Reunion Part Nine - Catching Up

Deepak walked in the door of the Toolbox. It was the in-between hours of Wednesday evening, which meant the days workers were strolling home to their respective homes after a "cheeky one or two" and the bar staff were trying to look industrious with only a few customers in the bar and the lounge empty. They chatted in hushed, almost reverential tones, like deciding who would be going to go for a smoke first, before the evenings rush that brought the darts team and the pub quiz players that sat in the lounge and would argue over the finer points of the Greek Mythology section that laid them low last week.

Reunion Part Eight - Michelle Goldman

Michelle Goldman didn't like running on the treadmill. Her reasons were threefold:

One, it made her sweat ("Feel the heat", her grandmother would say. "Horses sweat, men perspire and ladies feel the heat, bubbala"). It made her sweat and that played merry hell with her hair. It sent her expensively treated hair frizzy as all get out and her hairdresser Julian into conniptions.

Reunion Part Seven - The Room

There is a room in a house in Milton, on the nicer end of Cheapside about a miles walk from New Hill High School. It's mid morning on a sunny spring day. The house isn't much to look at, just a three up and three down terrace. These houses were formerly for the factory workers from the aeroplane parts plant just outside the town. The company went under in the seventies and the properties now were council owned. The area was nicknamed by the locals because if you were starting out on the housing ladder, you usually started in Cheapside. If you were buying there it was called West Milton. If you were renting though, Cheapside.

Let's get back to the room, in the plain house at the cheap end of town. The room is dark and windowless. It is lit by a lamp that sits on a plain office desk and the faint glow of computer screen. The tower unit sits under the table with the fan humming quietly. At the table sits a man. He is of medium build, with hazel eyes and light brown hair cropped close to the skull. He wears a pair of blue jeans and a white cotton oxford shirt with the collars buttoned down with a black Harrington jacket with tartan lining. He is average, you would walk past him in the street and not think twice.

Reunion Part Six - Deepak Ghosh

Deepak lay back on the sofa, freshly lit joint in hand and naked as the day he was born. Looking out of the fourth floor window, London hummed and bustled in the night. Even at this late hour, the city was full of buses, taxis and groups of people moving from pubs to clubs to drink and dance the working week away.

Reunion - Part Five

April 1988.

David Brook opened his eyes. He was lying on a wooden floor and he could smell burning. Pushing himself up on one arm he noticed that there was a sticky blotch on the floor where his head had been and then, with a wince he realised his head was cut above his left eye. In a fit of pique he wiped at the mark on the floor with his shirt sleeve and then stopped suddenly, not wanting to get his school shirt covered in blood and have to explain to his mother how it got there when he got home.

Reunion - Part Four

Micky Williams' day had been a long one. He had been on his last 12 hour shift at the hospital and spent most of it cleaning up cuts on drunk revellers. It was Saturday night and Sunday morning in town. He despaired of the so called "youth of today". He was only 40, but didn't remember his nights out on the town as a medical student to be so over the top. Most of his patients were full of alcohol, coke and God knew what else and with an average age of 22. As a doctor on the accident and emergency ward at New Hill Hospital, he saw the dark underbelly of the city and there were times he often thought he should take a cushy GP's job in the country. There was part of him though that refused to be so jaded.

Reunion - Part Three

It was ten minutes to show time. Jennifer sat at her dressing room table going through emails and letters from fans. Her personal assistant Fronq was sat on the couch reading from a sheaf of papers marked with a pink circle at the top left hand corner. His way of sorting the wheat from the chaff. Of course, everyone got some kind of response from her even if it was a signed photo and a standard letter of thanks. The things that Jennifer wanted to keep high on her public profile got a personal reply.

Reunion - Part Two

Richard Blake couldn't sleep.

He turned over as quietly as he could so as not to wake the person sleeping next to him to look at the clock on the bedside table. It read 3.23 am. His body was slick with sweat which predominantly was to do with the fact that the air conditioning in the room was pathetic but also had much to do with what he and his partner had been doing not ten minutes ago. 

Reunion - Part One

Reunion

The invitation arrived on Tuesday. It was a single piece of card with the school photo of the year David Brook left. Underneath the photo was emblazoned "Reunion! New Hill High School Class of '89!" There was a Facebook group and an email address by which to RSVP.