What became of us

clammed up, as if she was being talked into something.
    ‘Three hours, really?’
    ‘The North isn’t nearly as far away as you seem to think,’ Ursula said, sarcastically.
    ‘Then call him now, go on!’ Annie said.
    ‘No.’
    ‘It’s only half-past ten,’ Annie said, pressing a button on her gigantic watch and reading the fluorescent display.
    ‘Is it? I thought it was much later.’
    ‘Well, then...’
    ‘What do you think, Manon?’ Ursula asked.
    ‘I think that this is like a scene in a film,’ Manon did not want to be involved: ‘three friends meet after twenty years and discover things that they never knew about each other and that they never knew about themselves.’
    ‘It’s been done,’ Annie said. ‘The Big Chill.’
    ‘And what happens in The Big Chill?' Manon asked, innocently.
    ‘They all have loads of sex,’ Annie said, bringing them neatly back to the subject under discussion. ‘Here, use my mobile and call him.’ She took her Nokia out of her Fendi handbag.
    Ursula looked at it.
    ‘No, I’ll call him from my room.’
    ‘You won’t. You’ll bottle. Call him right now!’
    ‘Why are you so keen?’
    ‘Well, if I’m not going to get a fuck tonight, at least I can have the vicarious pleasure of knowing you are.
    ‘Oh, honestly,’ said Ursula, ‘Manon, what do you think?’
    ‘It’s really nothing to do with me,’ Manon said.
    ‘You only live once,’ Annie said.
    ‘Oh God!’
    ‘Go out of earshot, if you like,’ Annie conceded. ‘Do you know his number?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘She knows his number,’ Annie said.
    ‘Oh, just...’ Ursula got to her feet, and walked towards the back gate, trying to force herself to think of Barry and the children, but it was as if they were in another world that had nothing to do with the one she was in now. Her fingers pressed the numbers on the handset slowly and deliberately. The phone rang, and rang, and suddenly she was gripped by the panicky anticipation of failure. Was this love to be unrequited too? Was Oxford going to play a cruel trick on her?
    Then he answered.
    ‘You’ve called,’ he said.
    ‘How did you know it was me?’
    ‘I was dreaming about you. I dreamt that I was going to wake up with you in the morning.’
    He was making it easy for her. She did not know what words she would have used.
    ‘You are,’ she said. The words were soft, like a breath.
    ‘Shall I climb over the back fence?’
    She laughed.
    ‘No, I’ll meet you outside the lodge.’
    ‘I’ll be there by one o’clock.’
    And before she had a chance to think again, he had switched off his phone and she stared at the tiny slab of chrome technology in her hand wondering whether the conversation had really taken place. They were going to wake up together tomorrow.
    ‘He knew it was me!’ she said, as she returned, doing a little skip in the air.
    ‘He probably has caller display,’ Annie remarked.
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘Your phone has a display of the number calling you. Don’t you have it on your mobile?’
    ‘No.’
    Ursula’s spirits suddenly fell flat. Why had he never mentioned caller display? He must have assumed she knew, assumed that whenever they said telepathy to one another, they really meant technology. She felt a fool.
    ‘But it’s your phone,’ Manon said.
    ‘So?’ Annie asked.
    ‘So, he wouldn’t have known it was Ursula even if he did have caller display.’
    Ursula smiled.
    ‘Thank you,’ she said to Manon, then stuck her tongue out at Annie.
    ‘I’ll tell you what we can do until one o’clock,’ Annie said, standing up and brushing bits of grass from her dress, ‘Manon and I can get very drunk, and you,’ she pointed at Ursula, ‘can get very sober.’
    ‘I’m going back to London,’ Manon said quickly.
    ‘Just one drink. Come on, back at the Randolph. Might as well make use of the room. It’s on your way to the bus station.’
    ‘All right then,’ Manon agreed, ‘but I must have a wee first. I’ll catch you up,’ she called, running across the grass.
    ‘You don’t think Manon’s pregnant, do you?’ Ursula said. ‘She keeps going to the toilet and she’s not drinking.’
    ‘She doesn’t look pregnant, does she? Anyway, Manon never really drinks. Her mother was an alcoholic, remember? And she doesn’t have sex either. She’s an ice maiden. I know several very attractive men who’ve tried for months to get off with her. Manon doesn’t do sex.’
    ‘But we do,’ Ursula