The Reunion

face. It was almost painfully light, the sun reflecting bright and harsh as steel off the snow. She regretted leaving her sunglasses upstairs, she regretted not getting properly dressed before coming out here: underwear, a scant layer of silk and Ugg boots were not appropriate attire. Still. She lit a cigarette, inhaling deeply and feeling, for the first time since she’d arrived, that it had been a good idea to come.
    She didn’t think about it much, but if you’d told her all of a sudden that the French house had been sold, she could never go back there, it would have made her sad. She would have regretted never again having the chance to stand on this step and look out over the sweep of the front lawn, down to the dry stone wall and beyond. It triggered something in her. No, the wrong expression – being here was like lifting a veil, giving her once more a clear view of things long ago obscured. It brought back fragments of memory, like echoes, flickering images, a silent movie on a wall.
    She remembered, for the first time in forever, having a row with Andrew in the kitchen, something minor, something ludicrously petty, like her retuning the radio to Mélodie FM when he wanted to listen to the World Service. The row had escalated, and eventually Lilah had stomped off upstairs in a sulk, throwing herself on the bed, pulling the sheet up over her head. She just wanted to be somewhere else. She was sick of this place, sick of the unrelenting heat, sick of the dust and cobwebs and back-breaking bloody work. She wanted to be in Juans-les-Pins, where she used to go with her mum when she was younger, before the money ran out. She wanted to be on the private beach at the Hotel Belles Rives. Did they really have to spend the entire summer in this place, Jen’s dad’s unpaid lackeys?
    There was a soft knock on the door.
    ‘Piss off!’ she’d yelled.
    ‘Lilo?’ It was Natalie.
    ‘Sorry, Nat,’ she called out, the sheet still pulled over her head. ‘Thought you were Arsehole.’
    Natalie pushed the door open gently. ‘Oh, don’t be like that. You know how he is if he can’t get his daily fix of current events.’
    Lilah groaned. ‘I’m just so sick of it here. Can’t we go somewhere else?’ She pulled the sheet off her head and sat up straight. ‘I know! Let’s nick Andrew’s car and drive to the coast.’
    ‘Lilah, we can’t do that…’
    ‘We can! Just for a day, or two. We can go swimming in the Med, pick up sexy French boys… We deserve it!’
    Natalie clambered onto the bed next to her, getting under the sheet and pulling it back up over their heads, like a tent. ‘We can’t do that. And you don’t want to pick up French boys, you’re just cross.’ Lilah rolled onto her side, draping her arm over Natalie’s body.
    ‘Don’t you long for it sometimes, though? The idea of being elsewhere.’
    Natalie rolled onto her side too, so they were facing, their noses almost touching.
    ‘I’m happy here.’
    Nat went into the room next door and robbed a spliff out of Dan’s cigarette case. They sat on the bed and smoked it, and then Nat decided that, because Lilah had been denied the joys of Radio Mélodie FM, she would sing French pop songs, to cheer her up. They lay on the bed and laughed and laughed until tears ran down their faces, until they were gasping for breath. All of a sudden Nat leapt up, scrambling to get off the bed. She just about made it to the door and then she stood there, bent over a little, her knees knocking inwards, her face red turning to puce.
    ‘Nat? Are you all right? Nat? Are you peeing yourself?’
    Seventeen years later, Lilah stood on the doorstep and laughed out loud. She flicked her cigarette butt into the snow, desperate all of a sudden to run inside and say, ‘Do you remember the time Nat peed herself?’ But she couldn’t, of course, because she was sworn to secrecy on pain of death, so the only people who knew that Nat had peed herself were Nat and Lilah. And she had a feeling Nat wouldn’t find it funny any more.
    She was too cold to stand outside any longer, so she pushed the front door open and crept back inside.
    ‘Good morning,’ she said, popping her head around the kitchen doorway. ‘Any coffee going?’
    ‘Lilah! Jesus. You’re blue, do you know that?’ Jen looked horrified. ‘Were you outside? I thought I heard the door go – what on earth were you doing?’ Jen caught hold of her wrist and pulled her over next to the wood burner. ‘Sit