Classmates - Chapter 1

'Well I think you ought to dig out your ra-ra skirt for your little
trip back to the past,' Nadine teased, wringing a Hellmann's sachet
over her rocket salad, 'bet he'd love you in polka dots!'
'Ooh, kinky,' Heather giggled, through a splutter of Reef, 'very
Bananarama!'
'How about a FRANKIE SAYS T-shirt?' I actually possessed such a
garment, an iconic memento from my first ever concert. 'Might be a wee
bit tight now, though. I got it when I was ten.'
'You could wear it as a crop top.'
'Why not team it with a pair of fluorescent legwarmers?'
'Hey, Zoe, do your pixie boots still fit?'
I groaned in affected dismay and avoided answering by shovelling a
forkful of prawns into my mouth.
Most people do not form vivacious friendships with their colleagues, or
even socialise comfortably with them at all, so I count myself
fortunate to have these girls.
The Tunney works nestles on the outskirts of Lichfield, and at least
once a week the three of us pour out of it and directly into one of the
ambrosial cathedral city's many eateries for our tea. This particular
Tuesday was jacket-potato-in-Lloyds-Caf? night.
'Why did I ever agree to do this mad thing anyway?' I wailed, hurling
the fork down and clutching my head melodramatically. 'Just think - I
could be spending this Friday getting trolleyed in O'Neill's with you
pair. Or snuggling up in front of V. Graham Norton with Jerry and a
nice bottle of red! Instead - '
'You'll be doing something that sounds a hell of a lot more exciting,'
said Nadine firmly.
'Terrifying, more like.'
'Think positive, girl! You've got plenty of nights when you can tuck
yourself up all nice and safe with your Jerry. It's fun to live
dangerously once in a while. And this is a very special night.'
'But Jerry might miss me,' I mock-simpered, veiling my excitement
behind a very silly excuse.
'I bet he won't! He'll be glad to have the place to himself.'
'Well you two had better be thinking of me on Friday!'
'Thinking of you? We'll be dead jealous won't we, Heath?'
'Sneak out to the toilet, won't you,' begged Heather, 'and send us a
text? Let us know how it's going. We want all the juice!'
'I should imagine I'll be spending most of the night in the toilet.
Cowering!'
'Going back to clothes, though, Zo,' Nadine set her empty Metz bottle
down with a typically decisive air, 'you should knock his eyes out! Put
something sexy on, make him see what he's been missing out on all these
years.'
Heather, biting into a stalk of cress, pulled a sceptical face.
'Nothing too slutty, though, Nads.'
'No, don't want to look desperate, do I?'
'You wanna show him how you've moved on. Show him what a gorgeous and
sophisticated PR babe you've become. Be smart, but don't go OTT.'
'Smart-casual, you mean?'
'Yeah. Understated. Less is more, and all that.'

Musing on the girls' scrambled pointers, I plundered my wardrobe and
chests, attaining an eventual shortlist of cerise skirt versus scarlet
trousers.
The skirt was a recent purchase, and I adored its slimming flow and
sensual feel against my thighs - but when the momentous Friday came, I
felt all wrong and formal in it. My mood was more trousery.
The trousers were of a florid satin, with an Oriental flower pattern
twining prettily up each leg in gold thread. They had a happy colour; a
casual, though feminine, texture. Skirts were what I wore to the
office; these seemed to say more about what I was.
'Now I need a top, Jerry!'
Jerry responded with one of his slanted, adoring gazes that made my
eyes and smile involuntarily crinkle up with fondness. How empowering,
to know I had someone who loved me in anything.
But of no particular help to me now. Granted, many a young girl these
days hit the town attired in bra and trousers - but I was no
exhibitionist; moreover, I thought wryly, tonight was about being retro
and not concerning myself with the fashion practices of 'these
days'?.
'What am I doing, sweetheart?' I half sang in a demented, Shakespearean
heroine sort of way, squeezing Jerry's face between my hands. 'Oh sod
this - let's stick some sounds on, get us in the mood!'
My Birmingham home is served by Heart FM, a station with a Friday
evening music policy of 'great memories from the 70s right the way
through to the 90s.' I twizzled with the radio in my kitchen until
Kylie Minogue's Step Back in Time - appropriately enough - bounced
groovily around the wall units. Who'd have thought she'd still be going
strong?
Padding back to the bedroom past my bookcase, my eyes zoomed in on a
royal blue spine bearing the legend 'Capewell 91.' Heaving up the box
of Tunney's Double Bubbles - samples from work - that I illogically
filed atop this book, I stroked dust from its jacket and carried it
through to my room, brooding. The Capewell High School yearbook!
Published during our fifth year, our final in uniform.
I perched on a corner of the bed, wistfully and gratefully sidetracked
from my bewildering wardrobe. I soon found my class: a jumble of awry
ties, Jesus Jones hair and the kind of elaborately bored expressions
no-one but teenagers seem capable of pulling. I traced a finger along
the tiers of monochrome faces, speculating upon which ones I might
re-encounter this evening.
Tina Skidmarks (a soubriquet I never used to her face, funnily enough):
defiant pout, a perm that would not look out of place in Whitesnake - I
grimaced at the idea of attempting small talk over a vol-au-vent with a
sharper, brasher, twenty-eight-year-old mutation of that.
Janine Parrott, my one-time best friend - wouldn't mind seeing her,
though. Wonder what she was up to these days?
Simon Floyd; Nasreen Uppal; Bradley 'nose-picker' Round - and, oh
Christ, there was me! The obligatory Zitty Pig on End of Row. I looked
like the 'BEFORE' shot from a Weight Watchers commercial (an analogy
rooted in truth - since it was shortly after it was taken that I ceased
falling back on the old 'puppy fat' excuse and decided renouncing my
daily hot dog and chocolate cornflake cake fix might be a more
constructive approach to slimming).
Claudette Albert; Nathan Dickinson; Karl Corbett?.
Karl Corbett!
Towering over the back row; his personality almost tangible through the
shiny page. One of those enviably photogenic individuals, whom all
cameras captured mid-laugh. I gazed, absorbing and remembering the
energetic physique; the gregarious beam; the rascally green eyes,
delicately fringed by those oh so tormenting lashes?.

A colleague acquainted me with Friends Reunited last year. I couldn't
stifle a wow or two the first time those red names unravelled before
me, so 'read-me' dramatic against the background of hockey pitch
green.
My guts did a funny little tumble as I scrolled down and there,
nestling in that crimson list, was 'Karl Corbett.' I read, with
elaborate casualness, how he qualified as a vet (he'd wanted to be one
from about fourteen) after 5 years studying in the sunny West Country,
where I learnt to drink cider and munch carrots. (Yeah, great.) I work
at a practice in Halesowen (Halesowen - woo!) close to where I live
with my pet cat, Dog. (Dog! The old Corbett humour never changed.) I am
still single.
STILL SINGLE?
Still. Single.
Mmm.
I belonged to the same category, of course, since Neil's departure -
though, seven months on, still cherished independence and sought no
urgent successor.
I spent my lunch hour hunched, rapt, over my iBook, and my afternoon
enveloped in a sugary fuzz of dormant memories. All those names?all
those lives.
Some of my classmates had blossomed dramatically; others seemed yet to
evolve from giggly puberty. Some had become teachers, accountants,
lawyers, secretaries; others were students. (Still? What did they plan
to do - remain in education until retirement age?) A handful had
spouses and families; a great many more had what they demurely termed
'significant others' one or two were still at home with Mom.
I submitted my own life pr?cis:

After an English degree at the University of Central England, I landed
my dream job - doing PR for Tunney's. What better way to spend my days
- writing about chocolate?!! I share a flat in Sutton Coldfield with my
cat Jerry.

Call it a premonition, but I actually began imagining how fascinating
and bizarre it might be to mill in a room conversing with people I
hadn't so much as thought about since I was eighteen.
But I would never have done anything about it were it not for
Karl.
It was his fault I was now sitting in my underwear, poring over an
ancient and rather mortifying photograph.
He was the reason I was about to spend my sacred Friday night at a
school reunion?.

It was six weeks ago that, while sifting through an avalanche of
e-mails from my mother (a recent night school attendee and devoted
Internet convert), an unfamiliar username had blazed across my Inbox.
Well, not exactly unfamiliar - there had only ever been one 'Kcorb' in
my life?but it had been almost a decade....
I was appalled by how clumsily I groped at my mouse and jabbed it at
the 'OPEN' icon.
Get a grip, wench!
You shouldn't be shaking.
Nor should your little heart be leaping away like a space hopper on a
trampoline.
His words seemed to spring off the screen as if in 3-D: too alive and
feisty to be confined by a fifteen-inch monitor. I read them aloud, but
heard his voice rather than my own: reciting in exuberant Black
Country, all strident and cheesy, like a DJ.

Hi Zo,

Saw yer name on Friends Reunited. Thought you might be interested in a
reunion I'm organising to mark 10 years since our release from the
prison that was Capewell High.

I want to see as many Class of 93 members as poss @ the Brewers Wharf,
Merry Hill - 8pm, Fri 15th August, to enjoy a drink - or 3 :o) - and
swap memories.

Be there or be a triangle!

Your old mate,

Karl

That corny humour of old. The nonchalant matiness that paid no heed to
the fact we had exchanged not so much as a Christmas card since?well -
since things went wrong.
Unnervingly independent of my brain, my hot fingers double-clicked
'REPLY' and clacked out an effusive paragraph notifying Kcorb that yes,
I would be delighted to attend.
Whoa! Delighted? Where did that come from?
I vaguely recalled Dad going to a reunion when I was very young, the
twenty-fifth anniversary of his grammar school exodus. A quarter of a
century was a more curative lapse (middle age having the capacity to
mellow the meanest bully, or render bald and jowly the most dangerously
attractive heart-throb) than a mere decade. Ten years could turn
yawning wounds to scabs?but scabs still bled from time to time.
I indecisively swirled the cursor around the stark screen as I
dissected his message, as though it were an A-level English
assignment.
The tone was sufficiently impersonal to imply he had posted duplicates
to Claudette, Nathan and all the others registered on the website. And
look: he actually said he wanted to see as many Class of 93 members as
poss. There was safety in numbers (oh, I could always rely on a good
clich?), and anyway it would be thrilling to catch up with former
peers; reminisce about verruca socks, Bunsen burners and getting pissed
on Babycham. That was why I had suddenly gone all thirsty and winded,
the way I did after an aerobics class. Yes!
Gulping, I fired the cursor at 'SEND.'

It was well after seven, Kylie had long segued into Snap's The Power,
and I was still trouser- and bra-clad.
Clapping the yearbook shut, I vaulted coltishly upright and began
zealously hauling black tops out of my wardrobe. This was easier said
than done; it was a veritable sea of black in there. (At precisely what
point in my life had I managed to amass all these homogeneous,
unwearable garments?)
Crop top - no, far too sexy. String vest - ditto. You ain't fourteen
anymore, girl: off to the youth club disco in your trowled-on lipstick,
in blatant quest of a snog! Your goal is sophistication and
understatement. Lacy short-sleeved - too flouncy and scratchy.
Halterneck - too holiday-ish. Aaarggh! Long-sleeved - forget it, I'd
roast on such a sultry night.
The lone contender then was an Oasis spaghetti-strap jobbie: unfussy,
with a modest neckline, yet flatteringly clinging.
I smoothed the glossy vest over my hips and nodded with relief at my
full-length reflection. Yes, Heather was right - less was definitely
more. A squirt or two of Eternity, and I was fit. I flipped the radio
off and gathered up my handbag.
'Be good, Jerry,' I called, blowing a kiss to my pet, who was now on
his haunches in the centre of my bed, his sooty face all gorgeously
indignant at being abandoned for the evening. 'Wish me luck!'

My asthmatic Renault Clio (the only car I have ever possessed) knows
every pothole between Sutton Coldfield and Sedgley, the Black Country
village where I was - to quote my lovely old granny - born, bred and
buttered. I have been a happy immigrant in Sutton, an elegant borough
north of Brum, since discovering in my uni days how much I liked
expedient, anonymous city life. However, my pilgrimages 'home' are
frequent - particularly when the lure of Mom's Sunday lunch overpowers.
I can virtually smell the Yorkshire pudding down my phone twenty miles
away. That cosy, doughy odour of home.
The posters may be long gone, but my teenage bed remains permanently,
reassuringly aired, in that sunny den with the mint green wallpaper -
my sanctuary for twenty-one years. Where I would entomb myself with The
Word on mute, in the midnight company of my homework, diary or
Walkman.
Where I dreamed of Karl.
Sedgley perches two miles north-west of the Black Country's 'capital,'
Dudley, the historic colliery town famed for siring Lenny Henry, Sue
Lawley and Norman Pace, the moustache-free half of Hale and Pace. I can
reach it in half-an-hour, via the relentless dual carriageways that
slash through the urban clutches known as Great Barr, West Bromwich and
Tipton.
I reprised this route tonight - almost - tranquilly enough for the bulk
of it: chugging dauntlessly down the familiar roads, drumming the
steering wheel to the Heart FM soundtrack. My insides only started to
whisk up as I approached Dudley and had to digress south along the new
bypass to Merry Hill, the Pluto-sized shopping and leisure complex in
the town of Brierley Hill. I was not so much lost now as disorientated,
in a landscape dimly recognisable but painted at a distorting
angle.
My innate affection for the Black Country had inevitably been diluted,
by time away, into the more removed affection one might feel for a
childhood seaside haunt. It was aeons since I had socialised round
here. My eyes - tourist's eyes - were like a pair of bifocals:
magnifying features they spent twenty years overlooking when I was a
blas? native.
On the radio, Pass the Dutchie biddly-biddly-bonged to a close, and the
slinky intro of Madonna's Crazy for You oozed from the speakers.
My face smarted, as though from a slap, then just as swiftly lost its
blush and turned all waxy and cold.
This was Our Song.
'This one was requested by Abbie, out there in Willenhall,' fawned the
DJ, 'she wants to say a big Hi to Justin tonight and tell him she loves
him loads.'
I braked, none too smoothly, at the roundabout, wondering pathetically
whether Justin and Abbie had had their first snog to this melty,
mid-80s ballad. Beneath a lopsided mirrorball in a British Legion
hall?
When Abbie heard it now, did pins and needles stab at her skin? Did
Madonna's smoky vocals seem to resonate at her down a tapering,
claustrophobic tunnel?
Turn it off, came an urgent screech inside my brain, put a tape in,
anything to silence this portentous music - but my fingers remained
masochistically gummed to the steering wheel.
Until I became conscious that I was steering no longer, but in fact was
in the pub's car park, levering up the handbrake and deactivating the
engine - killing that disturbing song, at last.
How had I arrived here? I had no recollection of my final mile or two.
Clio had somehow navigated the A4036 and skimmed into a parking space
with no intermediary loss of life. I had been simply dazed,
abstracted?as I was on a certain other night when Crazy for You
played.
Slumping against the head-rest, I exhaled slowly and deeply, slowly and
deeply, a technique acquired from the softly voiced-over relaxation
tapes that counselled me through A-levels and finals. I felt like I had
been holding my breath for about three hours.
Brewers Wharf clientele poured around me in cliques and duos: uniformly
glossy and young, like extras from Hollyoaks. All too youthful to have
been members of my class, unless time - or Botox - had been
exceptionally kind to them.
This pub had always been colossally popular. I tried to calculate when
my last visit was. With him, undoubtedly, so I'd have been a student,
and wouldn't have felt half so incongruous and aged as I did right now
amongst all these jewelled navels and Atomic Kitten hair.
Relaxation Tape Man had prescribed a mantra for tremulous moments. I
recited it now, as I slithered out of the car and became the tail of
the bar-bound pageant.
I am calm and peaceful.
I am calm and peaceful.
Nudging the bar door open, tentatively, I froze on the periphery of the
tableau, exploring the waves of faces for flutters of recognition - and
whimpered an 'Oh God' of panic when none came.
I am calm and peaceful.
I struggled to radiate airy, defiant, 'no, I haven't been stood up'
vibes, to deflect these kids' pitying stares.
And then I spotted him.
My body gave an eerie little judder as my eyes honed in on him like
telescopic lenses.
Lolling gently on the bar, the quintessence of nonchalance.
Ordering his traditional Fosters.
Even in profile, semi-obscured by a posse of on-the-pull Gareth Gates
clones, his essential 'Karlness' shone through. He was as boyish as
ever. I knew he wouldn't have aged; his was the kind of face that would
look the same at seventy.
I seemed to be rooted there like a gormless tree for about forty hours,
just staring at him. And then my trusty feet took over, in the same
fashion my car had minutes earlier: surreally launching me across the
floor independently of brain commands.
I slithered through the crowd, murmuring excuse mes and sorrys as I
bustled between couples and trod on toes, until I was within
Lynx-smelling distance of him.
'All right, Karl,' I cheeped.