What became of us

deserted. The peculiar uninhabited coldness of it, and the smell, a not unpleasant mingling of disinfectant and baking croissants, reminded her of arriving in the early morning in a foreign city after spending the night on an Inter-Rail train.
    During the first summer vac, she and Penny had spent a month Inter-Railing. They had intended to do two months, but after a week or so they’d both got a bit drunk on sweet wine in some German city and admitted that they couldn’t see the point of it. Their exhaustive tour of Europe was proving simply exhausting (they had consumed so much Riesling, she remembered laughing quite a lot at that pun). The next day they set off for Florence and spent the rest of the time there, throwing student convention to the wind by taking a room in a pensione rather than squeeze into the youth hostel. It had used up all their money, but they had decided that two comfortable weeks would be preferable to six poring over timetables and traipsing round unfamiliar streets in search of a launderette.
    Whenever Ursula thought of Penny, the image that sprang to mind first was of her hanging up underwear on a piece of string she had tied from her bedpost to the window catch, then turning round and smiling triumphantly at Ursula, happy in the tiny home they had made together. Their room was at the back of the pensione and it didn’t get any sun, but the heat was scorching and knickers dried in an hour.

    It was strange how a memory like that could sneak up on you, just when you thought you were beginning to come to terms with it, Ursula thought, wiping her eyes as she bought a ticket.
    ‘Return to Oxford, please. Coming back tomorrow.’
    ‘Hay fever? My daughter gets it,’ the woman replied, as the little rectangular cards flew through the printer.
    The weekend ahead was bound to be full of moments like this, Ursula thought, wondering why that had not occurred to her before. The word celebration on the invitation had cajoled her into a false sense of jollity and she had envisaged only the pleasure of spending uninterrupted time with friends whose lives she had followed in the pages of the college magazine without the worry of having to get back for a babysitter. She had always enjoyed the conviviality of college dinners and the great swell of chatter which embraced you as you walked in.
    Ursula sat down at an empty table in a nonsmoking compartment and put her small weekend bag on the seat next to her. She was looking forward to making an entrance in her cream linen dress arid navy blazer and seeing their amazement at how slim she was. They would all be taking stock, comparing their achievements and she knew it was ridiculous when she was a partner in a respectable firm of lawyers, and married with three intelligent children, to take most pride in the fact that she was slim. But it was not simply vanity, she told herself more something to do with feeling in control.
    Everything was so much easier for a slim person. You didn’t have to make so much effort to be taken seriously. At lunch, people looked at you and not at your plate. (How on earth did she get like that eating so little? She must binge at home.) Your clients thought of you as a person, not just a sounding board. Strangers suddenly started making passes.
    Liam.
    The train slid slowly out of the station.
    Liam.
    It was as if Liam had triggered another self inside her that had lain dormant, an attractive woman with a slim body hiding beneath an eiderdown of fat. After she had met Liam she lost a stone in a month, then another and another, even though her intake of food remained virtually the same. She could only surmise that the mix of attraction and guilt that fizzed in her brain must make calories simply evaporate, like bubbles escaping a champagne cocktail.
    It was all the fault of Hill Street Blues. She liked ER as well, but Hill Street Blues was her all-time favourite television series. She had become hooked one evening late in the 1980s when, elated after winning a protracted case, she had come home to find Barry already in bed and snoring. Unable to fall asleep beside him, she had gone downstairs, poured herself a glass of wine and turned on Channel 4 in the hope of catching some late night political discussion, but found instead gorgeous Frank Furillo and his beautiful long-haired girlfriend in a bath, talking about the law at the end of an episode. People said the series was like real life, but Ursula knew that police stations