So many terrible things were linked to that one awful night. A blinding twist of pain, worse than even the severest of my headaches, stopped my thoughts suddenly in their tracks before they were allowed to venture down that forbidden avenue.
I intended to leave first thing in the morning and had looked up the times for the first train from London. I’d already booked two days off work, for although everyone wasn’t meeting up until the Thursday evening for Sarah’s hen-night dinner, I hadn’t wanted to arrive late in the day. In reality I knew I would need the time to compose myself for the three-day visit and I had no way of knowing just how hard that was going to be until I was actually there.
I had refused Sarah’s offer to stay at her parents’ place. Much as I loved her family, they had always been more exuberant and excitable than my own, and I didn’t think I’d be strong enough to face that particular brand of crazy in the run-up to their only daughter’s wedding. They had seemed to understand and hadn’t appeared offended when I’d declined their offer and had instead booked a room in one of the town’s two hotels. Many of the guests would be doing the same, I imagined, although of course quite a large number probably still lived in the area.
As the train slipped out of the station and began the two-hour journey, I allowed myself to think of the people I would be meeting again that night. My friends from the past. It seemed strange that the bonds I had thought would bind us for ever had not proved as resilient as I had always believed. And it hadn’t been the passing years that had slowly severed the threads apart. No, they had been sheared away by a young man’s moment of insanity and an out-of-control stolen vehicle.
Sarah had been extremely careful and cautious when filling me in on news of our old group of friends. From visits to her parents and through the town grapevine she knew that after uni Trevor had returned to Great Bishopsford and was currently living with his girlfriend, who Sarah had yet to meet, and was working as a branch manager in a bank. I found it hard to imagine the rock-band guitar-playing Trev of my teenage years in such a sedate and respectable lifestyle.
Phil was apparently still living the life of a nomad. He’d taken a gap year after university which had grown into a second year of basically bumming around the world. This wandering lifestyle had somehow metamorphosed into a job as a freelance photographer, and although his family still lived in the area, Phil apparently spent little time there between assignments, often electing those which sent him abroad for months at a time. Sarah said that when their paths had crossed, she sensed in him a restlessness that seemed to explain his lifestyle and reluctance to settle in any one place.
And then there was Matt… and of course Cathy, for now their histories were inextricably linked. I could tell how hard it had been for Sarah to let me know about them. How carefully she had chosen her words, picking just the right phrase, uncertain of the pain she might be inflicting. It must be just over eighteen months since she had told me that Cathy and my ex-boyfriend were now an item. As the words had settled down the phone lines between us, I had waited for any shard of pain that this news would bring. There was none; merely surprise. And not surprise that those two unbelievably beautiful people were together, just surprise that it had taken Cathy this long to achieve her objective.
I pushed this thought away, as I had when Sarah had first broken the news to me about their relationship. If I allowed myself to think of Matt, then I would be opening the door to our own sad little story and break-up, and that would lead to the reasons… and that would lead me somewhere I never allowed my thoughts to go.
As the clusters of houses and built-up areas gradually gave way to fields and open spaces, I could feel a palpable tension beginning to rise inside me. I swallowed it back down with a mouthful of revolting, bitter coffee bought from the buffet car and tried to focus instead on the purpose of the visit. This was Sarah’s weekend; Sarah’s big day; I couldn’t allow myself to ruin this time for her by having her worry about how I was going to cope with being home again.
That thought pulled me up sharply: home again. Was it really my home, was that how I still thought of it? I hadn’t lived there for five years, so technically no, it was not. But then nowhere else actually felt that it deserved that title either. Dad’s current address in North Devon, where we had moved during the long slow months of my recovery, was his home, not mine, despite the fact that I had lived there for almost two years. I suppose my small London flat was home, but it had always felt temporary and transient, chosen for its closeness to the convenient tube line rather than any emotional attachment to the building. Also, it was hard to form a deep emotional attachment to a rental property over a somewhat dilapidated laundrette in one of London’s less salubrious locations. I should have moved on when I had earned my first salary increase, should certainly have considered it by the next one, but there was a comfort in the known and familiar, however lacking in style it might be. In my more light-hearted moments I would refer to my flat as shabby-chic, but without the chic. That about summed it up.