What became of us

check the running order because in her haste and determination, Leonora had actually jumped the queue, before the cancer woman had had a chance to do her reading.
    Leonora’s performance took on a slightly comic edge. The atmosphere in the room changed from concert to music hall. From the strange contortions her face managed to achieve, the songs she had chosen were clearly meaningful, but the lyrics were all in German. Annie’s emotions balanced briefly between pity and hysteria, and ended up bubbling out of her mouth in a cough of barely disguised giggling. Ian looked at her with feigned sternness.
    Leonora sang three songs when two would have been more than enough. By the end of the third, Annie was making exaggerated faces towards Ursula and Manon’s table, trying to get them to laugh too. All at once Leonora sat down. There was a burst of feeble clapping, then the cancer woman read from the Bible, which calmed everyone down. Just as Annie decided she ought to pop to the loo before her turn, Leonora tapped her fork so forcefully against her glass that it shattered.
    There was a moment of stunned silence. Then Leonora was pointing at Annie with the fork as if accusing her, and Annie realized that her time had come. As she pushed back her chair, it grated on the floor.

    ‘You’re probably wondering why Leonora asked me to speak. I certainly am...’
    Small rumble of laughter, a bit like the first joke in her show when the people in the live audience were still a bit nervous about laughing and the crew hadn’t quite got themselves organized.
    ‘... I was a friend of Penny’s. I’d like to say her best friend, but there are several others in the room who have a better claim than I do, and it was indicative of Penny’s character that if I asked these forty people gathered here who was Penny’s best friend then at least three of you would stand up and probably the other thirty-seven would wish they could...’
    There was a murmur of agreement.
    ‘Penny was simply a fabulous person. She had everything. She was intelligent, kind and pretty and she could do things like make a soufflé. I mean, do you remember how we were then? I had trouble working out how to cook a Pot Noodle...’
    Slight laugh.
    ‘Penny was a great listener...’
    Lots of nods.
    ‘And a great giver... As a matter of fact, she gave me my big break. I rang her up to tell her how nervous I was about doing a stand-up routine, and I went on for hours about how I didn’t have anything to say... and Penny said to me, just be yourself, which was a really insightful piece of advice... or maybe she just wanted to get me off the phone...’ Polite laughter.
    ‘It was typically unselfish of Penny to start with Mel — ’ Annie waved in the direction of the cancer woman — ‘a branch of a charity to help others when there was no time for it to help her... I would have spent my last few weeks choosing the flowers for my funeral and buying the perfect dress to be buried in... but then Penny was a proper person, she knew who she was and if she hadn’t been so incredibly nice we all would have hated her...’ Silence.
    ‘... or at least I would, because I’m a very jealous person...’
    A glimmer of redemptive laughter.
    ‘I was thinking on my way here tonight...’
    This was getting a bit too much like a variety act, thought Annie: wrong tone.
    ‘... that it would have been Penny’s fortieth birthday in a couple of weeks’ time. Some of you are probably already forty, and some of you, like me, coming up to it any moment now, and you have that really big decision to make, don’t you? Should I have a fortieth birthday party? The dilemma is basically this: would it be more depressing to see the whole of my life in one room, or to stay at home, watch television and pretend it isn’t happening?’ Uncomfortable shifting around as people wondered where the speech was going.
    ‘... and I was thinking that we are a uniquely disadvantaged generation of women, because we’re the ones who hit our mid-life crisis exactly as the millennium draws to a close, so not only do we have this huge weight of expectation that we should have done something significant before we’re forty, it’s multiplied a thousand times by the fact that we definitely should have done something significant before the dawn of the new century...’
    One or two smiles as she touched a nerve.
    ‘I call it Pre-Millennial Tension.’
    A belly laugh from Ian’s direction.
    ‘But