‘So, what was Joshua like at uni?’ I take a poppadom from the pile in the middle and ping it in two to fit onto my side plate.
‘Just like I am now,’ Joshua replies, taking half of my poppadom. ‘Intimidatingly cool.’
‘Umm, yeah mate,’ Neil nods his head. ‘Very cool … Apart from trying to start a Coding Society that no one turned up to, and let’s not forget the cereal box business cards.’
The table collapses into laughter while Joshua blushes slightly.
‘What business cards?’ I ask.
Joshua shoots a ‘thanks mate’ glare at Neil before he explains. ‘So, on my first night of Freshers’ Week, I may have cut up a Kellogg’s Cornflakes box into small squares, written my name and email address onto them with biro, and handed them out to all the people I met.’
Everyone chortles, sprays of poppadom crumbs falling from their mouths onto the tablecloth, while I play the part of surprised-but-delighted-at-the-cuteness-of-it girl. ‘I don’t know where to even begin with that one,’ I say. ‘I mean, why business cards? Why out of Kellogg’s? Why your email address? Why did you not just make friends the regular way?’
Luke points to the air. ‘These are all very valid questions Joshua.’
Joshua gets redder and nuzzles into my shoulder for support. I smell the sweet tang of too much beer on him. ‘In my head, having business cards would make me seem really suave,’ he says. ‘But, no. Not made out of cornflakes boxes anyway. I promise you I’m really, really cool now,’ he protests.
‘I mean, cool people always tell you how cool they are,’ Lucy quips while we laugh at Joshua again.
‘Well I think that’s adorable,’ I declare, patting him on the head while they all laugh harder.
‘Great. Adorable. Men just love being called adorable.’ Joshua puts his head face-first onto the table.
‘But it is adorable!’ I pull him up and give him a quick peck on the cheek. He squeezes my knee again, his reddened face curled up into such a smile. Gretel is doing well. I’m fitting in perfectly. Of course I am.
‘You’re adorable,’ he whispers, pulling me in for another quick kiss.
And I wonder if he’d still think that if he’d been sitting at the pub earlier and hearing me share what I shared.
The poppadoms are demolished. Loaded with chutneys, sprinkled with sliced onions, chomped down into, crumbs flailing onto the white tablecloth.
‘Oh my God, do you remember that time in the third year, Josh? When you were so determined to make us go to Alton Towers before we graduated. But it came the night after the Otley Run?’
‘Vomit. So much vomit.’
‘It was Air that did it.’
‘Hahahahahahaha,’ says Gretel.
The mains arrive. Naans are torn apart and added to our tiny silver plates. We ask one another if they would like to try a bit of ours.
‘So, what are your plans this summer?’
‘Oh, George and I are going to stay in this villa in Crete with a bunch of his friends.’
‘Ooo, nice.’
‘Yes. I just can’t wait to have the time off work. How about you two?’
‘We’re diving in Indonesia. Trying to get our PADIs, aren’t we love?’
‘How about you, Josh?’
‘Working, I’m afraid. Used up all my annual leave climbing the mountain.’
‘I can’t believe you climbed a mountain, you’ve never mentioned that before.’
‘Shut up.’
‘Hahahahahahaha,’ says Gretel.
‘Don’t let him fool you, Gretel. He might act like an Iron Man but he has literally only climbed one mountain, and he hasn’t even walked up the left side of the Tube escalator since.’
‘Hahahahahahaha,’ says Gretel.
‘And you Gretel? What are you up to this summer?’
‘I want to go to Africa,’ Gretel says.
They all nod. They all say, ‘Amazing. Isn’t Africa just amazing?’
Another round of drinks. The men point to their beer glasses and nod. The girls pluck out the cocktail menu, pour over it as a means of bonding, discussing which one they are going to go for.
‘Mother’s Ruin sounds great,’ Gretel tells Lucy ‘I’ll get one too.’
‘Why is gin so delicious?’
‘Oh, I know. And, can I just say? I’ve been obsessing over your shoes all night.’
‘Oh, thank you! I was just thinking how nice your bag is.’
‘Oh, thank you!’
Nobody orders pudding because nobody ever orders pudding at an Indian restaurant. We have another round instead. Josh is slippery with drink, his hand constantly reaching for mine under the table, sweaty, squeezing my fingers too tight. His craving for physical affection overwhelmingly constant. I listen a lot more than I talk. Neil speaks the most, the loudest, interrupting, but no one seems to mind. Reminiscing about university is clearly the group’s conversational safety blanket. They remember old lecturers, and pubs they used to love going to that aren’t there any more, and compare living in the north with living in the south.
‘A taxi home was only four quid, can you imagine now?’
‘Snakebite. A pound.’
‘We could sell our one-bed and buy a castle up there. Well, not quite a castle, but you know. Four-bed detached. A garden.’
‘Yeah, but you wouldn’t be in London.’
‘True, true.’
Gretel’s doing well. I can feel she’s doing well. Julia has already nodded at Joshua when she didn’t realise I was looking.
I tune out whenever they drift into nostalgia I can’t join in with and busy my brain with reliving the boxing. Punch punch, kick kick kick. I want time to hurry up so I can go back and do it all over again. I don’t think I’ve stopped grinning since I left, and it’s contagious. The table smile with me, reflect it back, catch my happiness like a summer cold.
Eventually a waiter approaches the table with a bill. He’s sorry but they need the table now for the next booking. The air ripples with mild annoyance, no one wanting to leave the sanctuary of the table. Neil’s eyes flick to the queue below us, as if he’s trying to make out the group who dares expel us. He then picks up the bill and takes charge, calculating the amount we all owe.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll get it,’ Joshua says to me as I’m rifling through my purse for my card and praying I’ve got enough to cover it. I can’t afford to be as independent a Gretel as I want to be right now. ‘Thank you.’
‘I’m the one who asked you to come.’ He pulls me in to kiss me on the cheek. ‘They like you, I can tell,’ he murmurs, the smell of beer on his warm breath.
‘I like them too.’ It’s true enough. I certainly don’t dislike them. They’re just like any other group of uni people who have all ended up in London, glad to have ties and roots in this relentlessly lonely city. Neil’s a bit of a dick but every friendship group has a bit of a dick that only an outsider can pick up on. We wait impatiently as the waiter hurries through all our respective card payments, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. ‘It’s started to rain,’ he announces to no one in particular and nobody really takes it in. We’re all too busy collecting our bags and figuring out where to go next.