On New Year’s Eve, I went to a party at the house of my friend, Angela.  I wanted to see my friends from school, the girls with whom I had shared my life for seven years, until they had left last summer and gone to university without me.  Together, we had negotiated wonky treadle machines in the needlework room and vast, cold, damp hockey-pitches, Bunsen burners and French exchanges, bras and periods, bus journeys through snow and strikes, being called snobs by kids from other schools and then being reported by random old ladies for not wearing our horrible velour hats. 

Angela’s house was one of those big, double-fronted, detached houses on the Forest Road, concealed from the pavement by a “hedge” of tall conifers.  The sound of my feet crunchy on the gravel drive was deafening in the still frosty air, much louder than the pathetic rattle of the cow-bell type doorbell, a souvenir from a skiing holiday in 1972.  In the past, I had stood in this porch for ages, pulling the clapper of the stupid thing against its dull cracked frame, unheard and unnoticed, but on this occasion, the door was opened at once by Angela’s mother, who happened to be standing in the hallway putting on her coat, on the way, I supposed, to another gathering - a grown-ups’ party.  “Hello Marya.  How are you?” she asked, from in front of the mirror, arranging a silk scarf over the frilly collar of her blouse.  “I hear you got into Cambridge.  Well done.”

“Thank you.”

“You must be very excited.”

The last week or so had been so awful that there were whole days when I didn’t think about Cambridge at all.

“And what will you do between now and October?”

“I'm going to work for the Council.”

“Good for you!  So you’re not going travelling like so many of the young people seem to do nowadays?”

“Er… no,” I lied.  Or was I telling the truth?  I hadn't made any firm plans.

She smoothed her hair under her broad Alice band.  “And tell me, dear.  How is your mother?  She was ill last year, during the Oxbridge exams, wasn’t it?  Is she better?”

I shook my head.  “No.”

“Oh, I'm so sorry.  Anything I can do?”  Angela’s father appeared on the stairs, in a coat, and a white silk scarf.  “Well, we’d better be going.  And you’ll be wanting to see the others.”

She lived in a different world, I thought, a normal world, an everyday, cheerful sort of place, where someone might be ill for a while but would recover, where people slept in peace and their dreams were pleasant and inconsequential.  They never had need of a rusty wire.

Everyone had gravitated to the dining room, where the food was, clammy chicken, dry, flaky quiche and soggy, flaccid pizza.  Janice Harper was hopping about and clasping her mouth, because had eaten a slice of pizza with a chilli on it - drawing attention to herself as usual.  Everyone called out, “Hello, Marya,” but, after a minute or two, the conversation switched to boyfriends and stayed there.  I had the distinct impression that this was what they had been talking about when I came in.  Two of my friends were engaged – to boys they had met last term – and all of them appeared to have a Paul, a Dave, a Steve, or a Rick.  I drifted back to the food table and picked out the piece of pizza with the biggest chilli on it and put it in my mouth.  I waited… but nothing happened.  Then I recalled having read somewhere that the bigger the chilli, the less hot it was.

There was someone else hovering by the food table by herself - Jenny Ashton, the journalist, who would have been invited by Angela’s older sister, Elaine, I supposed.  But Elaine was standing a few feet away, giggling and giving the “come-on” to a boy with his back to me.  That back was familiar… Craig, he didn’t waste any time!

Was I angry with Craig?  Not really.  But I wasn’t going to look as if I was bothered in any way.  “Hello Jenny.  How are you?” I asked, turning to her.

“Hello, Marya,” said Jenny, staring into her plate.

“Did you have a good Christmas?”

She didn’t reply.  She was pushing coleslaw around her plate, mixing chicken bones, quiche crusts and bits of green fibrous lettuce tinged brown at the edges with watery mayonnaise.

“Did you have to work over Christmas?”

“No,” she said, in a tight voice and twisting round to put her plate down on the table, in a sudden, heavy movement.  When she turned round, her face was white and strained under her make-up and tears were welling up in her eyes.

“Jenny, are you all right?”  A stupid question, but it’s what we always said.

“Just leave me alone, will you?” she said, pushing past throngs of jolly people.  I went after her - obviously.  I found her standing alone in the kitchen, scrubbing her eyes with a soggy tissue, disintegrating into wet strings.  I handed her the unopened pack of tissues from my handbag. 

“Thank you,” she said, at last.  “I'm all right.  Really, I'm all right.”

I took a piece of kitchen paper off the roll and poured cold water on to it.  “Put that on your eyes, then you won't look like you’ve been crying.”  I wasn’t the youngest of four sisters for nothing!

She did what I suggested.  “I'm sorry.  I'm really sorry.”  She sniffed.  “It’s just that… well, I might as well tell you.  I've been going out with Chris for three years, haven’t I?  It all ended on Boxing Day.”  She blew her nose and then blew it again.

“Oh, Jenny!  That’s awful!”  That’s all you said in the immediate aftermath.  As I knew from sisterly experience, “Plenty more fish in the sea” advice didn’t go down well at this stage.

“Everybody here’s paired off…”

“I know.”

“And Elaine, who is the only person I know here, by the way, is chatting up some prat called Craig, who’s far too young for her…”

“Yes, he is a prat, isn't he?”

“I hate this place, Marya, Chenham, I mean.  I’m living with my parents and I’m twenty-three.  I've got to get out of here and the stodgy, dreary, provincial “Chenham Evening News”… wouldn’t know a scoop if one came knocking on the editor’s door.”  Jenny clenched her fists by her side.  “I've got to get out for a bit, even if only for a holiday.”

“Weren’t you going to Czechoslovakia?”

She heaved up her shoulders and let out her breath in a gust of a sigh.  “I was.  I was going to see my friend, Flavia, in Zilina.”

“You’re not going now?”

She shook her head from side to side several times, like a pendulum.  “Chris and I were going to go together.  He, I and Flavia all shared a flat in our last year at Cambridge.  I don’t want to go on holiday by myself.  That’d be awful!”

“You’d be all right, Jenny.  I mean, I'd like to go and see my aunt in Krakow, although… my dad doesn’t want me going into a Communist country alone, thinks I'll be arrested or something.  I wouldn't be, obviously.”

“Come on, everybody!” Angela was shouting and waving us all into the living room.  “It’s five to twelve.”

The English don’t know what to do about New Year.  We were all standing around in front of the television, watching some hitherto unknown presenter, with a tenuous claim to Scottish ancestry and looking very uncomfortable in a kilt, trying to pad out the minutes to midnight.  As I waited and tried not to drink the bubbly which had been poured in my glass for the toast, I tried very hard to recall how we had celebrated when I had been very small, something about Gody, the twelve days of harmony and goodwill.  And didn’t it go on until Epiphany - szczodry wieczor?  Did they still do this in Poland?  Would Magda be doing it now? 

But now Big Ben was chiming and in Broadcasting House the bloke in the kilt was getting very excited.  It was 1980.  Yes, it really was.  1980.  The 1980s, a new decade! 

“Ohmigod!” I exclaimed, meaning to be sarcastic, but everybody around me was too busy whooping to hear and embracing each other.  I got wished “Happy New Year” and kissed by more or less every male there - except Craig, which was a relief.

The television picture switched to Trafalgar Square and New Year revellers jumping in.  We moved into Angela’s garden in the dark and the cold and my friends were now standing around the goldfish pond.  They wouldn’t… would they? 

“Come on!  Everyone make a wish!” cried Angela.

“”What for?” asked one of the many boyfriends.

“For the 1980s,” said Jane, giggling and clutching his arm.  I had sat next to Jane in chemistry for two years, alleviating the boredom which was science by discussing Roxy Music and Fleetwood Mac.  She wasn’t the same Jane.

Jenny and I stood apart, clutching our glasses.  Thanks to me, her eyes were no longer red, but she still looked fragile.  “Jenny,” I said.  “Let's go together... on the InterRail.  You stay with Flavia in Zilina and I'll go on to Magda in Krakow.

Jenny was silent for a few minutes, then, she said, “We don’t know each other that well… anymore.”

A chill wind sliced through our party clothes, with it a penetrating drizzle.  Some neighbours a few doors away were having fireworks.  Something whooshed into the air with a fierce white flame, which turned red, then blue, then banged, and banged again. 

“We’ll be OK.  If we don’t go together, we won't go at all… either of us.”

“…I'm going to wish… for a 2:1, that we all get a 2:1, I mean.”

“Some people will get firsts.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Well, I'll wish that we all get firsts, then.”

 “All right,” said Jenny.  “Yes… yes.  Of course.  We’ll do it.”

“Great!” I cried, and everyone turned round and stared at me.

“We’ll travel together to Czechoslovakia, then you go on to Poland.”

“Yes, then we’ll meet up again to go home.”

“We… me and Chris…”  She heaved a shrug.  “We were going to go back via East Germany… see Berlin and pass through Checkpoint Charlie.”

“Marya, Jenny… you haven't wished!” called Angela.

“Checkpoint Charlie?  Like in the spy films…? OK, OK, Angela.”  I walked to the pond.  I couldn't think what to wish for.  “I wish…“ I began.  “I wish… that… the Berlin Wall will come down.”

“Don’t be stupid, Marya,” said Jane.  “That’ll never happen.”

“But I've wished it.  It’s got to.  Before 1990, the Berlin Wall’s going to come tumbling down.”