Reunion

A short story by Suzanne Ewart

- Suzanne Ewart

t's exactly the same as she remembers it. Not worse, not improved, but identical to how it was when she last walked out 20 years ago, proud yet defiant.

She'd done what she needed to do, got the grades for a new life far away from here, and had never needed to come back.

The entire journey back from London, she’d told herself she wasn't really returning to the small town her family no longer lived in for her school reunion. It was work. There was an assignment, pressure to get a good story from her new editor, Melanie, who she’s yet to impress.

If it wasn’t for the job, for the sheer coincidence that she, a newspaper reporter, happened to have graduated in the same year as Elody Quaint, the celebrity involved in the biggest scandal of the moment, there’s no way she would have come.

Funny, though, now she’s here, heart hammering against her chest, none of that seems to matter.

"Name?" the woman at the main entrance asks.

"Lucy. Lucy Mayers."

"Wow. So you are," the woman confirms, a big grin taking over her face. “It's me, Lauren.”

Lucy looks blankly at her as she trawls over her memories of St Margaret’s High for a Lauren, but she can’t place her face at all.

“Of course. Great to see you,” she lies, as Lauren writes out a name badge and hands it to her.

The canteen is the destination for the party, and Lucy can’t help smiling as she enters. There are some signs of moving with the times in this room — card machines, a few flatscreen TVs attached high on the wall — but you can’t modernise a smell, and that is entirely the same as it was 20 years ago.