this is Anna. Anna, James.’
‘Hi,’ James put his hand out to shake hers. It was chilly and slightly damp. She gave him a look that was simultaneously intense and unreadable.
‘Anna here is actually meant to be in Beth’s leaving do in the next room. But lucky old us, she stumbled in here by mistake.’
Anna looked awkward and James tried to convey with his eyes that he wasn’t encouraging or condoning Loz’s hitting on her.
‘Who is Beth and to where is she departing?’ Laurence asked.
‘Uhm. She’s my cousin,’ Anna said.
‘And …?’ Laurence made a ‘tell us more’ circling gesture with his hand.
‘And …’ Anna’s line of sight cast around the room, as if looking for escape. ‘She works at Specsavers. She’s travelling round Australia. Flying to Perth.’
Poor Anna was clearly dying to be released to Beth from Specsavers’ karaoke song murdering party. James was wishing very hard he’d reminded Laurence that striding over and introducing yourself to sultry strangers rarely went well. Not that it would have stopped him.
‘Wait, wait. Are you saying you came in here without your specs, but you literally shoulda gone to Specsavers?’ Laurence hooted.
Anna waited for him to finish laughing. James rolled his eyes in what he hoped came off as tacit apology.
‘Anyway. Australia!’ Laurence said. ‘Always quite fancied the Outback. James here says Oz is the choice of boring uncultured beer monsters, but I disagree.’
Oh my God, we’re playing good cop, bad cop now? You utter … James was going to have some words for Laurence when they left, not all pre-watershed.
‘Not exactly,’ James said.
Anna looked at him with burgeoning hostility.
‘James here works for a digital agency, lots of big impressive clients. And I’m in sales. Pharmaceutical sales. So if you’re fresh out of Anusol, I’m your man.’
‘Loz, how about we let Anna get to the right party?’ James said, hoping to redeem himself and halt the haemorrhoids chat. She scowled at him, as if he was trying to get rid of her.
‘I’ve got a better idea. Given this reunion has all the atmosphere of a Quaker quilting party, how about you smuggle us in to Beth’s do, and we buy you drinks by way of thank you?’
‘Loz!’ James said, sharply, writhing with embarrassment.
‘I think Beth might mind,’ Anna said.
‘Nah. Sounds like there’s karaoke in there? I do a belting “Summer
‘Nope,’ Anna said, smiling. ‘Bye.’
She slipped away through the door and Loz let out a low whistle. ‘Was that a second or third degree burn?’
‘You can’t hustle a woman you’ve never met before into drinking with you, without her exerting her free will to tell you to sod off,’ James said, shaking his head.
Laurence gazed at the door, as if Anna might come back through it.
‘Do you think that was a hint for us to follow her?’
‘No, Loz. Now can we go?’
Laurence shrugged, scanned the room and necked the last of his pint.
Minutes later, debating ‘more beer or kebabs’ on the pavement outside, Laurence prodded James’s arm. He urgently gestured down the street.
There, a few yards away, was the Mysterious Anna, climbing into a cab.
‘Can you believe it? The lying …’
‘Haha!’ James liked her style.
‘If she wasn’t really going to that leaving do, why was she in ours?’
‘She was left so depressed by one encounter with you, she couldn’t face any more socialising?’ James said.
‘No. This is officially weird. Maybe she did go to our school and didn’t want to say.’
They watched the cab turn the corner and then set off down the street in the stinging chill, chins angled down into coat collars.
‘Do you remember any Spanish-looking girls at our school?’ James said.
‘Nope. You know, her whole story was off. How could you not read a banner that big? You’d need to be Stevie Wonder.’
‘OK, try this for an explanation. Someone from school is a suspected terrorist and she’s an MI5 spook. The suspect’s gone to ground and the whole reunion was a herd and trap ruse by the British secret services to lure the target out. This Anna is their top woman, on secondment from Barcelona. But crucially, they forgot that to pass muster undercover as an ex-pupil of Rise Park, you need a KFC-zinger-tower-and-twenty-a-day complexion.’
James glanced over at Laurence and started laughing.
‘What?’ Loz said.
‘Oh, just the fact you were actually considering that as more likely than an attractive woman not wanting to talk to you.’
‘So, how did the reunion go?’ Patrick asked, as Anna put down a cup of tea on his desk.
Patrick’s office was as forensically neat as his clothing and, unlike Anna, he didn’t use chairs as receptacles for overflow from his shelves.
‘It was … peculiar.’
Anna debated saying no one recognised her but she realised that would involve pulling worms out of cans like streamers.
‘Didn’t run into any old flames?’
Patrick was a ‘committed’ – read: resigned – bachelor. His terror that Anna might betray singles club by finally meeting someone was only matched in scale by her equal certainty that she never would. She sipped from her own cup of tea and hovered.
‘You must be kidding. No old flames at Rise Park, more scorch marks.’ She wanted to talk about something else. ‘How’s The Guild doing?’
‘Good thanks. Spent the weekend disciplining wayward teenage Danish warlocks and facerolling our way through the current wave of raid progression.’
‘Much like here then. You’re still a panda?’
Patrick always knew he could discuss his hobby without fear of judgement from Anna. She might not be a gamer herself but there was a geek solidarity.
‘In
