things.
We became inseparable. Almost telepathic. We were partners in crime, stealing beer from her father’s fridge, window shopping on the Kings Road, eating chips with vinegar on our way home from school, sneaking out to see bands at the Hammersmith Odeon and movie stars on the red carpet at Leicester Square.
In our gap year we went to France. I crashed a moped, got cautioned for having a fake ID and tried hash for the first time. Cate lost the key to our hostel during a midnight swim and we had to climb a trellis at 2:00 a.m.
There is no breakup worse than that of best friends. Broken love affairs are painful. Broken marriages are messy. Broken homes are sometimes an improvement. Our breakup was the worst.
Now, after eight years, she wants to see me. The thrill of compliance spreads across my skin. Then comes a nagging, unshakable dread. She’s in trouble.
My car keys are in the sitting room. As I pick them up, I notice marks on the glass-topped coffee table. Looking closer, I can make out two neat buttock prints and what I imagine to be elbow smudges. I could kill my brother!
3
Someone has spilled a Bloody Mary mix on my shoes. I wouldn’t mind so much, but they’re not mine. I borrowed them, just like I borrowed this top, which is too big for me. At least my underwear is my own. “Never borrow money or underwear,” my mother always says, in an addendum to her clean-underwear speech which involves graphic descriptions of road accidents and ambulance officers cutting off my tights. No wonder I have nightmares.
Cate isn’t here yet. I’ve been trying to watch the door and avoid talking to anyone.
There should be a law against school reunions. They should come with warning stickers on the invitations. There is never a right time for them. You’re either too young or too old or too fat.
This isn’t even a proper school reunion. Somebody burned down the science classrooms at Oaklands. A vandal with a can of petrol rather than a rogue Bunsen burner. Now they’re opening a brand-new block, with a junior minister of something-or-other doing the honors.
The new building is functional and sturdy, with none of the charm of the Victorian original. The cathedral ceilings and arched windows have been replaced by fibrous cement panels, strip lighting and aluminum frames.
The school hall has been decorated with streamers and balloons hang from the rafters. A school banner is draped across the front of the stage.
There is a queue for the mirror in the girls’ toilets. Lindsay Saunders leans past me over the sink and rubs lipstick from her teeth. Satisfied, she turns and appraises me.
“Will you stop acting like a Punjabi princess and loosen up. Have fun.”
“Is that what this is?”
I’m wearing Lindsay’s top, the bronze one with shoestring straps, which I don’t have the bust to carry off. A strap falls off my shoulder. I tug it up again.
“I know you’re acting like you don’t care. You’re just nervous about Cate. Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
Lindsay reapplies her lipstick and adjusts her dress. She’s been looking forward to the reunion for weeks because of Rocco Man-spiezer. She fancied him for six years at school but didn’t have the courage to tell him.
“What makes you so sure you’ll get him this time?”
“Well I didn’t spend two hundred quid on this dress and squeeze into these bloody shoes to be ignored by him again.”
Unlike Lindsay, I have no desire to hang around with people I have spent twelve years avoiding. I don’t want to hear how much money they make or how big their house is or see photographs of their children who have names that sound like brands of shampoo.
That’s the thing about school reunions—people only come to measure their life against others and to see the failures. They want to know which of the beauty queens has put on seventy pounds and seen her husband run off with his secretary, and which teacher got caught taking photographs in the changing rooms.
“Come on, aren’t you curious?” Lindsay asks.
“Of course, I’m curious. I
“Don’t be such a spoilsport.” She rubs her finger across my eyebrows. “Did you see Annabelle Trunzo? My God that dress! And what about her hair?”
“Rocco doesn’t even have any hair.”
“Ah, but he’s still looking fit.”
“Is he married?”
“Hush your mouth.”
“Well, I think you should at least find out before you shag him.”
She gives me a wicked grin. “I’ll ask afterward.”
Lindsay acts like a real man-eater, but I know she’s not really so predatory. I tell myself that all the time, but I still wouldn’t let her date my brothers.
Back in the hall, the lights have been turned down and the music turned up. Spandau Ballet has been replaced by eighties anthems. The women are wearing a mixture of cocktail dresses and saris. Others are pretending not to care, in leather jackets and designer jeans.
There were always tribes at Oaklands. The whites were a minority. Most of the students were Banglas (Bangladeshis) with a few Pakis and Indians thrown into the mix.
I was a “curry,” a “yindoo,” an “elephant trainer.” Brown Indian in case you’re wondering. As defining details go, nothing else came close at Oaklands—not my black hair, braces or skinny legs; not having glandular fever at seven, or being able to run like the wind. Everything else paled into insignificance alongside my skin color and Sikh heritage.
It’s not true that all Sikhs are called Singh. And we don’t all carry curved blades strapped to our chests (although in the East End having this sort of rep isn’t such a bad thing).
Even now the Banglas are sticking together. People are sitting next to the same people they sat alongside at school. Despite everything that has happened in the intervening years, the core facets of our personalities are untouched. All our flaws and strengths are the same.
On the far side of the hall I see Cate arriving. She is pale and striking, with a short expensive haircut and cheap sexy shoes. Dressed in a long light khaki skirt and a silk blouse, she looks elegant and, yes, pregnant. Her hands are smoothing her neat, compact bump. It’s more than a bump. A beach ball. She hasn’t long to go.
I don’t want her to see me staring. I turn away.
“Alisha?”
“Sure. Who else?” I turn suddenly and put on a goofy smile.
Cate leans forward and kisses my cheek. I don’t close my eyes. Neither does she. We stare at each other. Surprised. She smells of childhood.
There are fine lines at the corners of her eyes. I wasn’t there to see them drawn. The small scar on her left temple, just beneath her hairline, I remember that one.
We’re the same age, twenty-nine, and the same shape, except for the bump. I have darker skin and hidden depths (like all brunettes) but I can categorically state that I will never look as good as Cate. She has learned—no, that makes it sound too practiced—she was born with the ability to make men admire her. I don’t know the secret. A movement of the eye, a cock of the head, a tone of voice or a touch of the arm, creates a moment, an illusion that all men gay or straight, old or young buy into.
People are watching her now. I doubt if she even realizes.
“How are you?”
“I’m fine,” I answer too quickly and start again. “I’m all right.”
“Just all right?”
