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.
Neil decides it’s best to stay here. ‘There’s a nice bar on the lower ground floor.’ His word is decision. We nod and clatter downstairs, walking through clouds of various aromas from different dishes carried past. My phone has a notification on it, telling me I’ve been added to a group chat called ‘Better Out Than In’ and my smile settles into my stomach.
‘You staying at mine later?’ Joshua asks, lips brushing my neck.
‘If you want me to?’ Gretel says, looking right at him innocently as we reach the ground floor. A grab of my arse indicates he does.
The bar’s crowded but dying down enough that we’re able to cram ourselves onto a circular table.
‘Right. Shots! Shots?’ Neil says and everyone groans but accepts the challenge. He returns