Caught in the Act

Diana grimaced. ‘I’m so sorry, Adrian. You don’t mind about the bears, do you?’ She sounded horribly apologetic. ‘I didn’t realise that they had given us the dormitories.’

Adrian snorted and then raised a hand to disburse any lingering doubt. ‘Oh, please. It’s fine, honey, don’t panic. I’ve slept in places a lot worse than this.’

Carol resisted the temptation to ask him where that was exactly.

‘Yes, for God’s sake, Di, stop apologising and just relax about the bloody bears,’ snapped Netty, still toying with her cigarette. ‘No one gives a shit. Now will you excuse me while I retire to a nearby bike shed before I die of nicotine withdrawal?’ She glanced round. ‘I don’t suppose anyone else would care to join me?’

‘Hang on, don’t go. It would be a shame to break up the party before it gets going. I’ll open a window,’ said Adie, going over and unfastening one of the sashes. ‘There’s a fire escape out here,’ he said cheerfully.

Netty peered outside and then with a hand from Adie clambered out onto the windowledge and lit up.

Once Netty was settled, Adie tipped the sunglasses back onto his head and clapped his hands together. ‘So—’ he began, but Netty was way ahead of him.

‘What in God’s name happened to you?’ she asked, snatching the words clean out of Carol’s mouth.

He laughed and shrugged. ‘You know how it is. I grew up, worked out, got a job. How about you?’

Netty sniffed. ‘Nothing so interesting.’

Carol hugged him. ‘You look absolutely amazing.’

‘You too. I just love what you’ve done with your hair,’ he said, holding her at arm’s length to admire her and then cast an eye round the rest of the gang. ‘And, Jan, I adore that colour. Was it that colour last time I saw you? Netty, it’s nice to see that bitch never went out of fashion. God, it’s just so good to see you all again. This was such a brilliant idea.’ Jan reddened furiously under his undisguised delight at her dye job. Carol hugged him tighter, relishing the smell of something expensive and the feel of his nicely muscled body under her fingertips, Diana grinned with sheer pride and Netty, perched like a grumpy dragon out on the windowsill, laughed, blowing out a great plume of smoke. Adrian Gilbert, home from the hills with fantastically good highlights and fabulous teeth—it was enough to restore anyone’s faith in the power of fate, peroxide and cosmetic dentistry.

There was a moment then when they all settled and paused to take stock and in a tiny intense silence Carol thought that maybe it was going to be all right after all. She felt the tension that she didn’t know she had been holding on to, slip away.

And then Jan said, ‘So who else is coming?’ unzipping her holdall and taking out a fluffy white dressing gown and toilet bag.

Carol seemed to remember that Jan—even in her teens—liked to move into a place. Every stop on the drama tour, out would come a big pink throw, clock, photos. True to form the next thing Jan pulled out of the bag was a thin scarlet Indian cotton throw, which she arranged over the miserable grey army blanket. It was like lighting a fire in the huge grey room.

Diana, meanwhile, was extricating a printed list from her bag, together with Carol’s sheet, and said, ‘I’ve got it all written down on here, somewhere,’ and began to scan the neatly typed pages. ‘Us, obviously—and the drama teachers, Mr Bearman and Miss Haze.’

‘God, they’re coming too, are they? How the hell did you pull that off?’ said Adie.

Diana looked bemused. ‘I asked them,’ she said as if it was perfectly obvious.

‘That’s great. I wonder how old they are. As kids you just don’t think. I mean, Miss Haze could only have been, what—four, five years older than us? I often wondered if those two had a thing going. You know,’ said Adrian conspiratorially, ‘all that late night rehearsing, away for weeks on end together every summer. The way they looked at each other sometimes. You must have noticed.’

‘Of course we did, everyone noticed, and we all thought the same thing,’ snapped Jan.

‘You never said anything.’

‘That was because everyone already knew,’ Jan bitched right back. ‘It was obvious.’

‘Ouch,’ whined Adie. ‘Don’t bite.’

‘Play nicely, you two,’ hissed Netty.

Carol found herself looking backwards and forwards between them, spectator to their verbal tennis match. She had completely forgotten the little needly thing between Jan and Adrian.

‘I don’t take any notice, she’s always like this,’ said Adie.

‘I’m not.’

‘Are too. Last Christmas you bit me.’

‘You were the one feeding people grapes.’

‘No one else bit me.’

‘Is there any chance we can carry on fighting over a sandwich and pint?’ asked Netty, stubbing out her cigarette on the windowsill. ‘Only I’m dying upwards from hunger over here.’

‘Great idea,’ said Adrian. ‘Everyone coming? We can always unpack later.’ He looked pointedly at Jan who was busy arranging two small, embroidered cushions. ‘It’s a shame that I’m not bunked down in here with you lot, re ally.’

‘Not a chance,’ said Diana wearily, although Carol wasn’t sure whether she meant Adrian sharing a room with them or heading off down to the pub. ‘I’ve got to stay here and meet people as they arrive—but you lot go. It’s not far. You go out of the back doors of the hall, follow the path down through the vegetable garden,’ by this point Diana was pointing and directing with her hands, ‘out through the gates and there you are. Pub, post office and a Spar shop with an offie.’ She paused, looking pleased with herself. ‘Everything a girl could want.’

‘You live in the country, don’t you?’ Netty said, eyeing Diana thoughtfully as she attended to her lipstick in a tiny silver mirror. ‘What about you, Jan, are you coming or are you planning on a complete makeover to the whole place before everyone else gets here?’

Jan, busy fluffing the cushions with care, wasn’t at all put out. ‘I just like to be comfortable, that’s all. I’m curious about who is going to show up. What time does this shindig officially kick off?’

‘Five o’clock,’ said Diana, glancing at her watch. ‘Informal high tea in the dining room and then dinner at eight. I thought I might say a few words. Adie, is there any chance you’d be master of ceremonies? I’ve got a programme of events and rehearsals printed up for everyone but if you could maybe read it through, say something clever, be funny, whatever.’

He groaned theatrically but didn’t actually say no as Diana handed him one of her photocopied sheets.

‘And I just want to say I’m re ally glad you all got here early. I was worried—well, you know, it feels like you lot are the vanguard—the inner circle—and it means that everyone else will probably turn up as well, and if you don’t mind the bears and the bunk beds then maybe nobody else will either.’ Diana reddened furiously, eyes all bright. ‘It’s so good to see you again.’

Carol could see that the nostalgia virus had infected Diana too.

‘For God’s sake, stop going on about the bloody bears,’ snapped Netty. ‘Unless you glued them up yourself they’re not your fault.’

‘Everyone be here for tea and buns?’ asked Adrian, looking down at the paper.

Diana shook her head. ‘No, not everyone—some people have said they won’t be able to get here until later. Sheena Mason, Phillip Hudson—Gareth Howard.’

As if on cue, everyone, including Adrian, turned to look in Carol’s direction. Carol felt a little flurry of something in her belly but, pretending to be totally unconcerned, she carried on unzipping her suitcase.

‘Have we got a cupboard each?’ she asked casually, hanging a towel over the rail at the end of the bunk to stake her claim, not that she was fooling anyone. There was a pause; she could feel them all still looking at her. ‘All right, all right, so it will be great to see Gareth again—is that good enough for you?’

Adrian lifted an eyebrow. ‘We don’t know yet, do we? What else had you got in mind?’

Carol slung a pair of socks at him. ‘Nothing, nothing at all. Besides, Gareth is probably happily married with half a dozen kids, a fish farm and a bloody Labrador by now. It will just be lovely to see him—to catch up, to catch up with everyone—but come on, a lot of water has flowed under the bridge since…since…’ She couldn’t quite find the right words to describe exactly since what.

Adrian came to her aid: ‘Since you and Gareth slipped off to God knows where with a sly grin and a packet of three?’ he suggested helpfully.

Carol felt the heat roar through her. ‘I did no such thing,’ she protested furiously.

There was another weighty silence and then Carol’s composure and outrage deflated. ‘All right, all right, so maybe I did, but that doesn’t mean that anything like that is likely to happen again—not at all. Is that clear?’

‘OK, well, as long as we’ve got that straight,’ said Adie wryly. ‘So are you coming down to the pub? Only I’m desperate to get all the gossip and, let’s face it, we’re going to need all the time we can get if we’re going to catch up on twenty years each.’