The Reunion

guilty too. The iPod shuffled, the track changed and a new song came on, ‘Can’t Be Sure’. Instantly Lilah was transported back in time and space to a campsite in St-Malo, a muddy field on the side of a hill, sitting inside the tent because it was raining, drinking wine out of a plastic bottle, listening to The Sundays.
    The previous day, Nat had been dumped by a monosyllabic northerner with bad hair and an even worse attitude and Lilah had persuaded her to leave college immediately in search of ‘cathartic adventure’. They’d borrowed Jen’s car and driven south through the night, arriving at Dover in the early hours, finally getting to rainy, miserable northern France around lunchtime, with no adventure in sight and nothing to do but get drunk and listen to The Sundays, so that’s what they did, for two days running.
Did you know, desire’s a terrible thing
? Natalie, washing up in the kitchen, looked over at her, and Lilah smiled. Natalie looked away.

 
     
    15 April 1999
    Email, from Lilah to Natalie
    Dear Natalie,
    No, I bloody well do not want to come to your wedding.
    Did you honestly think there was a chance I would?
    Lilah

Chapter Ten

    THEY WERE STAYING . He’d managed to persuade her. Or, she was persuaded, in any case, by the snow or the baby or just the fact that it would be embarrassing to leave now. Andrew carried their case back upstairs, and they unpacked.
    ‘What did the girls say?’ Andrew asked her. ‘Are they having a good time at your parents’?’
    ‘Seem to be,’ Natalie replied. She was standing with her back to him, refolding his boxer shorts, placing them neatly in the top drawer of the oak dresser.
    ‘Did you speak to both of them?’
    ‘Mmm-hmm.’
    ‘Has Grace been practising her violin?’
    ‘So she says.’
    ‘Good.’ He waited a moment, for her to turn back to him, so that he could see her face. He could tell, from the way she was standing, the set of her shoulders, that she was hurting. He put the empty suitcase on the floor and approached her, placing a hand gently between her shoulder blades. ‘Are you all right?’
    ‘I’m fine,’ she said, but he could tell by her voice, thin, a little high, that she was struggling. He took the last of the clothes from her hands and put them in the drawer, steered her back to the bed. She allowed him to manipulate her, silent, supine. She lay down, facing away from him, and he kicked off his shoes and lay behind her, his hand placed on her lower back. She liked the warmth, it seemed to ease the tension.
    ‘I wish,’ she said softly, after a few minutes, ‘I wish we could just let all this go. I wish you could let it all go.’
    ‘I know.’ But he couldn’t, he would not be persuaded.
    ‘It feels like poison.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘I don’t know…’ Her voice was breaking a little.
    ‘You need your pills?’
    ‘Please.’ Her voice was tiny, trapped at the base of her throat.
    Andrew got to his feet and went into the bathroom, rooted through her toiletry bag for her painkillers, the strong ones. There they were, six of twelve left, stamped into their silver sheet, the reverse of which bore a warning about addiction. Not Nat, she was too strong. She didn’t take them often, but today was a bad day. It was the plane, yesterday, the driving, the tension. She’d be better tomorrow. He poured her a glass of water and took it through to her. She propped herself up on one elbow and swallowed two pills in quick succession, jerking her head back as she took them, eyes shut, throat exposed.
    She lay back down, reaching one arm back, a signal for him to join her. He lay down behind her, slipped his hand under her top, gently massaging her lower back. ‘Our life is good,’ she said softly. ‘We have family and work and each other. I don’t want all this… the past, I don’t want it to poison our well. That’s what I mean. There’s too much sadness and too much hurt and too much blame. We moved on, we made our lives. It is not our fault, not
your
fault, that others failed.’
    ‘Nat…’
    ‘No. Let me say this. Jen and Lilah will always be the women you hurt. You can’t see them any other way. But…’ Carefully, she rolled over so that she could face him, as he watched the pain cross her face like a shadow. ‘You’ve already paid, in full, one, two, three hundred times over, for anything you did wrong. Only you can’t see that. All you can ever be with them is guilty. You still want them