Three of a (kind of) Kind
Three girls clustered together on the school playground.
They were stone stacks in the seething sea of people - together because they were new to the school, together because no one else wanted to know them.
Without speaking, they took themselves to the railings and looked out from the school grounds, to the street beyond.
Mandy spoke first.
“Who fancies getting out of here and going to the cafe over the road?”
“Yeah. Okay,” Debbie agreed.
Jo was smaller than the others, and was usually very cautious. However, being shunned by the other kids had roused a rebel that lay deep inside her. She nodded.
Marching over the invisible boundary that ran across the ground at the school gate earned each girl a detention. However, that action formed and cemented a friendship between them that would persist through the years.
They sat down at the same table they always used. It was thirty years later but it still seemed to be their table.
As rituals go, meeting up in the café each year, on the very same day they had first gone there, was easy to keep up. Throughout the trials of life, they had never missed an anniversary yet. Soaked into the wall next to the table were their words over the years: the excited chatting about boys, the agonies of exams, the cool dissections of University life. On the table before them, mugs had been joined by wedding invitations, baby toys and photos of family occasions.
And the thing was, these events had all happened at the same time to all three of them. A curious synchronicity existed between the friends. It wasn’t as if they were copying or following one another. It had just been organic. Every one of life’s steps had been tackled at exactly the same time.
They chatted as if they met every day. The conversation was easy, the silences were chances to wallow in the happy company of one another once again .
When Jo expressed exasperation about her husband, the other two nodded. There was no need for detail. They all knew what husbands were like.
“Kelsey has a boyfriend,” Mandy told them.
Claire answered that Connor had been talking incessantly about a girl from his class but no one was allowed to mention how he might feel about her. Each woman sighed and took a sip of latte as consolation for having teenage children.
Each hinted at the murky exploration of remortgaging homes that they had been through.
The lunch was served. They had all ordered the same lunch. Three mozzarella and tomato paninis.
Jo looked around and surreptitiously pulled a sachet of salad cream from her handbag. She knew the café only served mayonnaise but she enjoyed salad cream instead. Claire and Mandy watched aghast as she sprayed the vivid yellow condiment over the mixed leaves that garnished her plate.
After a moment, almost as a distraction, Mandy expertly slid a knife into the panini and opened it up. She stuffed the fries that she had ordered as a side, declaring that they all could share them, into the space she had made. Claire looked out of the window and thought dark carbohydrate thoughts whilst Jo ostentatiously snaffled a few fries for herself while she could.
After taking the fries, Jo began to cut her panini into small pieces. She worked methodically, slicing her lunch into squares. It was hypnotic. Her two friends were distracted by the whole process and all eating stopped. Only when her operation was completed, did Jo begin to take the fragments of panini delicately between thumb and forefinger and delicately serve them to herself.
Eating resumed. Three separate people, minds boggling at what they had seen.
It wasn’t until they began to talk again that it happened. They had been a trio of raindrops, scattered over a window. Now, as they ran down the pane, so they met, gathered and became a whole once more.
