The Reunion

her on the cheek. She remembered why he’d got to her the way he did. The lost boy.
    He stepped inside and she closed the door behind them, and they stood there for a moment, just looking at each other, not saying anything, Dan’s face a little flushed, and Jen started laughing and offered him a drink. She didn’t have time to get it, though, because it was just then that she heard another car pull up, heard doors slamming and laughter and a loud, confident knock. She smiled at Dan and took a deep breath, opened the door and was knocked back by a blast of cold air and by Lilah, hurling herself into Jen’s arms.
    ‘Jen! Oh God, Jen!’ Lilah was laughing and crying at the same time, her arms wrapped tightly around Jen’s body. She clung to her, and Jen couldn’t say a word, she could barely breathe, she just stood there, locked in an embrace, feeling the sharp edges of Lilah’s scapulae rising and falling. It was like hugging a skeleton. Eventually, Lilah pulled away.
    She laughed, wiping the tears from her cheeks, smearing mascara towards her hairline.
    ‘Jen! Oh my God. Look at you! You’ve put on weight.’ She laughed again, pulling Jen towards her. ‘It suits you! No, it does, I mean it. You look wonderful.’
    ‘And you look exactly the same,’ Jen said, although this wasn’t quite true. Lilah was even thinner, even blonder than before, her blue eyes huge above razor-sharp cheekbones. She looked almost other-worldly, a caricature of herself.
    ‘Oh, you are kind,’ she said, flicking her hair over her shoulder in a parody of coyness. ‘This,’ she said, waving her arm grandly in the direction of the man she’d brought with her, ‘is Zac.’ Zac, who was extremely handsome and looked around twenty-five, shook hands with Jen and then with Dan, while Lilah inspected the place, making funny little noises of exclamation. After a few moments she acknowledged Dan’s presence, greeting him not quite coldly but not warmly either.
    Jen was in the kitchen pouring drinks when she heard the third car arrive, and halfway through uncorking a bottle of red wine when she heard Lilah call out, should she get that? And before Jen had time to step in, Lilah had flung open the front door, Natalie and Andrew were standing on the doorstep, open-mouthed, shocked, and when Andrew at last looked over at Jen, he looked like he’d been punched in the gut.
    Natalie was furious and even to her own ears Jen’s apologies sounded trite and mealy-mouthed.
    ‘I just wanted you all to be here,’ she heard herself simper, ‘and I knew, Nat, I knew you wouldn’t want to come if…’
    ‘If what?’ Lilah snapped, wasting no time to jump into the fray. ‘They wouldn’t come if they knew
I
was coming?’ She lit a cigarette, her cheeks sunken as she dragged on it furiously. ‘Bloody cheek.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ Jen said. ‘I really am. This was a mistake.’
    ‘I think it probably was,’ Andrew said quietly. He was reaching for his wife’s hand, eyes dipped, unable to meet Jen’s eye; he looked crestfallen. Jen felt as though she might burst into tears. ‘Perhaps it would be better,’ Andrew said, ‘if Nat and I went down to the village for the night.’
    ‘No!’ Natalie’s refusal was loud and vehement. ‘I’m not driving anywhere else tonight, Andrew. Absolutely not. We’ll stay here tonight and leave in the morning.’
    Feeling silly and sheepish, Jen took the couples to their rooms. Lilah, determined to outdo Natalie in the huffiness stakes, stomped off with her man and slammed the door behind them; Jen was left to accompany a silent Andrew and Natalie. She opened the door and beamed at them, feeling rather like a hotel porter angling for a tip. Natalie bustled past her and disappeared straight into the bathroom, muttering something about needing a bath. Andrew stood in the doorway, his hand resting on the frame. He rapped it once with his knuckle.
    ‘Held up all right, didn’t they?’ he said; there was a small smile on his lips, pride, or remembrance. That summer, way back when, the summer of the renovation, Andrew and Conor had repaired most of the door frames up here on the first floor. They’d fixed sagging joists and repaired the roof, shored up the vast oak beams, rescued the place from collapse.
    ‘They held up great,’ Jen said. She was perched on the edge of the bed, watching him, waiting for him to look at her; to
really
look at her.
    But Andrew was admiring his old handiwork, running