Page 7 of The Reunion

‘Oh, um, no. No, we just … Uh, she—’

‘Have you got any pictures of the girls, Hayden?’ Aisha asks. She must be able to sense I’m out of my depth and I breathe a sigh of relief as I get my phone out, showing her the background. The girls are squished into a toy car that Margot’s definitely too big for, so they’re both half spilling out of it, the photo capturing them both mid-laugh – and moments before Skye fell on her bum and started crying, and then Margot had a tantrum.

‘Oh, my gosh, they’re precious! They look like you.’

‘Poor them,’ I joke, and everybody laughs now. As Aisha takes control of the conversation, asking me polite and non-invasive questions and teasing Shaun about how they’re hoping to start trying soon, after the wedding is out of the way next year, I feel some of the tension ease out of my shoulders.

By the time I move on to chat to another group, and receive another round of sympathy and one audible ‘Ouch!’ for the fact that I became a dad instead of a graduate, I’m starting to wish the punch was spiked. When they exchange uncertain looks over the fact that I work from home part time as a software developer so I can look after the kids, because the girls’ mum is a nurse, and someone tells me they’re sorry about it, I’m starting to wish that I spiked it.

‘You were meant to be the next big thing,’ someone tells me.

‘I thought you said you were going to invent the next Facebook,’ Chris from my GCSE French class says.

‘You were always so bright. You could’ve been buying up Twitter and building rockets, if you’d wanted.’

‘I always thought you were gonna, like, win a Nobel Prize or something.’

‘I swear I still think I’m going to see you on one of those ‘thirty under thirty’ lists – LOL!’

‘You used to win all those awards and stuff, didn’t you?’ a girl called Elise says, face twisted in a sad frown. I think she was in my English class at some point. She used to wear non-regulation hoop earrings and blue eyeliner. ‘That must be so hard, Hayden.’

‘I don’t know,’ I say, feeling everyone’s eyes on me, and not quite sure when so many people clustered around to hear about the ‘sorry’ state of my life and express their sympathies for the death of my would-be success. ‘The girls got me a mug for Father’s Day last weekend, and apparently I’m the World’s Best Dad.’

They erupt into laughter, and hands clap my back affably and affectionately. I muster up a smile, and wonder if it’s too early to call it a night.

Chapter Five

Ashleigh

‘Most Likely to Kill Each Other’

I’m not hiding out in the school toilets.

I’m not, obviously, because I’m not fifteen years old.

I’m just … taking my time. Checking my hair, making sure my lipstick hasn’t smudged from the liquid courage I downed in the taxi on the way here.

Yeah, that’s all.

I lean into the mirror above the sinks in the girls’ toilets; it has that dark, dappled look around the edges and I’m sure it’s some original fixture from the seventies nobody has ever bothered to update, like the sinks and cubicles. My lipstick, at least, is flawless, and I don’t let myself second-guess the deep red shade, dark and stark against my pale, freckled skin. I try not to fidget with my hair either – the wispy fringe, and loose tendrils that frame my face where they weren’t quite caught in my bun. It’s held in place by about a dozen hairpins and sheer dumb luck, so I dare not disturb it.

Trying to occupy my hands, I smooth them over my flared trousers, pull my skintight top with its puffy, off-the shoulder sleeves back into place. Considering it’s my go-to outfit for a night out because it makes me feel so confident, all I can see now is how big my thighs look and how silly that tiny strip of stomach on show looks and how ridiculous the sleeves are, making me look wide and bulky instead of sexy and feminine.

I haven’t even said hello to anybody yet, and I’m already sweating like I have to get changed for PE and am paranoid that everyone will notice I forgot to shave my legs.

Spoiler alert: nobody ever noticed.

Okay. I can do this. This is fine. It’s just a party. I like parties now.

And I liked school, too, for the most part. I liked plenty of the people, and I’m still friendly with some of them. I was looking forward to tonight.

If only because there are plenty of people whose faces I’d like to rub my life in, and put them in their place. I’d really love it if some of them aren’t doing so great, too – maybe their partner left them or they were fired or, even better, they’re stuck in a job they hate with their dreams all turned to ash, while I’m out here doing so well for myself. What a shame that would be.

I grip the cold porcelain sink tightly, teeth clenched.

This is ridiculous.

But this reaction, however much it’s taken me by surprise, isn’t wholly unexpected. I’m returning to the place I spent my formative years of pre-adulthood to face a lot of people who tried their best to make my life miserable. The worst part of hiding out in the toilets and wanting to run home is that I was usually so much better than that, at school. It was a reaction I learnt to temper and control, so the comments about being a square and a try-hard and (my favourite, the most bizarre and inexplicable of all) a slut, would roll off my back. I stopped batting an eye when people snickered at me in the hallways. I trained myself to stop caring.

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