What became of us

tell me, I’m late and I only live down the motorway. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I’ve had the most horrendous twenty-four hours, and I’ve been driving round for an age trying to find a parking place. God, I’m so hungover! You know when you wake up you sometimes feel really bright and buzzy? I think it’s probably still being a bit drunk or something, and then you kind of slip into collapse? Ugh! I need about a gallon of fizzy mineral water and a strong cappuccino. Caffeinated, of course.’ Annie grabbed a passing waitress.
    The waitress looked at her, wrote down the order then looked again.
    ‘Yes, I am,’ Annie told her briskly, sitting down and turning her full attention to Ursula, ‘You look incredibly slim and very cross,’ she said.
    Ursula couldn’t help smiling back. Annie was completely unreliable but there was something so direct and unstoppable about her personality that made it very difficult to be angry with her for more than a minute.
    ‘So who were you talking to? A secret lover?’ Annie asked, pointing at the phone that was lying between them on the table.
    The way she said it made it sound as if Ursula had about as much chance of having a secret lover as she herself had of being punctual.
    Ursula put the phone back into her bag.
    ‘Just Barry,’ she said, picking up her coffee cup and tipping it up too hastily so that a blob of cappuccino froth attached itself to her nose. She wiped it away. Then she picked up the menu again for camouflage, stealing a surreptitious glance at Annie across the table. She was wearing a bright silk chiffon dress in a kind of Seventies print in red, black and pink. It clung to all her curves, making her look more voluptuous and overblown than ever. Her hair had been expensively highlighted so that if you hadn’t known you would think her a natural blonde. She was not wearing make-up except for a slick of letterbox red lipstick which was exactly the same as the red of her dress and her smooth leather handbag. She looked like a cross between Kate Winslet and a barmaid. She made Ursula feel anaemic.
    Annie fished around in her handbag and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. Ursula glared at the slim red and white packet.
    ‘Oh don’t be cross with me,’ Annie said.
    ‘I’m not cross, I was just thinking about Penny. She didn’t smoke, or drink or anything. It’s so unfair.’
    ‘Unfair that it was her that died and not somebody unworthy like me?’ Annie asked, putting a cigarette into her mouth.
    ‘No, of course not,’ Ursula said, now unable to ask Annie not to smoke. How did Annie always manage to make everything something to do with her?
    ‘Look at this,’ Ursula said, pulling the photo out of its envelope again. ‘I was thinking what an odd combination of people we were in Joshua Street. The only thing we had in common was Penny.’
    ‘We were her waifs and strays,’ Annie said, light-mg up and blowing a funnel of smoke straight up into the air.
    ‘That makes it sound like Battersea Dogs’ Home.’
    ‘I was little orphan Annie and you were the poor Northerner with the posh name because your down-trodden mother had a secret passion for D. H. Lawrence.’
    ‘Don’t...’
    ‘Who took the photo?’
    ‘Must have been Vin.’
    ‘I suppose it must. Actually we had other things in common,’ Annie said.
    ‘Like?’
    ‘We were all only children.’
    ‘I’m not,’ said Ursula.
    ‘Oh, you’re right,’ Annie acknowledged. ‘Well, bang goes the surrogate sibling theory then, although of course she did marry your brother.’
    ‘None of us were what you’d call Oxford types, were we?’ said Ursula. ‘We were educated at comprehensives.’
    ‘Penny wasn’t, nor was Manon...’
    ‘But Manon wasn’t a typical boarding-school girl, was she? All of us were the first in our family to go to university. We were all misfits here.’
    ‘Penny wasn’t,’ said Annie, drawing impatiently on a cigarette, ‘but perhaps that’s it. You make friends to fill the deficiencies in your own life. Penny liked being with unconventional people because she was so ordinary. It was her way of being unconventional, if you like, except that it just made her appear more normal than ever in comparison. I don’t mean that in a nasty way,’ she added hastily, seeing Ursula’s shocked face, ‘and anyway, we’re not going to spend the whole day talking about then, are we? I mean, we haven’t seen each other for ages. I loved Penny and all that, but I just