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‘That’s very kind – I will indeed.’

The shadow of Nadine hung there – the uneasy link between them. Something should be said. You must miss Nadine. I wish Nadine and I had seen more of each other. You must realize that Nadine and I hadn’t really known each other at all well for over thirty years.

‘We’re entirely different types,’ says Nadine. ‘Probably just as well.’

She is talking of physical appearance. They are both in their underclothes, getting ready for a commemoration ball. This state of undress points up the distinction, it is true. Nadine is short and plump. She has a pointed cat-like face with notable green-gold eyes and the clear creamy skin that can go with very dark hair. Stella is long and leggy with an undulating pre-Raphaelite tawny-red mane and a permanent rash of freckles.

‘Why just as well?’ enquires Stella.

‘We attract different types of men.’

‘We’re quite different in other ways. It’s peculiar we get on so well.’

‘That’s why, silly,’ said Nadine. She stands in front of the mirror, intent upon her eyes, which are being given the full treatment with mascara and eye-shadow. She waves the mascara brush at Stella. ‘Do you want to try some?’

‘No. It makes me look like a pierrot.’

They have arrived here from very different backgrounds, too, propelled on to the level playing field of higher education by brains and application. Stella is the late only child of unassertive parents who are still startled to find that their supposed ugly duckling is apparently a swan, in academic terms, and one of the chosen few. Her father, an accountant, has commuted to the same City office from the same suburban semi all his working life. He is beginning to be alarmed by Stella and will be entirely bewildered as time goes on. Her mother does some voluntary work in the Oxfam shop on the high street and otherwise devotes herself exclusively to scrupulous maintenance of the house and the servicing of the family. She is proud of Stella but becoming increasingly nervous of her. As the Oxford years go by she can find less and less to say to her, except to offer diffident advice about clothes and diet, which Stella smilingly ignores. Stella’s eventual choice of occupation will throw them both into an unsettling state of respect, anxiety and dismay. When they both died in their early seventies, within a year of each other, Stella found that she had loved them more than she knew, but also felt released from some guilty obligation of perpetual reassurance.

Nadine is the youngest of a brood of five, the children of a showy barrister whose name crops up in newspaper accounts of big murder trials. ‘So
embarrassing,’
says Nadine. Her mother is half-Spanish, which accounts for Nadine’s eyes and colouring – an exuberant, cushiony woman who descends once a term, packaged in silks and furs, drifting Chanel No. 5 and shrieking with horror at the spartan college accommodation. Nadine is forever embroiled with her siblings; quarrels and reconciliations reverberate between Oxford and Richmond. Her older sisters arrive, dressed to kill, and sit fastidiously sipping Nescafé in Nadine’s room while they tease her: ‘Miss Education here.’ Her brothers drive down in MGs and sweep the girls off to the Trout or the Bear at Woodstock, where Nadine flaunts them at anyone she knows. One of them takes a shine to Stella and is sharply warned off by Nadine: ‘Don’t you dare! She’s much too clever for you and anyway she’s
my
friend.’ Stella and Nadine tell one another that they would like to swap families, but neither is sincere. ‘Your parents are so sweet and
quiet,’
says Nadine. ‘Honestly, the
peace
in your house.’ Stella observes the Richmond household with amusement and the occasional twinge or envy, but knows that it is alien to her soul.

Stella considers other differences between them. Principally, Nadine is not much interested in her overt reason for being at university. She is only committed to her subject in so far as it is her guarantee. She is here for the fringe benefits of higher education, as indeed are many undergraduates. But she is intelligent, or she would not have got a place, she is energetic and she does enough work to get by.

Stella is frequently absorbed by what she has to read and write. She is simultaneously daunted and exhilarated – daunted by her perception of the range and profundity of knowledge and her recognition of the fact that she can never do more than scratch the surface, exhilarated because she has realized that learning is the arousal and satisfaction of curiosity. And she is abidingly curious. Sitting in libraries, she has come to see that for the rest of her life she will be prompted to ask questions and try to find answers. She feels as though her mind is expanding, month by month. Sometimes it seems to brim over with discovery.

She is fond of Nadine. She enjoys Nadine’s company. They are a conspiracy, a gleeful, greedy alliance in pursuit of experience, of pleasure, of laughter, of whatever there is to be had through the accelerated passage of these three heady years. Each recognizes the distinctive flavour of the other and knows that they are not alike, but that, for the moment, they are caught up in the intimacy of being young and about the same business in the same place at the same time – an association as intense in its way as love or marriage, and one which quite eclipses later forms of friendship.

‘OK,’ says Nadine. ‘Frocks on!’

They are both wearing strapless evening dresses. Nadine’s is a froth of lilac tulle over a stiffened nylon petticoat, with a wide satin sash in a deeper shade. Stella is in plain dark green brocade taffeta. Both of them have their torsos clamped tight within rigidly boned bodices. Both wear elbow-length white nylon gloves which will be discarded and lost as the night warms up. Indeed, both dresses will be dreadfully abused. They will be peppered with small burns from cigarette ash, they will be splashed with wine. They will be creased and torn and grass-stained and Stella’s will eventually be so saturated in muddy river water at the bottom of a punt that she will throw it away when she gets back to her college room at eleven the next morning. Track suits might be a more sensible uniform for the night ahead, but that would never do. Nadine and Stella are extravagantly parcelled for one of the major rituals of undergraduate life. Neither of them will lose their virginity tonight because both already have. Nadine will get bored with her escort and make a bid for someone else’s, while Stella will overdo the champagne and end up asleep at dawn in that punt with a man she has never met before.

But at this moment they are untarnished. They inspect one another.

‘Ravishing,’ says Stella.

‘Irresistible,’ says Nadine.

They grin.

‘And what decided you to settle in this part of the world?’ said Richard.

He had told her about the several holidays he and Nadine spent around here. He had described his house and the search for it. A meticulous, methodical process, as one might expect.

She could have replied: you did, in a way. A provocative statement, strangled at birth. She bit back an alternative: I, too, have been here before. One would not want to have the matter pursued.

‘Reasonable climate. Glorious landscape. As you said in your letter. I have friends in Bristol.’

And house prices are lower than in many parts. Though I note that your house was considerably more expensive than mine. Which is to be expected – civil servants are better paid than social anthropologists. A point appreciated by Nadine, who was into wage differentials long before I was.

‘Lovely,’ says Nadine, surveying the flat in Birmingham. She does not mean this, and the survey does not take long. A turn of the head suffices. There is a single room, with kitchen and bathroom slotted into windowless spaces more like cupboards than rooms.

Stella laughs. ‘Come off it. You wouldn’t be seen dead here.’

‘At least it’s nice and light.’

‘It’s what’s called a studio flat. Euphemism for only one room.’

‘You could do more with it,’ Nadine decides briskly. ‘You need some cushions to brighten it up. And a different lamp. I know a woman who’d make you new loose covers for the couch and the armchairs really cheaply.’

‘I’ll bear her in mind.’

‘What are you
doing
here exactly?’ Nadine’s tone perfectly expresses her perplexity, concern and barely suppressed disapproval of what she perceives as her friend’s present plight. ‘Do you know, I’ve never even been to Birmingham before. I mean, it’s a place you knew was there but not that you’d ever think of going to. At least not on purpose.’

Nadine and Richard are now living in Sevenoaks, in an old farmhouse with a big garden. This means rather a lot of commuting for Richard, but it is so much nicer for Lucy, who is now two, to grow up outside London.

‘I teach. And when I get the chance, I talk to people on housing estates about their attitudes towards their parents and their grandparents and their uncles and aunts.’

Nadine registers this but is not sufficiently interested to wish to know more. ‘What about social life?’

‘Are you asking if I’ve got friends to go to the cinema with?’

Nadine giggles.

‘No,’ says Stella. ‘There’s no man right now. At least none I’m encouraging. God, you don’t change, Nadine.’

Stella and Nadine are still within reach of their former selves. They can still slip back for an instant into that climate of shared experience, the shorthand of mutual concerns. Very soon – a few more years – this community of spirit will be extinguished. They will be launched upon the divergence of direction that will take them into their different lives.

‘What do they pay you?’ asks Nadine.

Stella tells her.

Nadine is aghast. She stares at Stella in horror. ‘Richard gets heaps more than that.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ says Stella.

‘Richard knows what he’ll be getting in five years’ time.’

‘Lucky old Richard. I don’t even know if I’ll have a job in five years’ time.’

‘Are you worried?’ Nadine soberly inquires.

‘Not particularly.’ This was true, she was not. Something would turn up. And in the event it did. ‘I’m not a planner, like you. I bet you’ve already worked out which day to stop taking the pill so Lucy’s sibling gets born at the convenient moment.’

‘Sibling!’ mocks Nadine. ‘Listen to you, you’ve even started talking jargon. Actually,’ she goes on complacently, with an instinctive glance down at her stomach. ‘Since you mention it …’

‘Congratulations,’ says Stella. ‘Aren’t you clever! Oh – and Richard.’ She tests herself for a twinge of envy, of resentment, and finds that there is none. Quite genuinely there is none. Does this mean that she is wanting a vital component because she is without genetic drive? And if so, does it matter?

Perhaps it is just that she would not want to be Nadine, hitched now to an inexorable process, subsumed into the lives of her husband, her children.

One day, maybe, thinks Stella. Not now. Not yet.

Richard was talking about the daughters. ‘The girls are attentive, but of course they have their own agendas.’

Stella tried to remember what they did. She had seen them briefly at the funeral, women in their thirties valiantly greeting people through tears only just held back. ‘Oh, Stella,’ they said. ‘Mummy was talking about you only last week.’ Their eyes glistened. Richard was grim-faced. Stella could think of nothing appropriate to say. She mumbled conventional condolences and assumed that she would not see or hear of him again. She was surprised when she received a Christmas card and then another the following year in which he gave his change of address: ‘ … my retirement bolt-hole in west Somerset. You may remember that Nadine and I often used to holiday down here.’

Nadine had announced her cancer in a bleak little letter. ‘I’m about to start some rather ghastly last-ditch treatment for a growth. Keep your fingers crossed for me.’ When Stella visited her a few weeks later, she saw that Nadine was beyond the reach of either hi-tech medicine or superstitious encouragement. She was at home, a frail carcass beached on a sofa, her eyes dark pools in a white face. Richard clattered quietly in the kitchen, supplying refreshments at discreet intervals. The two women struggled to find anodyne matter for conversation. Stella felt the presence of their former selves, unquenchable in youth and fervour. She saw Nadine’s twenty-year-old body, contained within a Kestos bra and a panti-girdle that was supposed to do something cosmetic for her hips. This image floated above the diminished, almost extinguished Nadine who lay there on the sofa. The real Nadine, the Nadine of then, sat in her undies in front of the hissing violet and orange columns of a gas fire, stretching out her fingers to dry the nail varnish, lecture notes strewn around her. But implicit within that moment was this one, Stella now saw, a dark inevitability lurking beyond them.

‘Remember the fire escape?’ said Nadine suddenly.

‘I do indeed.’ They looked through forty years and saw again the vertical iron ladder down which had shinned illicit male visitors to the undergraduate hostel.

‘I had the fire escape room in my second year, didn’t I?’ Nadine continued. ‘Very convenient, but it meant you had to put up with other people’s men creeping past your bed in the small hours.’

‘I went down it myself once,’ said Stella. ‘Just for the hell of it. You had to jump the last six feet. It’s a wonder none of them broke an ankle.’

‘Maybe they did and we never knew. Sports injury, they’d have had to say.’ Nadine grinned, then flinched with pain. The smile faded. She stared bleakly at Stella. ‘Well, long time no see, I’ve lost track of what you’re doing. Still camping in mud villages?’

‘No, I gave that up long ago. Professionally unfashionable nowadays, anyway. In fact I retire in a couple of years’ time.’

‘I suppose you do,’ said Nadine. ‘Like Richard. He’s going to be on his own, I’m afraid, poor darling.’ Her face suddenly crumpled. ‘Oh,
shit …’

And now Stella and Richard had moved from the quiche and salad to the choice of local cheeses (‘Ah, you already know about the Stogumber dairy, I see’), and still Nadine hovered unmentioned. I know so little about her, thought Stella. She had realized this on that last visit: they had nothing in common except that time. The bond between them was the uneasy one of those who have been young together and then forge apart, but remain perversely united by those shared and heightened years. We are in each other’s heads for ever, Stella had thought – not as we are now but as we were then. Nadine knows nothing at all about me any more and yet in some eerie way she does because once we were twenty.