What became of us

she smiled. ‘I’m starving,’ she said.
    ‘So, what else is new?’ Annie asked despondently.
    Manon knew that her fast metabolism, which allowed her to eat enormous quantities of food and never put on any weight, was one of the many things that stood between them ever becoming very close friends.
    ‘Come and make me feel less guilty about ordering pasta,’ Annie said magnanimously, grabbing Manon’s arm and guiding her to the table.
    ‘Hello, Ursula,’ Manon said.
    ‘Hello, Manon.’
    Using each other’s name made the exchange seem formal. Manon did not know whether to kiss her. They had shared the house in Joshua Street for two whole years, but she had known that Ursula tolerated rather than liked her. The only occasions on which they had met since university were at Penny’s party and Penny’s funeral. The unexpectedness of a chance pre-reunion in Brown’s seemed to throw them both back to that awful rainy winter’s day when they had stood at the graveside next to one another.
    ‘Is that a Lulu Guinness bag?’ Annie enquired, never able to let a silence last for very long.
    ‘Yes,’ Manon replied, grateful for the intervention.
    ‘It’s gorgeous. I’ve got one with pink roses on top, but I didn’t know she’d done one with red.’
    ‘I think it was a sort of Valentine special,’ Manon said.
    ‘Oh... lucky you.’ Annie’s face fell dramatically.
    ‘I love your dress,’ Manon said quickly.
    ‘Thanks. It’s Gucci. Cost a fortune, but when I got it home I suddenly thought, oh God, it looks just like every dress I had in the Seventies and gave away to Oxfam.’
    ‘No!’ protested Ursula and Manon simultaneously.
    Manon picked up the menu and told the waitress she wanted fishcakes.
    ‘Bloody fishcakes,’ said Annie, ‘the obligatory fare of the Nineties. I mean what’s so great about a bit of mashed potato and a teaspoon of salmon, unless you own the restaurant of course, when you’re laughing all the way to the bank. It’s like pizza. Whoever thought up pizza was a bloody genius. Make some dough, get some wanker to spin it around a bit, then smear on a teaspoon of genetically modified tomato puree, about a tenth of the salami you’d get in a sandwich, and charge ten quid.’
    ‘Would you rather I chose something else?’ Manon asked.
    That made Ursula laugh and the tension around the small table suddenly evaporated.

    ‘Well,’ said Annie, ‘so here we all are...’
    ‘When was the last time we were all together?’ Ursula asked, rather pointedly, Annie thought, as if to underline the fact that she had missed Penny’s funeral.
    ‘Penny’s thirty-eighth birthday party,’ Manon said.
    ‘Yes, of course,’ said Ursula.
    ‘The last time before that must have been after finals,’ Annie said. ‘We were all sitting in the Parks wondering where we’d be in twenty years’ time. God, the year 2000 seemed unimaginably far away, didn’t it?’
    ‘I remember,’ Ursula said.
    ‘Do you remember, Manon?’ Annie demanded.
    ‘Yes, I do,’ Manon responded, but she had a sense of foreboding about the conversation they were about to get into. She did not want to revisit that day with them.
    ‘Have some champagne,’ Annie offered, picking the bottle out of the ice bucket. ‘Oh, it’s empty, how did that happen? Let’s get another!’
    ‘I’m not drinking,’ Manon said.
    ‘Never?’ Annie asked.
    ‘Just not today.’
    ‘Why ever not?’
    ‘Some people don’t drink all the time,’ Ursula snapped at Annie, intervening on Manon’s behalf. ‘I don’t usually,’ she said feebly, looking guiltily at her glass.
    ‘We had a picnic in a hamper,’ Annie continued her reminiscences where she had broken off. ‘Trust Penny to have a bloody picnic hamper when the rest of the world had plastic carrier bags from Safeway...’
    She called the waitress over and ordered more champagne, then she turned to Ursula, and said, slightly accusingly, ‘You were the one most likely to be Prime Minister.’
    ‘I don’t think so.’
    ‘Yes, you were,’ Annie insisted. ‘Mrs Thatcher was Prime Minister, and suddenly it was something a woman could be...’
    ‘I certainly didn’t think of Mrs Thatcher as a role model,’ Ursula said sharply; ‘it was only just after the Falklands.’ She turned to Manon, making an effort to include her.
    ‘I think you were the one most likely to be rich because you always made more money in the vac than we did,’ she said.
    ‘Well, that’s a