Bob Mather made his way to the buffet table. He hated these things; industry dos, corporate meet and greets, the whole networking bullshit.
He told himself to not look bored, to project his regional-assistant-trading-directorness.
The buffet table was surrounded by fat people in suits troughing away at the food cos it was free.
What was wrong with people? Why did people let themselves go so much? Everyone they’d packed into this room was between 45 and 60, and yet, Bob reckoned, he must look 10 years younger than anyone else here, more if he hauled his belly in and did that frowny thing that dragged his hairline a bit closer to the front of his head. Still, he should try to eat something, for appearance’s sake.
He sighed. The white wine was lukewarm, and so were the vol-au-vents. The vol-au-vents were grey, the white wine yellow.
It was the sudden laugh that made him freeze, overcooked salmon bite half way to his lips. A deep throated rasp of a laugh that could only belong to one person, and wrenched him back almost thirty years, to one break time at school, when Bob Mather was 14.
Maria Greenhalgh was also 14, and had just grown up, over the course of about a fortnight. She came in one day a foot taller, another day she spent tripping over her own feet, another she kept sweeping pencil cases and exercise books off her desk with sudden breasts each time she turned in her seat. The biggest difference was that she stopped laughing, suddenly useless in her new body.
Bob had watched from the muddy football field as she found herself at the back of the cross country pack, confused concentration on her new face, trying to turn her new hips, to plant one new leg in front of the other without falling over, forearms holding her new breasts in place.
And then, one break time, after weeks without hearing it, there was that laugh again. A deeper laugh, a throatier laugh, innocent and lascivious at the same time. Bob had looked at her, and it was abruptly clear; she’d caught up with herself; she was suddenly complete, in control, self-confident.
Stunning.
Laughing.
From that moment on, Bob was lost. As were all the other boys in the class. Maria, oestrogen pulsing from each pore, exuded sexuality, as the testosterone gathered yellowly on Bob’s face, or stood, sore, behind the physics textbook permanently clamped in front of him whenever she was in the room.
She moved schools at the end of the year and set him unhappily free.
Bob bit down on the salmon, and scanned the room, trying to look casual. When he found her, and he needed the help of that laugh, he could’ve cried. If the years had been kind to him, they’d been devastating to her. It was gone. All gone.
She was like everyone else here now.
Broken. Old. Fat.
The fresh sparky eyes were hidden amid flesh and millions of lines, and when she smiled or giggled, which she seemed to be doing all the time, the wrinkles pulled from the corner of her mouth. Her neck was tight with tendons, and her hair grey. Why wouldn’t you at least dye your hair? He thought to himself.
She was working the room; he recognised the technique; and as he watched she successfully broke away from some sweaty accountant from Swindon and turned towards Bob.
He didn’t know how to set his face. Should he let the pity show? Pretend to not recognise her, to let her keep the secret of her succulent past?
In the end, he decided to just return her smile, and be ready with consolations when she recognised him.
“Hello; Bob,” she said, looking at his name-tag, and reaching out her hand in a mock-formal way, “and where does your cog fit in this machinery then?” She smiled. Bob looked at her, waiting for realisation to light in her eyes.
Nothing.
“I mean, where do you work,” she said after a few seconds
“Are you ok?” she said, after a few more seconds.
“It’s me,” he said, into the silence of her bemused face, “Bob. Bob Mather.”
“Oh,” she said. “Sorry,” she said, “Erm, I don’t, erm…”
“Bob Mather,” he said.
“Ye-es.”
“Robert Mather, Bob Mather,”
She looked blank.
“Bob Mather,” he was almost shouting now. “You were in my class at school.”
“Oh,” she said. “Oh I’m so sorry. My memory is terrible.” She paused again.
“So what did you teach?” she said.