What became of us

giggled.
    ‘Speak for yourself.’
    ‘Oh, Annie, you’re always having sex.’
    ‘You’re thinking of Annie McClintock. It’s not all straight autobiography, you know. Some of it is wishful thinking.’
    ‘Well, you seemed to be getting on very well with the only man in the room tonight,’ Ursula said, waspishly.
    They walked through the lodge.
    ‘Moustache,’ said Annie.
    After a moment’s thought, Ursula said,
    ‘He didn’t have a moustache.’
    ‘Didn’t he?’ Annie asked. ‘Well, the point is that he looks the type who might. Probably wears Y fronts.’
    ‘What’s wrong with Y fronts?’ Ursula asked, picturing a washing line of Barry and the boys’ underwear.
    ‘Oh, get real,’ said Annie. ‘Anyway, he’s married.’
    ‘He didn’t look very married.’ Ursula tried to be encouraging.
    ‘Married men never do. Married women, on the other hand…’ Annie rounded on her.
    ‘Don’t.’
    ‘Oh, for God’s sake, you’re allowed a fling occasionally, aren’t you? A reward for long service.’
    Ursula dissolved into uncharacteristic giggles.
    ‘Do you think that all-night hamburger van is still around?’ she asked as they approached the beginning of St Giles. ‘I’m starving.’
    ‘Probably. Probably serving the same hamburgers. Do you know, whenever somebody mentions BSE, my first thought is that van.’
    ‘But, God, they tasted good, didn’t they?’ Ursula said.
    ‘You’re not going to?’
    ‘I bloody am!’ Ursula said defiantly running ahead.
    ‘Well, you are living dangerously. I don’t know which is the riskiest — the burger or the bonk,’ said Annie behind her.

Chapter 29

    ‘Manon?’
    The voice made her jump.
    Roy ’s fair hair caught the light like an angel as he emerged out of the darkness.
    ‘How did you know it was me?’
    ‘Your footsteps fall in a certain rhythm.’
    ‘You haven’t been hiding?’ she asked, amused.
    ‘Not exactly, well, yes, I had to get away from Leonora, and I think I’ve drunk too much to drive just yet. I was just lying on the lawn looking at the stars.’
    There were blades of grass in his hair to prove it.
    ‘Would you like to come for a walk with me?’ He shifted from one foot to the other, his head slightly inclined, like a teenage boy asking a girl on their first date at the school bus stop. Here in the deserted quad there was no compressed-air hiss from the doors of the departing bus to drown out difficult words.
    ‘I’m supposed to be going back to Annie’s room at the Randolph,’ she replied.
    ‘Walk you there, then?’
    She hesitated.
    ‘OK.’
    The silence between them was tense as they started to walk down the Woodstock Road trying to adjust to each other’s pace and to maintain a distance that was neither too close nor too distant.
    ‘It wasn’t too bad, was it?’ Roy finally asked, as they passed the Radcliffe Infirmary.
    ‘No,’ said Manon. ‘For me, it was better than I expected. Quite interesting.’
    She wondered if he had any idea about his sister’s surprising secret life, but decided he did not. She did not think that Ursula had told anyone before tonight.
    ‘What did you make of Annie’s speech?’ he asked.
    ‘I thought it was wonderful,’ she said immediately.
    ‘Did you?’
    ‘Didn’t you?’
    ‘It was more about Annie than Penny.’
    ‘Of course!’ she laughed, as if to say, what did you expect?
    ‘I suppose so.’ He laughed too. ‘Do women really spend all their time worrying about their bodies?’ he asked. ‘It seems such a waste.’
    ‘That wasn’t really what she was talking about. Women use their bodies as a gauge of their success…’
    None of the worries that Annie had talked about had ever bothered her specifically, and yet the speech had touched a chord in Manon.
    ‘So what do slim women do?’ he asked, half jokingly.
    ‘What she was saying was that we dwell on things that are fundamentally immutable,’ Manon went on, ‘and that is a waste when you might only have a short time. I do think she’s right about our generation of women feeling this enormous pressure to be everything, but perhaps every generation feels that way.’
    ‘So Annie’s Pre-Millennial Tension is just another name for a mid-life crisis?’
    She laughed quietly.
    ‘I suppose so.’
    ‘Do you feel like that?’ he demanded.
    He sounded aggressive because he was nervous being alone with her, she realized.
    ‘Not so much, because I’ve completely failed to do everything I was