The Reunion

least she isn’t a shoplifter. She isn’t a shoplifter, is she?’
    He grinned. ‘Not that I know of.’ Then he said: ‘I’m sorry that you didn’t get to live the life you should have.’
    Jen shrugged. ‘No one gets the life they think they’re going to have when they’re twenty-three, Dan. Almost no one, anyway. If you look at the names on that list, you can hardly say I had the worst time of it, can you?’ They both fell silent after that.
    Despite herself, Jen was wondering how you would rank them, in terms of bad luck. Conor had to come first, of course, but then was it Andrew, who took all the blame, or Nat, who lived with the pain? Dan and Lilah appeared to have got off easily, but who really knew what they’d been through?
    ‘Do you blame Lilah, Jen? Now you know. The whole story, what Nat said.’
    Jen thought for a moment. ‘No. I mean, she could have taken some of the pressure off Andrew, couldn’t she? She should have spoken up about that. But it doesn’t really change anything, does it? And you know, it could have been me driving that car. If someone had suggested I drive, I would’ve done. Yes, I’d had two glasses of wine, but I still would’ve done it. Do you remember, what it felt like, that day, that summer, the summer before?’ She smiled. ‘It was like this list, we thought we could do anything. No one ever thought about anything bad happening. We were going to be friends forever, love each other forever, live forever. We were invincible. I think everyone feels like that when they’re that age, don’t they?’
    Dan nodded. ‘I remember driving so fast, that rush, that recklessness. I know exactly what you mean.’
    Jen remembered the rush, too. She still had the taste of wine on her tongue when she climbed into Dan’s car, the taste of Conor’s kiss. The sun shining down on them. Lilah was in the back, sitting sideways with her feet up because it was the only way she could fit her long legs into the car. Jen could remember leaning back in her seat, closing her eyes, willing him to go faster and faster, letting the rush take everything else away.
    ‘Jen?’ Dan brought her back, to the darkness of the living room. ‘You all right?’
    ‘I’m fine.’ She paused for a moment. ‘I was just thinking, that list. I didn’t write down anything that I wanted for myself. Conor and Jen want this, Conor and Jen will do that…’
    They fell into a silence heavy with things unspoken. What she wanted at the time she wrote that list, how that had changed six months later, and six months after that, and then, how everything she’d ever wanted didn’t mean a thing any longer, because the life she’d known no longer existed. Slowly, tentatively, Dan reached out his hand to her. She took it.
    ‘Not everyone wants the same thing forever,’ he said, as though he’d read her mind.
    ‘I know.’ There was a moment where she thought she could tell him, what it was that had kept her away so long, a moment where she thought she could explain it perfectly, but then his phone beeped and he said, ‘At last, signal!’ and the moment was gone.

 
     
    Letter, from Jen to Conor, dated May 1996, never sent
    My darling Con,
    I need to say this to you, but I can’t say it to you. I can’t say it to your face. I can’t bring myself to say it and see the look in your eyes, I can’t bear it, the thought of how much you’ll hate me when you know what I’ve done. The terrible things I’ve done.
    There is no excuse for it. All I can say is that for some reason, some reason I can’t even remember any longer, I woke up one day, or maybe it came upon me gradually, I don’t know, I don’t even bloody know, I just realised that maybe everything we wanted wasn’t everything I wanted any longer. And it’s not that you aren’t enough, it’s that I’m not enough. Like this, I’m not enough.
    I can’t say this to you. I can’t even write this to you. I have to write the words down but it frightens me to do it, to end it, to put an end to this, because it will be, once you know, it will be the end of you and me. I know it. I did a terrible thing. I betrayed you. I have to say it to your face, don’t I? I can’t write this down.
    I can’t.

Chapter Twenty-one

    WITHOUT BEING ASKED, the auberge owner’s wife, a large, round lady, living proof of the inaccuracy of the claim that French women do not get fat, brought to their room two plates of stew, a rich boeuf bourgignon accompanied by