The Reunion

Here it is - an extract from my short story 'The Reunion', shortly to be published in the compilation Someone Has to Die, Volume IV. If you like it, please head to spikethecat.co.uk and buy a copy. If you don't like it, please humour me and buy a copy anyway.

When the invitation arrived to my university 10 year reunion, I ignored it. I just knew it would be full of exactly the same louts and airheads who plagued me for my whole three years in Durham. I added the invitation to the pile of post, free newspapers and takeaway menus on the kitchen table and forgot about it. With hindsight, I wonder how different things would have been if I’d just thrown the thing away.
The invitation would probably have stayed in the pile on the kitchen table for the next few weeks, if it hadn’t been for the phone call I received on Friday. I answered the phone as I opened the fridge, looking for milk to put in my tea. As the fridge door opened, a precariously balanced carton of orange juice fell onto the floor and burst. The first word my caller heard from me was, ‘Shit!’
‘I see you’ve still got the legendary charm, Alex,’ the caller drawled.
‘Kate?’ Whoever it was I expected to be on the other end of this call, it’s fair to say it wasn’t her.
‘Afraid so. How have you been?’
My relationship with Kate was highly complicated. This relationship had gone through three distinct phases. Phase one, lasting for the whole first year at university and most of the second, involved me lusting after Kate and going to ever more desperate extremes to persuade her to notice me. Phase two, which lasted just short of eight delirious months, consisted of wine, French cinema, sex (initially pedestrian but gradually becoming more and more acrobatic) and very little else. Phase three was prompted by certain photos of Kate of a rather intimate nature being uploaded to the university website, apparently from my laptop. This phase involved horror, apologies and protests of innocence from me; outrage, verbal abuse and finally, deathly, deathly silence from her. The silence continued up until graduation and had not been broken for the past ten years. So a phone call from Kate now was both unexpected and long hoped for.
‘Kate! I… Have you… This is a surprise!’ My powers of articulation had entirely deserted me.
‘Yes, it is a bit, isn’t it? I’m a little surprised myself.’ Her tone of voice was incredibly level, as always. It made it extremely difficult to judge her mood.
‘It’s… good to hear from you,’ I ventured.
‘I think I’ve been rather hard on you Alex,’ she said briskly. ‘Ten years is a long time to give someone the cold shoulder. I think it’s about time we moved on.’
Every possible definition of ‘moving on’ crowded into my head: every possibility from a chat over a cup of coffee to a post-coital cigarette.
‘So, I was wondering if you’re coming to the reunion?’ Kate concluded.
‘Er… yeah, I’ll be there,’ Dammit! Where did I put that invite?
‘Great,’ she replied. ‘See you tomorrow then. Bye.’
Tomorrow? I soon found the invitation in the pile of paper. Yes, the reunion was indeed happening this weekend. I knew it would be dreary: people I either didn’t know or couldn’t stand, tours around the university’s latest anonymous building, and hourly appeals to give to the alumni association. However, weighed up against the chance to resurrect my relationship with Kate, it was worth it. I switched on the PC in the living room, and began to search for hotels. I was just booking a room when the phone rang again.
‘Hello?’
‘Hello Alex.’
‘Hello?’ I repeated. I didn’t recognise the voice.
‘You don’t remember me?’ my caller asked in a mock-hurt tone, ‘After all we’ve been through?’ Suddenly it clicked. My stomach knotted as I realised who I was talking to.
‘Oh, I remember you, Miles. Don’t worry.’ Miles Lawson had a reputation in our college for being highly intense and more than a little unhinged. The famous rumour was that he once killed and skinned his tutor’s cat after she gave him a bad mark for an essay. This was almost certainly exaggerated, but I’d always had the uneasy suspicion that there was a kernel of truth in it. More immediately relevant to me, Miles used to go out with Kate, before I did. Unfortunately, when Kate dumped him, it took Miles a while to get the message. When Kate and I started seeing each other, Miles offered to castrate me. He got into the habit of sitting in the union bar in the evenings, and spending the whole night just staring at me and Kate. The fact that he was renewing our acquaintance now could not be good news.
‘Of course you do!’ Miles replied, slightly too cheerfully. ‘Now. I have just one question for you, my friend. Will you be at the reunion this weekend?’
‘Wouldn’t miss it, mate.’ Hang on. How did he get my number?
‘Wonderful!’ His tone was unsettlingly warm. ‘I’ll see you in Durham then.’
‘Great,’ I probably sounded considerably less enthusiastic than Miles.
‘Oh, just one more thing,’ Miles went on. His voice became suddenly highly menacing. ‘You’re going to pay for what you did to Kate, you scum. You’ve been waiting a long time to get what you deserve and now you’re going to get it. I’m going to destroy you, Cohen. Your life is over.’
He hung up. If I’d believed for a minute that Miles actually was as serious as he sounded, I would have forgotten about the reunion and spent the weekend at home, in bed, with the doors locked and the curtains drawn. But I didn’t believe it. So I went to Durham.