I met Denise again in Fareham in May 2009.
I was leaving a shop when somebody behind me said, ‘Margaret Wells?’
Nobody had called me Margaret Wells in years except medical receptionists working from an old record.
I turned round. Denise had shorter hair, glasses and the same way of looking directly at me while waiting for an answer.
‘It is you,’ she said.
I said her name at the same time, which saved us both from pretending recognition had been immediate.
We had not spoken since 1991. There had been no argument. We had exchanged Christmas cards for a while, then missed a year, then several. Each of us had assumed the other was busy.
We stood outside the shop and tried to cover eighteen years in ten minutes.
She asked about Alan, Claire and Michael. I asked about her work and family. We named people from school and discovered that each of us had kept track of different ones. Denise knew what had happened to two girls I remembered clearly. I remembered a teacher she had removed from her account of childhood.
We exchanged telephone numbers.
I expected one of us to delay using them. Denise rang two days later and came to Emsworth the following week.
Alan made tea and left us to talk. Denise looked around the bungalow and said it suited me.
‘What does that mean?’
‘Everything’s where you expect it to be.’
I did not correct her.
We talked about Portchester, school and our first jobs. Denise remembered the science-cupboard incident differently. In her version, she opened the door and I knocked the box. In mine, I opened the door because she told me to.
‘You always said that,’ she said.
‘I have consistency.’
‘You have one version.’
We did not settle it.
The friendship did not return to what it had been when we were thirteen. We did not see each other every day or know every person in each other’s lives. We began with occasional telephone calls, then lunch, then messages about things the other might remember.
Before she left, Denise asked why we had stopped speaking.
I said I thought we had both stopped at the same time.
She said, ‘That sounds like us.’
I watched her drive away, then put her number into my phone properly. I had written it on a piece of paper first, in case I pressed the wrong thing.