Page 9 of The Reunion

‘So,’ I say, and give my best boardroom-shark grin to the group. ‘What’s everybody up to these days?’

The first half-hour of the party is a blur of old familiar faces and violent panic when someone greets me super-enthusiastically only for me to realise that I cannot, for the life of me, remember their damn name.

There are hugs and cheek-kisses and handshakes. Some people, I greet more genuinely than others. It’s nice to see Steph and Shaun again, for instance, and every so often I swing by whatever little group Hayden is talking to in case he needs rescuing again. And I quite like it when Bryony calls time on her hostess duties and joins the rest of us mere mortals, but hooks her elbow through mine like we’re lifelong besties, like we’re a set. Like I am, and always have been, every bit as deserving of the spotlight as she is. Like it’s an impossible idea that people would ever have considered putting me down instead of worshipping the ground I walk on – or like she ever did that herself, from time to time.

It’s pathetic, how much I enjoy it.

I know it’s only for a night, but there’s something exciting and exonerating about being one of the popular girls at school for a change.

I like it when people do a double take at my outfit, and I relish it when they congratulate me on my career, especially when I don’t have to explain that I work in research development for the pharmaceutical industry trying to fight degenerative diseases, because for whatever reason, they already know. I don’t pretend that I’m not immensely proud of myself, or that I don’t love that my work is making a real difference in the world. I don’t bother to hide the smugness from my voice when I tell them things like, ‘Yes, my team just made a really exciting breakthrough,’ and, ‘I got to spearhead a new drug to treat that, you know. It’s actually going through its next stage of trials soon before it can be formally approved, but things are looking good so far.’

Now, I slip away from Bryony, who’s telling a story about when she went to a premiere party with Olivia Coleman that has everyone hanging off her every word, aware that I’ve left Hayden unattended a little too long. I know he’s a big boy and he can look after himself, but he’s my best friend and I know he was nervous about coming tonight.

Based on the number of times I’ve heard people murmur, ‘Isn’t it a shame about Hayden?’ his concerns weren’t unfounded.

But when I find him chatting to a group of girls I recognise from A-level maths, he’s animated, flushed, telling them, ‘I swear, some days, that big blue dog is my nemesis. Bandit, you know, the dad? He’s always playing these great games with Bluey and Bingo, and then of course my kids expect me to do the same because I’m at home with them most of the time, and I don’t know how to explain that I cannot keep up with this damned cartoon dog.’

Bloody Bluey, I think, and swallow a laugh. Even I’ve watched the episodes multiple times over when I swing by to hang out, or when I’ve looked after Margot and Skye; I reckon Hayden must know some of them word for word by now.

But our old classmates are laughing, and one of them starts up saying how the ‘Grannies’ game from the show is her son’s favourite thing and she can never play it for laughing too hard because he’s too good at pretending to be like his nan, and then someone mentions the name ‘Peppa Pig’ and a collective groan sounds from the group.

I leave Hayden to it, glad he’s found some safe ground in fellow parents for a while, and circle back around the room.

Bryony has moved on to a new group, but flags me down when she spots me.

‘Ashleigh! Ash, over here! We were just talking about that Red Nose Day talent show we did, d’you remember? The one you organised in Year Twelve?’

A few heads turn at the sound of Bryony’s voice. It’s always carried, like her natural state is to project, and I don’t hate when the eyes shift to me.

So I call back to her, ‘D’you mean the one where you coloured your hair red with cheap hair dye that ran everywhere? By the end of the day, you looked like one of the Angry Birds.’

Bryony laughs, hand reaching for me to pull me into the group. There’s a buzz as the topic ripples through the party and people start reminiscing about that particular talent show. The teachers that sang ABBA or got up to ballroom dance, Shaun and his mates who formed a little band to sing ‘Wonderwall’ (unironically), when Roisin and Noodles Greg (why did we ever call him that? Why can’t I stop thinking of him as ‘Noodles Greg’?) tried to do a sort of circus double-act and he knocked himself out with the juggling clubs …

‘That was mint, to be fair, Ashleigh,’ someone is saying to me now. ‘You got us the whole afternoon off lessons for it, remember?’

It takes all my willpower not to roll my eyes. Of course that’s what they remember now – not how peeved people were with me after making the grand announcement in the common room and how much they grumbled about having to waste their afternoon on some stupid fundraiser rubbish.

But I smile and say, ‘I know. It wasn’t easy.’

Bryony catches my eye, the tip of her tongue bitten between her teeth like she knows what I’m not saying is that I had to fight tooth and nail with our Head of Sixth Form for it and prepared a kickass presentation for the occasion, and got no thanks from anybody for it – even after they had such a great time. It was one of the rare times I found a true ally in her, taking my side against the rest of the year group; she was all for an excuse to show off, and the first to sign up.

What she says to the others, though, is, ‘Well, we all had to make sure we put on a good show after that. Ash never skipped lessons for just anything, did she! You swot!’

The group falls to dissecting their favourite memories of the talent show, and I listen with only mild interest.

The hairs on the back of my neck prickle and I don’t notice at first, not until my hand clenches so tightly around my paper cup that it crumples in on itself.

And I don’t know what’s wrong, until I do.

It’s an hour into the party. Everybody’s here.

Almost everybody, anyway.

There are heavy footsteps approaching, a confident stride that nobody else seems to notice, not until the double doors are thrown open by a broad man in an expensive suit, who stands there while heads throughout the hall swivel towards him and conversations hush, as if his very arrival deserves that particular mark of respect.

It doesn’t.

Ryan Lawal gives us all that smug, shit-eating grin that hasn’t changed a bit in ten years, and stands there like he’s God’s fucking gift. The prat is even wearing his school tie, for Christ’s sake – bright cobalt that would be unremarkable but for the silver imprint of the school badge on it.

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