Clara Bennett stood at the threshold of Sarah Thompson’s Manchester townhouse, clutching her vintage clutch bag like a lifeline. The familiar hum of Midland accents, once playground whispers turned dinner-table gossip, now felt like background noise in a world she barely recognized. In her thirties now, her childhood friends had bloated into middle-aged confidence, their laughter echoing off the chandelier. Sarah, soft around the edges but still vibrant, barreled forward, engulfing her in a hug that smacked of old embraces. “Clara! For God’s sake, look at you! You haven’t changed a bit!” she squealed, dragging her deeper into the party. “We thought you’d ghost us after twenty-five years!”
Clara stiffened slightly. The living room buzzed with photos from youth—Michael Carter, now an overweight barrister in a tartan tie, hooted from the sofa. “If it isn’t our class poet! Still the picture of poise, I see,” he jeered, clapping a hand beside him. Clara sat, her knee-length skirt crumpling beside his loafers, as questions piled in.
“Still at the library? Not tied to anyone?” Michael’s smirk was sharp as cutlery.
“Not married,” she replied tersely, fiddling with her tea.
Jane Whitaker, in a cream sweater paired with Manolo Blanks heels, leaned forward. “You were the belle back in Eton, Clara. All the boys wrote you sonnets. Where’d you lose it?”
“I didn’t lose it,” Clara muttered, her eyes drifting to the chocolate fudge cake Sarah had ordered from a boutique in the Peak District—her childhood dream of grandeur, now drab and overpriced.
Jane didn’t relent. “What about Sebastian Arnold? You two were inseparable at the prom. He wrote that heartfelt letter to you, remember?”
Clara stiffened. Sebastian, once a sensitive boy with glasses, had become a corporate lawyer in London, divorced with two children. “His wife left him. Drink, they say. Tragic.” Michael’s tone was almost dismissive.
A silence hung, heavy as the antique chandelier. Clara’s gaze flitted to the framed photo of Sarah and her husband, Daniel, grinning in a Cotswolds garden. *Full*, she thought. *So full.* While others had careers and children, she was a relic in a tweed jacket, working with books instead of people.
Michael’s laugh snapped her back. “Remember when you turned down Richard’s proposal? A man who adored you!”
“It wasn’t meant to be,” she said flatly, recalling Richard’s proposal during her Oxford year, his wealth and charm unable to soften her pride.
“Too proud, Clara,” Sarah chimed in, decades of resentment in her voice. “You shut out everyone.”
The room leaned closer, their murmurs about her past choices blurring. Clara wanted to flee—back to her gloomy flat in North London, her cat Mr. Whiskers the only company she craved.
The cake was cut, Sarah blowing out candles in a puff of breath. Clara’s portion was sweet, cloying, nothing like the frugal pound cakes of her childhood. “If you had just let someone in,” Sarah whispered as they toasted, “you’d be sipping champagne with a husband now, not this cheap wine.”
Clara left at ten, the M11 train humming her to Nothing Hill. Rain pattered outside her window as she clung to her copy of *King Lear*, its pages yellowed with time. “You miss out on the storm and still live in it,” she murmured, tears smudging the ink.
Back home, the silence was louder than Sarah’s laughter. Mr. Whiskers purred in his basket, oblivious to the woman who had traded a life for stories she’d never write.
In Manchester, Sarah slept soundly, her dreams unmarred by regret. But for Clara, the night was a chapter not yet written—one she’d never dare pen.