Caught in the Act

‘I’m off now, love,’ she said cheerily.

‘So’s this yoghurt,’ he huffed miserably. ‘I might have got food poisoning or something.’

Carol took the offending article out of his deeply disgusted paw and dropped it into the pedal bin. ‘For God’s sake, Ollie, you’re a new lad, you’re not supposed to read the sell-by dates,’ Carol growled. ‘You’re meant to eat it and then burp appreciatively, green hairy mould and all.’

Ollie’s expression of unrelenting disdain did not waver. Carol held up her hands in surrender. ‘OK, OK, my mistake. You can go and buy more tomorrow. Organic, low fat, no fat—whatever.’

He sniffed.

Carol pulled him closer and brushed her lips across the top of Oliver’s spiky hard-boy haircut. ‘And don’t worry, I’ll be back on Sunday evening to mop up any unused emotional blackmail and residual maternal guilt.’

His eyes twinkled but his expression remained steadfastly hard done by. ‘Just as long as we’ve got that perfectly clear,’ he said.

Carol resisted the temptation to scrunch his carefully teased and heavily gelled hairstyle into prepubescent fluffiness. ‘Have a good time without me.’

‘Yeah, right, we will. Bye, Mum,’ Ollie said grudgingly.

At least he helped her to feel slightly better; resentment and grumpiness made Carol feel she had every right to go. After all she did for them, ungrateful buggers. She sighed; who the hell was she trying to kid? Although she did want to go and meet everyone and see what they had been up to—she and Diana had got a brilliant response from their ad on Oldschooltie’s message board—Carol knew that the main reason she was going was so that she could take a long hard look at Gareth Howard. Not only to see what the years had done to him but also to see if there was a flame still burning after all.

What if she had met Mr Right all those years ago and had been too blind or too young or too naïve to see it? Maybe it wasn’t too late to go back and pick up the pieces.

She’d had a thing for Gareth for years—but it wasn’t until they started rehearsing the play that he suddenly seemed aware of her for the first time.

‘I was looking for you,’ he’d said, bounding up to her in the corridor on impossibly long legs. ‘I was wondering if you’d like to read the script through some time before we start rehearsals?’ Carol had been hurrying out of the common room, her arms full of books.

‘Sorry, that was the bell—I’m supposed to be in History…’ Ah, that was it. And she had turned away and Gareth had caught hold of her elbow and turned her back towards him. ‘When’s your next private study? It would be good to go through the play a couple of times—you know, get a feel for it.’

Carol could feel her colour rising; wasn’t this what she had been daydreaming about for years? Her annoyance at being held up faded to a kind of self-conscious discomfort. Get a grip, she thought, and tried smiling.

‘This afternoon, after lunch I’ve got a double free,’ Carol had heard herself saying, stumbling over the words, trying to forget the pile of work she had to catch up on.

And then Gareth had grinned and brushed his fringe back off his face; he had been playing cricket and tennis and had a tan that made his eyes seem far too blue. ‘Great. Me too, any idea where we could go?’

Carol stared at him; where the hell did you go with somebody you had been lusting after since you were fourteen?

‘How about the library?’

He pulled a face; so maybe it wasn’t the best choice but it was all Carol could come up with under pressure. ‘Someone is bound to complain about the noise. We need somewhere quiet where we can read through without being disturbed. How about if we go over to the pavilion; we could sit out on the veranda. At least it will be out of the way.’

Carol felt her stomach fluttering. The cricket pavilion was up on a bank overlooking the cricket pitch, sheltered on two sides by huge horse chestnut trees with a view back over the main school. People mostly went there to smoke or snog.

‘Sure, sounds like a good idea,’ Carol said, with a confidence she didn’t feel.

‘OK,’ he beamed. ‘See you there first period after lunch then?’

All these years on and Carol could still feel that intense little flutter in the pit of her stomach that he had made her feel then. Across the kitchen Raf was looking at her quizzically.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘You look a bit pale.’

Carol made a real effort to smile. How could she possibly tell him? ‘I’m fine.’

‘I love you,’ Raf said gently. ‘And I’ll be here…’

What was that supposed to mean? For an instant Carol wondered if Raf had some inkling of what was going through her mind, some Celtic intuition that told him that she was floundering. She stared at him. Why didn’t she want to commit herself to living with Raf? Was that what all this hankering after Gareth was re ally about? Wasn’t she aching for a fantasy, some perfect love that had never re ally had the chance to blossom, or go wrong or get dull or cruel? Fancying Gareth after all these years was like loving a dead war hero; in her mind he hadn’t aged, he didn’t fart in bed and his hair hadn’t thinned or been combed over.

Raf’s expression crinkled up a little. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

Carol waved her thoughts and his words away. ‘Just a bit nervous, that’s all. I mean, do I re ally want to see just how wrinkly everyone else is and know they’re thinking the same thing about me?’ she said with a grin. ‘All those old faces, all those old memories.’

‘And all those old flames?’ he added casually.

Carol stared at him. He knew. ‘Maybe,’ she hedged, aware of something that Shakespeare had written in another play about what a dead giveaway it was to protest too much. Any heated denials would only make things worse, not better. ‘There’s bound to be one or two but they’re probably balding with false teeth and half a dozen kids by now,’ she joked.

‘They?’

Carol felt a great rush of heat. ‘He,’ she said uncomfortably, cursing her inability to lie.

Raf nodded. She wondered if for an instant he felt worried or hurt or threatened. If he did, it didn’t show. Raf looked at her with his big brown eyes and smiled. ‘Well, have a good time and give my love to Diana. We’ll be fine, assuming we can avoid yoghurt poisoning.’

They both looked at Ollie, who made a big point of ignoring them.

‘God, I’m so glad that you arrived early,’ said Diana. ‘I was beginning to panic. I’ve got the list—did you receive any more replies or apologies?’

She was standing all alone in the huge vaulted hallway of Burbeck House. Once a great baronial manor, it was set in its own grounds at the far end of an impressive sweeping drive. The interior was now painted a pale and rather morbid shade of November afternoon grey. The enormous entrance hall was dotted with hessian pin boards screwed to walls that would have looked far more at home under rows of stags’ heads, axes, spears and suits of armour. A reception desk, dwarfed by stone columns, was set up inside the great double door and beside it Diana was standing, surrounded by various boxes, shopping bags, bits of costume and piles of books.

Carol pulled a sheet of paper out of her handbag. ‘All present and correct, Capt’n Bligh.’

‘Sorry,’ said Diana. ‘It’s just that I’ve been panicking. You found it all right, then?’ she continued, gathering assorted bits and pieces together.

‘Eventually,’ said Carol, bending down to help her. ‘It’s a bit out of the way, but it is such a great place. It was a good idea to hold it here, Di. Do you have any idea who designed the park? It almost looks like it might be Capability Brow—’ Glancing up, Carol could see from the anxious expression on Diana’s face that architecture and landscape weren’t the most pressing things on her mind. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘We’ve got a bit of a problem. Well, I’m not sure it’s a problem, exactly,’ she said, shifting her weight uneasily from foot to foot.

‘Spit it out,’ said Carol, straightening up under a carton full of props. ‘What’s the trouble? I’m good at crisis management.’

Diana looked even more uncomfortable, as if struggling to find exactly the right words.

‘Don’t tell me,’ said Carol, ‘you’ve accidentally booked the wrong weekend and nobody is coming after all. Just you, me and a box full of papier-mâché crowns, plastic swords and a pile of scripts?’

Diana shook her head. ‘Oh, no, as far as I know everyone is coming. It’s just that when I rang up to book the rooms I must have said something about it being a school reunion and the receptionist got hold of the wrong end of the stick and…’ Diana bit her lip and pulled one of her world-famous faces.

‘And?’ said Carol, willing the words out of Diana’s mouth.

‘And they’ve allocated us the dormitories.’

Carol stared at her. ‘The dormitories?’

‘Uh-huh, you know—bunk beds, communal washrooms. They thought we were some sort of school party.’