Chapter One

Lucy sank into the seat. Her head lolled briefly against the back, and her eyes followed the road in front, and then her own slow progress into London. She couldn’t contain as sense of emotion – strong yet indefinable emotion. It seemed conversely a lifetime and a few days since she had left Mile End. It had been twelve years. Twelve years since they had all vowed to stay in touch forever, since they had made plans for the years ahead, safe in the assumption of their all consuming togetherness. This seemed a laughable concept now, considering how few of them had managed to stay in touch, even fewer had done more than Christmas messages and the odd email. The break up had all started when Alex had failed to return from America that summer, and the stress of living together in the second year had driven rifts between them. When Lucy had returned from her year abroad, the group had scattered further, and only passing reference was made to all their comings and goings. She realised she was as much to blame as anyone. She had had different priorities since then, and despite good intentions, had failed to make the drinks, reunions and all arranged attempts to reunite the group. Thinking about it now, she considered that in some ways she had thought this a good thing – why try and re-create what had already passed?
The lack of communication did not mean, however, that she was completely unaware of their activities, jobs and varying degrees of success. She had stopped to stare at the familiar faces staring back from morning television, the Sunday supplements and magazines. The others? Google, of course.
Across London, dressed in tailored expensive black, and carrying a coffee so large, it could have held a small child, Jen juggled her phone, her bag, and her invitation for the Mile End reunion. In a fit of exasperation she thrust her bag in to the arms of her assistant, who had to maintain a surprised jog to keep up with Jen’s long strides. A charity mugger. He had recognized her face from the press, and, visioning enormous sums of money, sprang in front of her, unable to contain himself from calling her name. He had only reached ‘Je..’ when a swift kick to the genitals with Jen’s favourite stiletto boots rendered him speechless. It was the inane grin that did it, she would have recognised it anywhere. Jen took great pleasure in placing one stiletto on his clipboard, and the other on his hand, before continuing swiftly onwards, glancing again at the invitation. It mentioned tea, it mentioned alcohol, and even with her busy schedule, Jen couldn’t wait to see how everyone had aged.
Alex was drumming her fingers on the armrest, distractedly. The stranger in the seat beside her glanced significantly, attempting to wither Alex into stopping, but her mind was elsewhere. She was thinking back over the years. Her husband was incredulous that she was travelling across the Atlantic, to a country she rarely visited, to see people with whom she had spent 8 or 9 months with, over a decade ago. She had reminded him of exchanged phone calls, emails, and fly-by-night meetings in New York, where the obligatory few drinks seemed both too long and not long enough time to spend together. At this point however, she wasn’t quite sure what she was doing on this plane. She reassured herself with a sip of her drink and the thought of London shops and museums. Even if Ego’s strange message was a hoax, she felt confident in her abilities to find something to amuse herself, even if it solely involved finding a proper chippy. As the plane dipped in to land, she wondered if the Golden Fryer was still there. In fact, she remembered with a smile, that had been one of the comments that had followed the first shock when she announced that she was staying in the US – how would she manage without proper British chips? She had, it seems.
When she had left that summer, she had been apprehensive to say the least, and the last thing on her mind was staying any longer. Fate had intervened. Or perhaps it wasn’t fate, but Alex’s love of American shops, American living, and, of course, American men, that had been most influential. But had she not met Bradford, whose passion for the geography of the American coastland was infectious, and had she not been able to transfer her course so easily, then she would have been back in Mile End by October. As it was, Alex revelled in the American University experience, and had worked hard to build a successful life for herself. With so much of her family having so many connections in, what she now considered to be her part of the US, she had hardly made it back to the UK once a year. But the message from Ego, asking for the reunion, had hit her in a particularly vulnerable and nostalgic moment in the small wee hours, after a few beverages. She was sat at the computer, in a house full of sleeping bodies – her husband, her children and their friends, entities that were briefly forgotten in her search for memories of her youth. And so, in this state, she booked the flights and hotels that would see her returning to Mile End, for the first time.