The Reunion

night.’
    ‘Yeah, I used to freak myself out doing that.’
    ‘And being here, with us… Conor’s going to be the one she thinks of, isn’t he? The one she imagines.’
    ‘I suppose so.’ She sipped her coffee. Her head was bent, hair falling forward, and when she looked up at him again her mouth was set in a line, determined. ‘Sorry about before, running off like that. I was a bit… taken aback. I didn’t realise. That you knew. About that. Me and Dan.’ There were two spots of colour in her cheeks, a deep, blooming red.
    Her and Dan. It was quiet then, just the gentlest of breezes pushing a few dead leaves around the forest floor, the occasional chirp of birdsong. Jen and Dan. Dan who likes Japanese cinema. Jen who lied.
    ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘About you and Dan. What is there to know?’
    ‘Forget it, Andrew,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Just forget it.’ She got to her feet. ‘Shall we get going?’
    ‘No, hang on. What did you think I knew?’
    ‘Look, I don’t even know why we’re talking about this. You said something about having an argument with Dan about me. Maybe I misunderstood you. It doesn’t matter. Let’s just go home now, OK? Dan’s watching Isabelle, I shouldn’t leave them too long.’
    ‘Playing Daddy is he?’
    Jen gave him a look he hadn’t seen for a very long time. The last time he’d seen it she’d been looking at Conor; it usually meant he was dangerously close to crossing a line. ‘Don’t be childish, Andrew.’ He was still sitting at the foot of his tree, looking up at her, towering over him.
    ‘So, you and him. You and Dan. When did this happen?’
    ‘Andrew…’
    ‘When? College? Here? When?’
    ‘London,’ she said quietly.
    ‘London? When?
Jennifer
? When?’
    ‘A few months before the accident.’
    Andrew felt as though the ground were shifting beneath him, he actually put his mug down, put his hands on the clammy earth next to his legs as if to steady himself. Right then he had a flashback, the clearest possible memory of standing outside a tube station after an evening in the pub, Conor unsteady on his feet, looking over at Andrew, expression wounded, saying,
She lied to me, Andrew, she lied to me
.
    ‘You’re telling me you cheated on Conor?’
    ‘It was a mistake.’ Her voice was tiny, broken. She was standing a few feet away from him, staring at the ground; perhaps she felt it moving too.
    ‘Did he know?’ She shuffled her feet, turned away from him. Andrew leapt up, grabbed her arm and pulled her roughly round to face him. ‘Jen, did he know? Did he know when he died?’
    ‘No,’ she said, ‘no. I don’t think… No, he didn’t.’
    ‘You don’t think so, or he didn’t?’
    ‘Andrew, Jesus. What does it matter now?’
    She started to cry. For a fraction of a second he felt the old impulse to go to her, to help her – this was Jen, his little sister, the girl he was supposed to protect. Just a fraction of a second and the urge was gone.
    ‘What does it matter? How can you ask me that? Fucking hell, all this time,’ he was shouting at her, ‘all this time, I’ve felt so sorry for you, knowing that your heart was broken, that you lost the love of your life, that you lost him because of me, and it wasn’t true. It wasn’t true! You don’t think that matters? It matters to me, Jen.’
    He started to walk away from her, out of the woods; he could hear her crying behind him and it made him want to slap her. She ran after him, grabbed his hand, but he yanked it away from her.
    ‘I
was
heartbroken,’ she said. ‘Of course I bloody was. And I did love him, you know I did, don’t you dare suggest that I didn’t. Dan and I made a mistake, one stupid mistake, that was all it was. Do you not think that mistake cost me? Do you not think it just made everything worse?’ Andrew stopped at the treeline, looking out into the dazzling sunshine of a perfect August morning. She was standing close behind him, he could hear her breathing, quick and ragged. ‘I’m sorry, Andrew. I know it’s a horrible thing that I did, I know you must be disappointed in me.’
    ‘We have… all of us… behaved despicably, haven’t we?’ he said. ‘Not one of us is innocent.’
    She let out a sharp breath, exasperated. ‘Of course we aren’t. Did you really think you could get to this stage in life and be innocent?’
    He shook his head. ‘Maybe I thought we could be better than this.’
    ‘Oh, Andrew. Better than what?