The Reunion

midnight.’
    ‘That’s hours away,’ she replied, giving him her most enticing little-girl pout. She drew her left leg up higher still and pushed the sheet all the way down to the bottom of the bed, leaving her totally exposed.
    Dan sat down on the edge of the bed, leaned over her body, lowered himself to kiss her. She grabbed hold of him tightly, wrapping her arms around his waist, pulling his body against hers. No denying it was tempting, she was tempting. She was more than that, she was special.
    They’d been in Nice three days. There was a film festival, a mini one, lots of worthy indies and angry documentaries made by 23-year-olds with extravagant facial hair. In comparison he was an old man, and, relatively speaking, wildly successful, which in their eyes, of course, meant sell-out. They’d learn. In any case, it was hard to feel aggrieved when you were staying in a suite at the Palais de la Mediterranée with the most beautiful girl in Nice.
    The idea of staying with her, even for just a few hours more, was almost irresistible. Almost. He had to go. No, it was more than that; he wanted to go. To say that his interest was piqued by Jen’s email, received quite out of the blue a month previous, was an understatement. Jennifer Donleavy, the girl who ran away, the one who got away. The girl he hadn’t seen in, what was it, sixteen years? She wanted to see him, she’d invited him, and the others of course, back to the French house. It was being sold, she said, and she thought they might like to see it one last time.
    If ever there were an offer he couldn’t refuse, this was it. A chance to go back to that house, the place, he still felt, where his career pretty much started. He got all his best ideas, wrote all his best lines sitting on the stone wall overlooking the valley with his fancy leather-bound notebook (a present from Jen for his birthday), smoking Gauloises Blondes. He grinned at the memory. There was no denying it, he’d been a pretentious wanker back then. He wondered what it would stir up, being back there, walking through those rooms, whether there was any inspiration left.
    And he couldn’t wait to drive his brand-new Audi on those incredible winding mountain roads. Music up loud, adrenaline rushing as he took the corners, space to think. He hadn’t had that in a while, it would do him good. Get the creative juices flowing. Plus, it wouldn’t be a bad thing for him and Claudia to be apart for a few days; it would sweeten the reunion, heighten its passion.
    But above all that, there was Jen. He didn’t allow himself to think about her much, he hadn’t done for a long time, but how could he pass up the chance to see her again, to find out where she had been all this time, what she was now? She had been off the radar, no Facebook page, no Twitter he could locate, not a single hit on Google. He’d dug out some old photos when he first got her email, pictures he hadn’t looked at in a decade. He was dying to see what she looked like now: was she still beautiful? Had she got fat? It was a chance to see all the others too; and he had to admit that he was looking forward to seeing how a reunion between Natalie and Lilah would play out. He had a feeling it would be worth getting the popcorn out for that one.
    ‘I told Jen I’d be there today,’ he said to Claudia. ‘I can’t just not turn up. I’m not even sure I have the right number for her, she’ll think something’s happened to me. And I’ll see you in three days, in Paris. In three days we can be together properly. Can’t we?’
    ‘Of course,’ Claudia said, lips pushed into a perfect little moue. She pulled the sheet back up to her waist and rolled away from him, affording him the perfect view of her creamy, lightly freckled back.
    ‘Christmas Eve in Paris,’ Dan said, reaching out to touch the smooth blade of her shoulder.
    ‘Of course,’ Claudia said again, but she didn’t look back at him.
    It took them more than forty-five minutes to get to the front of the hire-car queue and by the time they actually found their silver Citroën in the middle of a football field-sized car park full of silver Citroëns, it was almost dark and starting to rain. They got lost trying to get out of Marseilles, mostly because Natalie was too busy fiddling with her phone to read the road signs. Andrew didn’t say anything, because the last thing they needed now was to get into a fight.
    ‘I wonder if we should stop somewhere, just stay