The Reunion

forty-five in the entire pub. And Lilah was right, it was an old man’s pub, all along the bar they were sitting there, stooped over pints and papers, few of them even bothering to chat to each other. Perhaps it was their refuge from the missus, too.
    Oh God, he couldn’t believe he’d become one of those sorts of men, the type that runs off down the pub to escape the woman they’ve chosen to spend their life with. He couldn’t become one of those tedious bores who sees women as a necessary evil, something to be tolerated because they provide food and sex and comfort. He wasn’t like that. He didn’t want to be like that. He picked up the glasses, beamed at the barmaid and walked back to their table, determined that they weren’t going to moan about women any longer.
    ‘Tell me about the plans for the French house,’ he said brightly as he placed a pint in front of Conor.
    ‘Ah well.’ Conor’s eyes lit up whenever the house was mentioned, the house and his plans for it. ‘Yeah, as Jen said, we were thinking, if the barn’s structurally sound, and I’m not sure that it is, that we could convert it, into a studio, but also extra living space, in case we wanted to go when her dad’s using the main house or whatever, you know…’ He was off. They might raze the barn and build a whole new extension – a workshop for himself, a place for Jen to work. He wanted to build an enclosure out back because Jen had always fancied keeping goats. They might even move there next year, earlier than expected, they might not go travelling just yet. It was, after all, the place where they were happiest.
    They stayed in the pub until closing. They were in good spirits by the time they left, laughing as they told stories they’d told and heard a thousand times of things they did at college, that summer trip to Italy at the end of their first year, the time they stole Dan’s clothes and towel from the shower rooms, forcing him to walk back through halls stark naked.The cold air hit them as they waved goodbye to the barmaid and stepped outside, sobering them up just enough to realise how drunk they were. They weaved their way down the road towards the tube station, Conor’s arm around Andrew’s shoulders.
    ‘I’ll give you a call tomorrow,’ Andrew said as Conor fished around in his pocket for his travelcard. ‘We can go for a hair of the dog if you like.’
    ‘Yeah,’ Conor said, ‘that would be good.’ He found the card and looked up at Andrew, his eyes glassy, expression unreadable. ‘She lied to me,’ he said.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Jen. That week I went back to see Ronan, I told you, we’d had that big fight?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘She lied to me. She told me she’d spent the day on her own, she said she’d just wandered around and gone to the cinema. But then, it was like a week or two later, I was looking for my driver’s licence, right, and there were these papers in the spare room and I thought it might have got mixed up with them, and there were some ticket stubs for some Japanese film at the Barbican.’
    ‘She told you she went to the cinema, though.’
    ‘Yeah, but there were two. And she told me she was on her own. And the film was at eight in the evening. She didn’t tell me exactly what time she’d been, but I just find it hard to believe she was just wandering about on her own, all day, until eight o’clock at night.’
    ‘Are you sure it was from that day?’
    ‘Sure. It was 8 March, the Friday I went to Ireland. And she wasn’t with Lilah, she wasn’t with Nat, and she couldn’t have been with someone from work, because she’d called in sick that day. And if she had been with one of them, she would have told me, anyway. Why would she say she was on her own when she wasn’t?’
    Andrew shook his head. He was trying to think of an innocent explanation and failing. ‘I don’t know, man. I don’t know.’
    He walked back home disconsolate. He was sure there was an innocent explanation, and the only reason he couldn’t think of it now was because his head was clouded with drink. Jen wasn’t a liar, she wasn’t a cheat and she adored Conor, she would never do anything to hurt him. There weren’t that many things Andrew had unshakeable faith in, but Jen and Conor’s relationship was one of them.
    Back at the flat, all the lights were on, the television too. Lilah was asleep on the sofa, an overflowing ashtray and a half-empty wine glass on the floor. He cleared up, turned off the