dad has married again and they want to redecorate.’
‘That must have been tough,’ says Daniel.
‘It was,’ says Ruth. ‘And mysterious too.’ She starts to tell Daniel about the box marked ‘private’ and the strange photograph but suddenly there’s a glitter of gold and someone shouts, ‘Danny! Darling!’
A woman dives between them, kissing Daniel on both cheeks with an Ab-Fab flourish. She has blonde hair, tanned skin and lots of gold jewellery. Ruth has noticed that, as a general rule, the women present tonight look younger than the men. This is partly because the women have tended to go blonde, rather than grey, with age. This woman seems burnished all over and the effect is quite dazzling.
‘Kelly, you remember Ruth. From our year?’
So this is Kelly Sutherland, the Queen of Eltham Park.
‘I remember you, Ruth,’ says Kelly unexpectedly. ‘You used to go out with Danny.’
‘That’s right,’ says Ruth, ‘for a few months in the sixth form.’
‘For a year,’ says Daniel.
‘I got him next,’ says Kelly. ‘Did you know?’
It turns out that Kelly and Daniel dated for two years. ‘But it didn’t work out,’ says Kelly, ‘we were babies really.’ Daniel went on to marry Fiona, by whom he has grown-up daughters, and then the youthful-sounding Ruby. Kelly has been married three times and her current husband is none other than the school-gates-haunting boy on the motorbike.
‘My first love,’ says Kelly, laughing rather loudly. ‘Romantic, eh?’
‘Very,’ says Ruth. She is wondering whether she can make her excuses to Alison and go home.
Daniel offers to buy more drinks. Kelly asks for Prosecco but Ruth says no, thank you. She doesn’t think she could take any more soda water. While Daniel is at the bar, Kelly puts a red-nailed hand on Ruth’s arm. Ruth pulls away slightly, she’s getting a headache from the glare of Kelly’s hair.
‘You know, Ruth, I used to envy you at school.’
‘Really?’ This is the biggest surprise of the night.
‘You always seemed to know what you wanted. You weren’t bothered about clothes and boys and all the rest of it.’
‘I was bothered about them,’ says Ruth. ‘I just wasn’t very good at them.’
‘Danny was mad about you. He was so upset when you finished with him.’
As Ruth remembers it, she and Daniel had drifted apart when she went to university. Although she had only crossed London to go to UCL, she had moved into halls and consciously started a new life.
‘Well, he seems OK now,’ says Ruth lightly.
‘We’re all OK now,’ says Kelly. ‘Have you seen Alison? She must have lost five stone.’