‘Now even if I do say so myself,’ I pulled a face of mock distaste at my spoonful of minestrone, ‘this soup isn’t as tasty as the stuff I can rustle up in my blender.’

‘You’re still cooking then?’

‘I’m a right Nigella once I get going.’

‘You’re much better looking than her.’

‘Soup is a bit of a speciality of mine,’ I continued witlessly, as though he hadn’t spoken; as though he wasn’t adoring me with those lustful eyes; as though my face wasn’t afire with a ruby blush.

‘Perhaps you could rustle some up for me one day!’

I walked straight into that one, didn’t I?

‘Mmm – er –’  Stop staring at me like that!  ‘Is your mom still cooking too?’

‘More than ever.’  Ah, I’m on safer footing now.  ‘She does wedding cakes now.’  Maybe not!  ‘She made Faye and John’s six years ago, and since then her reputation has spread far and wide.’

‘Faye’s married now then?’

Karl nodded, through a soup slurp.  ‘But then she always was Mrs Conventional.  They’ve got two littl’uns an’ all, one of each.’

‘What are their names?’

‘Britney and Chico,’ he replied with a poker straight face.

‘No?’

‘Only teasing!  Sadie and Ryan really.  They’re four and two – right little monkeys!’

‘What’s Stef up to?’

‘Working for a mobile phone company.  He’s getting wed too, next July, in Greece.’

‘Greece – how romantic!’

‘The whole clan’s going out there for a big beano – can’t wait!’

‘So that just leaves you,’ I pointed out – then silently cursed myself for involuntarily steering the conversation into precisely the waters I’d sought to avoid.

‘So it does.  But I’m afraid there’s no Mrs Herriot on the horizon at present.’

‘What a shame.’  I strove for a more neutral tone – but was none too sure it convinced.

‘Ain’t it just?’

I sipped some spritzer.  The bubbles fermented with the flutter of emotion in my stomach.  I plunked the glass down and, with a ‘since this is confession time…’ air, began to talk.

‘I haven’t fared much better, to tell you the truth.’

‘No?  A girl like you?  I’d have thought chaps would be queuing up at your front door.’

‘Well I see no queues when I leave the flat of a morning.’

‘All I can say is the men of Sutton Coldfield have no taste.’

‘That’s very nice of you to say so, Karl, but I’ve been on my lonesome since January.  I didn’t have the greatest start to the new year.’

‘How long were you with him?’

‘Neil?  Five years.  I met him in a pub in Sutton.  I moved out that way after I graduated and got my job with Tunney’s.  I was renting a flat at the time, but we eventually bought a place together.  I really thought he might be The One, but we drifted apart, ran out of things to say to one another, all the clichés.  Things had been dodgy for a while, but we decided to spend one last Christmas together, see if we could make it work.  We couldn’t – we found the forced jollity of Crimbo far too torturous – so he left and I bought him out of the flat.  It was all terribly civilised really.  Somehow that made it sadder.

‘Now I’m afraid the only man in my life is Jerry – bless him, hug him, squeeze him, love him!  Neil never took to him, you know.  He wasn’t fond of cats.  Perhaps that’s what taught me it could never be between us.’

‘I’d never have that problem.  I’ve got a mog of my own – Dog, her name is.  Well, you did say I was cheesy!  She’s my babby.  I wonder how well she’d get on with your Jerry?’  He looked me in the eye with that ‘Are you going to take the hint or what?’ boldness that I used to find so irresistible.

‘I heard our song on the radio coming over this evening.’

‘Crazy for You?’

‘You remembered!’

‘I could hardly forget.  I’d been building up to that moment for months.’

‘Really?’

‘Too right!  You were the best-looking sixth-former by a mile.  I’d been dying to ask you out for ages.  I counted down the days to your eighteenth birthday when I’d have an excuse to ask you to dance.’

‘You never told me that,’ I burbled, ‘even when we were going out.’

‘I was a different person at eighteen.  A typical lad, I guess.  Too concerned with looking macho to care much about confessing innermost feelings.  Anyway, I didn’t like to make my moves too soon for fear of getting rejected again.  I thought you were still hung up on that old guy.’

‘Ben!  The scary thing is, Karl, that ‘that old guy’ was younger than we are now!  He’s probably a thirty-eight-year-old wife-beater these days.  Anyway, I was never really hung up on him at all.  I was just young and desperate and going out with the first man to give me the time of day.  The one I really wanted is sitting across this table from me now!’

‘Really?’

‘Mm-hm.  But you barely noticed I was alive – or at least I thought that was the case until you phoned up that day to ask me out!’

‘Only by then you were spoken for with Ben and I was too late!’

‘I know – I couldn’t believe your appalling timing.  Mind, you saved me from him really.  If you hadn’t given Ben an excuse to go ape and dump me that day, I’d probably have ended up getting engaged to him or something.  On second thoughts, I probably wouldn’t have actually.  My dad would never have let me.’

‘No, he’d have wanted to protect his only daughter from that evil corrupting man.  How is your dad these days?’

‘Great, yeah.  He’s retired from Goodyear now.  He enjoys being a “man of leisure,” just doing odd bits of part-time work to keep him off the streets.  And Mom’s working in Iceland – ’

The conversation was diverted by the arrival of our main-course-bearing waiter.  We munched in pensive silence for a while.

‘How does that salmon compare with the Zoe Taylor version?’

‘Very well.’  I smiled, easing into this safer topic.  ‘How’s your steak?’

Karl beamed naughtily.

‘Menacing!’

‘Menacing!  That was our word at Holly Lane, wasn’t it?  Good things were menacing, crap things were soppy.  Anyway, since this is supposed to be a school reunion, do you actually see any of our old classmates these days?’

‘Not really, to be honest.  I used to meet up for a pint with Shane Ashcroft from time to time, but since I moved out of Sedgley I haven’t seen anyone.  How about you?’

‘No.  Again, moving out of the area has meant I don’t bump into people.  Which I’m grateful for, in certain cases.’

‘Don’t you keep in touch with that tubby mate of yours?’

‘You mean Janine?  We sent Christmas cards and stuff for a few years, but that kind of tailed off.  Same with Andrea and Claudette.  You know how it is.  Shame really.  Still, we make new friends through life.  I’ve got a great couple of girls at work, who I go drinking with all the time.’

‘Claudette’s on Friends Reunited.  She’s a cruise ship superstar now apparently.’

‘Yeah, she’s done well.  I’m pleased for her.  She used to be in all the shows, singing and dancing.  And Simon Floyd’s done all right for himself.  Teaching, isn’t he?’ 

‘I know.  I saw his nan in Dudley a year or so back.’

‘Old Beryl’s still going strong then?’

‘Mmm.  She told me Si is head of the maths department at some private school down south.  I always knew he’d end up doing something swotty.’

‘He used to fancy me.’

‘I know.  He wasn’t all bad then.’

The staccato beep of my mobile tugged me back to the twenty-first century.

‘Sounds like someone’s got a text.  Another admirer?’  He asked this casually enough, but with a gratifyingly anxious expression, as though his real question was: ‘It’s not an admirer, is it?  No?  Please tell me it’s not!’

I fished in my handbag and chuckled at the typically cheeky pixels.

‘No, my mate Nadine.  One of my workmates I told you about.’  SNOGGED HIM YET? was emblazoned across the tiny screen.  ‘Will you excuse me for a mo, Karl?’

‘So let me get this straight – he engineered this whole “reunion” stunt just to get you alone with him tonight?’

‘A-ha.’  I gave the chain a strategic flush to conceal my conversation from fellow loo-goers.  I had promised the girls a text this evening, but my adventures were impossible to summarise with laborious taps on a mobile keypad.  Ringing was far speedier.  ‘He says he’s never stopped loving me, never met another girl as special as me, and wants to give things another go.’

I could hear Heather chirrup ‘How romantic!’ in the raucous background – while Nadine’s jubilant whoop was of a volume that rendered telephones unnecessary.  I pictured the pair of them doing a high five, drawing bemused stares from the O’Neill’s Friday punters.

‘Get in there, babe!’

‘You think so, Nads?’

‘Too right, you jammy tart!  Honestly, Zo, I’m so jealous that if I didn’t like you so much I’d peck yer eyes out!  We’re having hopeless luck our end.  There’s a right bunch of gormless goons in tonight.  Heath had her bum pinched once, but apart from that there’s nothing doing.’

‘That’s not like you two.’

‘We must be losing our touch.  The total opposite of you, by the sound of it.’

‘You really think I should go for it?  I shouldn’t – you know – hold back a bit?’

‘Oh, just have some fun, girl!  What harm can it do?  If things don’t work out, you don’t have to see him again.  But your Aunty Nadine has a funny feeling they will somehow…’

‘I’d best be getting back to him then.  Love you loads, girls.  I’ll call you tomorrow with an update.’

‘Not too much graphic detail, though.  I don’t want to hear anything that’ll make me really nauseous with envy!’

‘Sorry about that.’  I clacked back to the table, where Karl was studying a dessert menu.

‘No probs.  I was just contemplating whether to go for pud.’

‘Oh, why not?  We might as well push the boat out.’

‘I agree!  We are celebrating after all.  One apple crumble then please,’ he requested from the lingering waiter, with custard.  And – ?’

‘Blackcurrant cheesecake please.’

‘You know, I often wonder what we did before mobile phones,’ Karl mused.  ‘You see all the little kiddies walking round with them nowadays.  We never had text messaging and ringtones in primary school, did we?  We used to be happy playing with toy racing cars.’

‘Oh Karl,’ I chuckled, ‘you sound ever so granddad-ish with all this “when I were a lad” gubbins!’

‘It’s true, though.  We were more easily pleased.  And we didn’t seem to need phones anyway.  We could play out all day – sometimes my mom hadn’t got a clue which friend’s house I was in – yet nobody ever worried that we couldn’t be contacted.’

‘Yeah, you’re right there actually.  I’d never thought about it like that before.  We had a lot of freedom.  I suppose parents are terrified of letting kids out their sight nowadays.’

‘I know Faye’s quite protective over her two.  Keeping them in is all very well, though, but what do you do then?  Sit them in front of a computer where they can look up all kinds of horrible stuff on the Internet!’

‘Which is something else that wasn’t around when we were nippers.’

‘Or even when we were last together.  So much has evolved since we last met, it’s scary.’

‘It isn’t half.  Karl, there’s one thing – ’

The waiter reappeared then with our desserts, and chomp-punctuated silence fell for a few more moments.

‘One thing’s bugging me a bit, Karl,’ I resumed my thread, ‘how did you know I’d broken up with Neil?  You mentioned that you knew I was single again before I told you about me having no luck with the chaps.’

Embarrassed bemusement clouded his face.

‘Oh.  Did your mom not mention to you about bumping into my mom in Iceland a few months back?’

I winced so sharply, my insides seemed to crease in half.  This sounded dismayingly familiar.

‘Not again!’

‘Mom happened to go in – just by chance, you know, we didn’t even know Val worked there now – and they obviously started discussing us – and – what do you mean, not again?’

‘This is a nasty omen, Karl.  Unpleasant things have a habit of happening when our mothers meet in shops.  Don’t you remember how you inadvertently dropped me in it about my imaginary boyfriend Curtis?’

In clipped prose, I reacquainted Karl with the fourth-form scandal it took me an aeon to live down.

‘So, you see, it was all your fault.’  My tone was jocular but with a sad undertone I was sure he detected.  In fact, I know he did.  ‘I had the piss ripped out of me for months – and a lamping by Tina Skidmarks – because you couldn’t resist grassing me up to your precious Hayley.  If you’d just let me enjoy my dizzy little fantasy, instead of repeating my mother’s bletherings from bloody Argos – ’

I floundered, startled by the sharpness and pain of a silly fourteen-year-old memory.

He reached for my hand.  ‘I’m sorry.  I was young and twattish – what can I say?  Anyway, Hayley was never really precious to me, not like – ’

‘You’re right,’ I interrupted, ‘it’s in the past, forgive and forget, and all that.  But to think the only reason I concocted that yarn about Curtis in the first place was to make you jealous!  Because I fancied you like mad.  More fool me, eh?’  I snorted and took a rather urgent gulp of spritzer.

‘Zoe, neither of us are fourteen anymore.  We all make mistakes – and I made my biggest one all those years ago, when I behaved like such a prat towards you on that weekend…’

Ah yes, that weekend!  That horrific night and day in early summer 1994 which in my rose-tinted-spectacle-wearing voyage to the past, I had neatly overlooked.

I shut my eyes and let ugly images swim around me.