Page 6 of The Reunion

Not that I think I would’ve done anything differently. I would’ve still been a shy, geeky kid.

I’m still a shy, geeky person now, and I’m twenty-eight years old. I guess not that much changes, really.

But even as I think it, the slide cartwheels with a corny animation into a new one. It still has the same title, but the picture is replaced by one I recognise from my Instagram, and how Bryony tracked down my Instagram, I have no idea. Either she’s a master sleuth when it comes to social media, or Ashleigh, the traitor, provided it to her without asking me first.

Still, it’s a nice photo. My favourite, actually. I have it printed and framed in the kitchen at home. It’s of me crouched down with an arm around each of my girls on a snow day, Skye on one side and Margot on the other, all of us beaming at the camera and hugging close together, our cheeks pink with the cold.

Smiling, I turn away and scan the sea of not-so-familiar faces throughout the room. I know partners are welcome, but even people I went to school with suddenly seem to have changed beyond all recognition, and most of the ones I do recognise, I can’t remember their names anyway.

Steph is easy to pick out, because she still looks like the ray of sunshine she always was. It helps that she also looks exactly like she does on social media, and that she’s standing with the same group of girls she always used to hang out with at school. I almost expect to see Shaun with her, but the guy standing next to her, talking to some other men I don’t know, is definitely not Shaun. Good-looking in that conventional, cookie-cutter way, taller than Steph (though that’s not hard) and with a friendly face – but not Shaun.

No, Shaun is standing at the drinks tables, chatting to two of his best mates, Josh and Hassan. The tall, slim lady next to him is decidedly not Steph.

I don’t know why it’s hard to process seeing them both with other people, but they were always such a pair around school, it’s hard to consider them as separate entities now. Hard to consider them as true individuals ever existing outside of one another at all, really.

There must be about a hundred people here already, and it’s barely ten past seven. We must be getting old, I think, if almost everybody is here so on time for a party that started at seven. What happened to being fashionably late? Weren’t they all supposed to be pre-drinking somewhere before getting a lift in an hour after they said they’d show up?

I sort of wish I’d had a beer before coming, but settle for getting myself some of the punch. I don’t think the worst of the ‘lads’ are here just yet, so it should be safe. I joked about Ryan spiking it and I know we’re all adults now, but … I still wouldn’t put it past them.

‘Hey, Hayden! I thought that was you!’

I finish pouring myself a glass and hold it out to one side as I return Shaun’s one-armed embrace. He pats my back roughly, grinning when he pulls away.

‘How’s it going, mate? It’s been forever! You remember Josh and Hassan, right? And this is my girlfriend – fiancée, sorry – Aisha.’ He gives a cheeky wink that’s classic Shaun Michaels, and says, ‘Still getting used to saying that.’

Aisha blushes, and I give her a friendly smile before shaking the boys’ hands. The guys’ – the men’s. A processing error flashes up in my brain, not quite computing that we’re no longer teenagers.

‘Didn’t recognise you for a minute there,’ Hassan tells me, peering up at me in that same way Bryony did. Like his brain is struggling to reconcile these two images of me, too. ‘Were you always this tall?’

Josh grins and digs an elbow in Hassan’s ribs. ‘Nah, but you were always this short.’

He’s laughing as Hassan shoves him off, then Josh hooks an arm around his neck in a playful headlock, mussing his hair before Hassan wriggles free.

Yep. Some things just don’t change.

Shaun catches my eye, like he knows exactly what I’m thinking, and I relax a bit. I always liked Shaun. Everybody did. He and Steph were some of the most likeable people ever; the kind that you wanted to hate just for being so damn perfect, but they were so nice, you were incapable of doing anything but enjoying their company. I never heard anybody badmouth them, not once – not even Bryony.

‘Did you bring anybody with you?’ he asks, glancing around like someone might pop out from behind me.

‘Nah. Just me. The girls are with their mum tonight.’

‘Oh, man, that’s right! I straight up forgot you had kids.’ Josh claps me on the shoulder, brow furrowed. ‘Was real sorry to hear what happened, mate. It must’ve been rough.’

The only semblance of answer I can form is, ‘Uh.’

Hassan is busy explaining to Aisha, ‘Hayden was going to be it, you know? The next Steve Jobs. Honestly, when I heard about that guy who created Wordle, you remember that? When I first opened that article, I thought, hand on heart, that was gonna be Hayden. He was a total genius. Gutting, though – he had to drop out of uni after he got some girl pregnant.’

‘I didn’t have to,’ I say, bristling at how tawdry he makes it sound.

Aisha looks at me with a softer smile, head cocked slightly to one side. It’s curious, and there’s not the same sort of pity in it as in the guys’ faces. ‘You’ve got daughters, then?’

‘Um.’ I clear my throat. ‘Yeah. Margot – she’s nine, now. And Skye, she’s four.’

‘I didn’t realise you had two,’ Hassan says, aghast.

Josh gives a melodramatic shudder. ‘And both girls.’

Shaun rolls his eyes, but says to me, ‘Are you still with Margot’s mum, then? I didn’t know that.’

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