What became of us

have missed this for anything else, but the funding came through for the trip and...’
    ‘Oh, everyone’s going to the Galapagos Islands these days,’ said Annie, impatiently. ‘If it’s not Tuscany, it’s the bloody Galapagos Islands. Why is everyone going to the Galapagos Islands?’
    ‘Turtles,’ Ian replied.
    ‘Exactly. What’s suddenly so great about turtles?’
    ‘My thoughts entirely.’
    ‘Which is why you’re here.’
    ‘Seemed a pity to waste it.’
    ‘Right. And did you know Penny at all?’
    ‘Of course I did. Everyone knew Penny, didn’t they? She was the woman every woman wanted to be, and every man wanted to marry.’
    ‘To marry?’
    ‘Well, maybe not then, but ten years later, when they thought about the opportunities they’d missed.’
    ‘I didn’t realize that men thought like that.’
    ‘I don’t know whether they do. It’s what Chloe said.’
    ‘Women think like that all the time,’ said Annie. ‘We used to sit around the table in Joshua Street doing all those daft games, you know, Tinker, Tailor and all that. What do you do, by the way?’
    ‘I’m a GP,’ he said.
    ‘Oh...’
    ‘Something wrong?’
    ‘I just didn’t have you down as someone with a responsible kind of job. You look more like a rogue.’
    ‘I think I’ll take that as a compliment.’
    ‘Don’t, because it means you’ve ruined this evening for me already. I’m going to spend the rest of dinner feeling guilty that I haven’t done something proper with my life,’ she complained.
    ‘Tell you what,’ he said, ‘why don’t you pretend I’m a derivatives trader, just for tonight?’
    She gave him a long look.
    ‘That’s very nice of you. I think I will, if you don’t mind.’
    He threw back his head and laughed so loudly that the rest of their table stopped talking and looked at Annie in the expectation of her repeating the extremely witty thing she had said. When she didn’t, they went back to their Avocat aux crevettes Marie Rose starters.
    Annie exchanged looks with Ian.
    ‘Have a glass of wine?’ he said, picking up the bottle of white wine that everyone else had been too polite, or too abstemious to touch.
    ‘Just a little,’ Annie said. ‘I’ve got to say something later.’
    Her stomach was full of butterflies and she thought a little alcohol might settle it.
    ‘So who were you going to marry,’ Ian said, adding swiftly, ‘in the Tinker, Tailor game?’
    ‘Rich man, of course,’ Annie said, ‘or possibly thief, depending on how broadly you’re meant to interpret these things. Actually, I’m surprised each generation doesn’t update it. I mean how many tinkers and tailors are there nowadays?’
    ‘Quite a few tailors…’
    ‘You mean designers.’ Annie thought for a second. ‘Today it would go something like plumber, designer, Gulf War veteran, round the world yachtsman, celebrity chef, novelist, teacher, literary agent... and instead of silk, satin, cotton, rags, you’d have Vera Wang, Berketex, Monsoon, British Home Stores.’
    She seemed to remember Ursula taking great offence at rags being her designated choice of wedding attire. But she needn’t have worried because things hadn’t worked out as predicted in the fruit stones. Penny (cotton) and Ursula (rags) had been the only two to get married, and, as far as she could remember, both of them had worn silk.
    ‘What’s the other one?’
    ‘Coach, carriage, wheelbarrow, dungcart,’ Annie replied automatically. ‘I always rather liked the idea of being pushed to my nuptials in a wheelbarrow. One of the only romantic things that happened to me here was when some bloke pushed me home from a ball in a shopping trolley. I remember lying there in this bloody great borrowed Anna Belinda dress, gazing at the stars as I trundled along and thinking that this was how Oxford was supposed to be...’
    ‘This place made you think you could do anything.’ Ian smiled nostalgically.
    ‘Oh, don’t go all Glittering Prizes on me,’ Annie said sharply. ‘It was freezing cold most of the year, and full of public school twits.’
    ‘I know what you mean,’ he said.
    ‘Do you?’
    ‘I was a grammar school boy and they never let you forget it.’
    She was beginning to like him.
    ‘So when did you and Chloe tie the knot?’ she asked.
    ‘Straight after I graduated. A bit young, really, but Chloe wanted kids fast so that she could get on with her career after.’
    ‘I thought we were the generation that did it