The Reunion

pro, standing up on his pedals and pushing hard. Andrew tried to keep up, but with every turn, with every hairpin, he was aware that Dan was pulling further and further away from him. His legs were leaden, sweat poured into his eyes, his heart beat fit to break his ribs. Ahead of him, the road shimmered in the heat. He felt nauseous, breathless, paranoid. He was going to die of a heart attack, here, on the side of the road, eating Dan Parker’s dust. He dismounted and pushed his bike into the shade of a tree. From somewhere way above him, a voice called out, ‘You all right down there?’ and he had to summon all his willpower not to pick up the bike and hurl it over the edge of the mountain.
    Sunburnt and hung over, he slept fitfully that night and rose at dawn feeling sheepish and desperately thirsty. He slipped out of bed, leaving Natalie sleeping, and crept downstairs to make coffee. He found Jen in the living room, dozing off in the armchair with Isabelle in her arms.
    ‘Oh, sorry,’ Jen whispered when she saw him, ‘did she wake you?’
    ‘Not at all, didn’t hear a thing. Has she been crying?’
    ‘Mmm. Not a good night.’
    ‘You want a coffee?’ he asked.
    ‘Actually I was thinking of taking her for a little walk, seeing if I couldn’t get her to sleep for a few hours now. You want to come?’
    They popped a weakly protesting Isabelle into the pushchair and set off down the driveway. The sun was rising across the valley, but the air was still cool, the grass wet with dew. The world smelled fresh. They walked down the driveway, turning right at the road. They trudged up the hill in silence for the first couple of hundred yards or so, the steeper section. Once the road levelled out, they stopped for a moment to get their breath back and Andrew asked: ‘Did you talk to Dan last night?’
    ‘Not really. I was in Lilah’s room when he came back. He popped in for a moment. She had a pretty bad evening, so I didn’t really chat to him.’
    ‘Oh. Sorry, I hadn’t realised she’d had a bad day.’
    ‘S’OK. She fell asleep in the end and slept pretty soundly after that, I think. I was up quite a bit in the night with Isabelle and I didn’t hear her.’ She turned to look at him. ‘Why do you ask? About Dan, I mean?’
    ‘We had a bit of a row.’ He thought he’d better tell her, give her his side before she heard Dan’s, which was bound to be imaginatively embellished.
    ‘Did you? What about?’
    ‘About you, actually.’
    ‘About me?’ she laughed. ‘What have I done?’
    Andrew shrugged. ‘No idea. What have you done?’
    Jen stopped walking for a moment. Andrew turned and looked at her. ‘Andrew, what are you talking about?’
    ‘We had an argument about you. About him and you, the way he feels about you…’
    Her eyes widened, she looked shocked.
    ‘I don’t want to talk about this with you,’ she said bluntly, then she turned around and walked briskly away from him, the pushchair almost running away from her as she marched down the hill.
    He called after her, a little half-heartedly, but she didn’t respond, so he carried on alone. He walked for a long time, all the way up to the very top of the hill behind the house, then he turned and walked back down, slowly, turning everything over in his mind as he went, the things Dan had said, Jen’s bizarre reaction, her over-reaction, and in the pit of his stomach something gnawed at him like a rodent.
Dan doesn’t like rugby, Dan likes art galleries and Japanese cinema
. He’d walked about three quarters of the way back down the hill when he met Jen walking up to meet him. She was alone, without the baby, carrying a flask.
    ‘I thought you might like a cup of coffee,’ she called out when she saw him. ‘And I thought maybe you and I should talk.’ They left the road and climbed up the verge together, walking across a field and into the woods. They walked until they found a clearing where they sat down, each leaning against a tree trunk. Jen poured them both a mug of sweet black coffee.
    ‘She talked about him again, last night,’ Jen said. ‘Lilah. She keeps talking about Conor being in the woods. I’ve no idea where that comes from. He didn’t even spend much time up here, did he? None of us came up here much, did we, except maybe to look for firewood.’
    Andrew shook his head. ‘Not that I remember. I think she just sees shadows, sees things move. You do, if you stare at the trees for long enough, especially at