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awkwardly hugging her. We haven’t exactly lost touch, but nor are we bosom buddies. Partly it’s cowardice: I’ve never quite forgiven myself for how Sally and I dumped her as a roommate in our second year, but I’ve never had the guts to properly have it out with her either. While she and Sally made a full recovery, we never quite managed to repair our friendship. She’s moved out of London and had a clutch of kids, our lives so different it’s been all too easy to let it slide. The other reason makes me feel ashamed: I don’t think I could stand the sense thatI’d ended up being the one on the outside, she and Sally signed up to a club that I was blackballed from.
    “It was beautiful though, wasn’t it?” says Lola. I want to agree, but it feels like the wrong word.
    “Yes. Was she Catholic? I don’t remember her ever . . .”
    “William is,” she says, looking over to him. “I only saw her a couple of months ago.” She looks at me, helpless, like she’s hoping I’ll have some kind of blinding observation that will make sense of it all.
    “Where?” I ask. “Was she in London?” It still hurts, that she could be so close and never call.
    “New York.” There’s an awkward pause. “She invited me out for my birthday.”
    “Was she . . . did she seem well?”
    “She was great. You know—Sally!”
    I wonder what that means. Lola was always such a foot soldier, running to keep up with Sally: I can’t imagine her ever promoting her to an equal. I look over at William, still trying to imagine the two of them together. He’s moved across the room, flanked by a stern-looking man with a beakish nose who must be his father. I don’t see it so much in their faces, as in the way they inhabit their suits, their ramrod posture—years of breeding translated into a million tiny signifiers. I smile at Lola, too proud to ask for details, to admit that I don’t know if her Sally—the polished married lady—was the same as mine.
    “And they still don’t know what happened,” adds Lola, her voice low.
    “What do you mean?” I ask, the hairs on my arms prickling to attention.
    “She was meant to be picking Madeline up from school, but she never turned up. She was somewhere out in the depths of New Jersey in the middle of the day. No one knowswhy. It was pouring with rain. She just lost control of the car, spun into the median strip.”
    Is that why it’s taken weeks for the funeral to happen? I’ve thought of her, lying there, cold in some morgue, waiting to come home. I haven’t even voiced the thought, ashamed of how ghoulish it seems, but it wasn’t that—I was worried about her, in a childish sort of a way. It seemed so long, but perhaps they wouldn’t release her back to her family until they had some answers.
    “It would’ve been instant, wouldn’t it?” I demand, bile rising in my throat.
    “Yeah, I’m sure it was,” says Lola, tearing up. “She wouldn’t have suffered.” She reaches out and grabs my hand, her fingers tight around mine, their grip anchoring me in the living present. She always had that easy, instinctive warmth about her. My neurotic, competitive, younger self never valued it enough; it was easier to protect my position with Sally by joining in her sly, semi-affectionate mockery. Lola was an easy target—earnest, her heart worn proudly on her sleeve—but we were the ones who got it wrong.
    “Let’s not be so crap at keeping in touch,” I plead, and she nods, mute, overcome by emotion.
    “Lola?” interrupts a glamorous-looking American woman, around our age but far better groomed. She looks both younger and older all at the same time, her figure-hugging, beige wool tube dress reeking of money, the gold hoops at her ears setting off her caramel highlights. She reminds me of one of those gated communities so beloved of Americans, all pristine façades and manicured lawns, sinister in their refusal to let anything be less than perfect.
    “Mara, hi! This is