The Reunion

front of everyone. She rang his mobile for the hundredth time.
    ‘Please, please, please,’ she whispered to herself, biting her lip with frustration and disappointment when, yet again, she got that insolent, repetitive beep. She longed to tell him she hadn’t meant it. She’d just got lost in her anger. She longed to talk to her children. She wanted so much to hear their lovely voices, their pealing laughter, to listen to them prattle on about the skinny jeans they absolutely had to have. Christ, she’d give anything to listen to them nag her to let them get their ears pierced. But she couldn’t call them. They’d want to talk to Dad (they always wanted to talk to Dad) and what could she say? Could she lie, convincingly, without bursting into tears, could she say he was in the shower? That he’d gone out for a drive? He went out into a blizzard, chasing after his ex-girlfriend, and he never came back.
    She put her drink down, walked to the window and pressed her forehead against the glass. She thought perhaps that the screaming of the wind was fainter now, and was the snow easing off? Or was that just wishful thinking? She tried to imagine them, Andrew and Lilah, sitting in Jen’s car, the heating on full blast, windows steamed up. Laughing about old times, perhaps? Or maybe they were cursing her, for what she’d said, for what she’d wrought. Maybe they were making up. Kissing and making up, making up for lost time. Natalie tried to picture her husband with his hands on Lilah’s still youthful body; she concentrated on trying to conjure up that image, because it was infinitely preferable to the other one, the one that kept forcing its way into her brain, the one in which Jen’s car was lying at the bottom of a ravine, a tangled mess of metal, the windscreen smashed out.
    When she closed her eyes she could see just that, the windscreen smashed out. No snow drifting in though: it was warm, the car sat motionless in dappled sunshine. Andrew was there, and then he was gone. She could hear someone shouting, someone sobbing, a terrible, desperate sound, and then silence. Then black, and later, Andrew was back at her side, holding her hand. He told her that she was going to be all right, everything was going to be all right. He told her that he loved her. She’d waited so long to hear him say that, hear those words, spoken to her, from his lips. She should have been happy to hear them, but it was all wrong, it sounded wrong. Andrew had blood on his face, he was crying. Someone else was crying, too, a plaintive, keening wail. Natalie could smell burning. Could she smell burning? She was terrified, she wanted to get out of the car but she couldn’t move, the door wouldn’t open, her legs wouldn’t move. The pain was consuming, paralysing, unlike anything she’d ever felt. Andrew kept holding her hand, speaking softly, telling her that it was all going to be all right. It wasn’t, though, she knew it wasn’t. She knew that Conor was dead, but she couldn’t think about that, all she could think about was the pain and the smell of burning and the terrible certainty that she was going to burn alive.
    She could smell burning.
    ‘Zac found candles!’ She turned around. Jen was standing there, a lit candle in either hand, Zac just behind her. ‘Nat! Jesus. You’re shaking. Oh, Nat, it’s going to be all right. She handed the candles to Zac and hurried to Natalie’s side to give her a hug. ‘He’ll be OK. It’ll be OK.’
    Natalie smiled and nodded. She was distracted by the appearance of Dan in the doorway behind them, holding a piece of paper in his hand. He looked pale, shocked. As though he’d seen a ghost.
    The phone started ringing and everyone jumped.

 
     
    31 August 2002
    Dear Jen,
    Congratulations! Of course I don’t feel strange about it, you deserve to be happy, I wish you the greatest happiness possible. Can’t wait to meet him. And I’m not put out at all – elopement sounds like a fine idea to me. I wish more people did it…
    We’re good. The girls had their second birthday party last week – fourteen under-fives running around in our back yard – it was absolute bloody chaos, I can tell you. I’ve never been so exhausted in all my life. It was a fantastic day, though, they were spoiled rotten and thoroughly enjoyed themselves. I will get Nat to send over some pics for you.
    Nat has decided to leave Murray Books – she’s decided she would rather stick to full-time