The Locked Room (Ruth Galloway #14)(4)

‘Is Fatima coming?’

‘She said she’d try but I think it’s hard. With work and the kids.’

Fatima was the third of their triumvirate at school. Ruth vaguely recognises the male names but she definitely remembers Kelly Sutherland, who was the acknowledged queen of their year, cool and fashionable with a boyfriend who waited for her outside the school gates on a motorbike. Ruth doesn’t think they ever exchanged more than two words together. Also, she still can’t understand why women change their names when they get married.

Alison, like Ruth, has never been married. At school, Ruth, Alison and Fatima were ‘the clever ones’, collecting prizes every year and studying in the library when their contemporaries were experimenting with drugs behind the gym. The Three Amigas, they called themselves. At a plate-glass comprehensive in the eighties, it wasn’t assumed that most people would go on to university. By the time they took their A levels, the three girls were part of an elite group who had special lessons on completing UCCA forms and applying for grants. Full grants still existed in the eighties; Ruth couldn’t have gone to university without one. Ruth and Alison had been at primary school together, Fatima joined them in the third year of secondary, noticeable for her elegance (which transcended her inevitable nickname, ‘Fatty’) and for being one of the only black students. Eltham was a multiracial area but this wasn’t yet evident in Ruth’s school. Eltham was later to become infamous for the murder of Stephen Lawrence, a young black man killed by white thugs as he waited for a bus, but, even in the early eighties, there was a racist undertone to daily life that Ruth might not have noticed if it hadn’t been for Fatima. ‘They mean eloquent for a black person,’ Fatima explained when collecting a debating prize. ‘They’re surprised I’m not speaking patois.’ In fact, Fatima’s father, Reginald, had the poshest voice Ruth had ever heard. He was a doctor, something that even impressed Ruth’s mother.

Ruth went to UCL to study archaeology, Alison to Bristol to study English and Fatima to Edinburgh to study medicine. Ruth and Alison both won prizes at the final assembly but it was Fatima who was Student of the Year in 1986. Fatima is now a GP in north London, married with two children. Alison did a post-graduate degree at Columbia and lived in New York for over twenty years, teaching and working as a freelance journalist. She is now back in London, but Ruth hasn’t seen her since a hasty drink after Jean’s funeral. Ruth had been very touched when Alison turned up at the church.

Ruth finds a parking space near the pub. Alison says she’ll meet her outside. ‘It’s awful going into a bar on your own.’ Ruth had thanked her but she thought that, if Alison really feels self-conscious about going into a south London pub, then she must have changed. This was the woman who had lived on her own in Manhattan, after all.

When Ruth first sees Alison, standing huddled in a red, fake-fur jacket under the twinkly fairy lights of the Black Lion, she thinks that her friend hasn’t changed at all. Same short hair, same glasses, although these have trendy black frames, unlike the battered specs of childhood. They hug and go into the pub. The Eltham Park reunion is in a private room upstairs and Alison says she needs a drink first. It’s only when Ali takes off her coat that Ruth realises that she has changed. She looks diminished somehow and, close up, her face is gaunt and lined. Was Ali always this small? Ruth is only five foot five, yet she seems to dwarf the figure beside her.

Ruth buys red wine for Alison and lime and soda for herself.

‘To us.’ They clink glasses.

‘You look well, Ruth.’ Ruth feels underdressed. She didn’t bring any smart clothes with her so is wearing jeans and a blue jumper that’s slightly too big for her. She did wash her hair though; it’s still damp at the back.

‘So do you,’ she says.

‘Thank you,’ says Alison. Then, ‘I’ve lost quite a lot of weight.’

So that’s it. Alison isn’t shorter, she’s thinner. Without the coat, she is twig-like, her head with its oversized glasses almost too big for her body.

‘I went to Lean Zone,’ says Alison. ‘I lost three stone.’

‘Great!’ says Ruth. She knows this is what you are meant to say when someone has lost weight. After all, ‘Have you lost weight?’ is universally considered to be a great compliment. Ruth never feels that it is, though. Partly it’s the word ‘weight’, so solid and uncompromising. Also it’s the implication that the speaker feels that this diminution is devoutly to be wished, if not long overdue.

‘I just wanted to feel healthier,’ says Alison, almost defensively.

‘That’s great,’ says Ruth again. ‘I really must lose some weight.’

‘I’ll send you a link to the website,’ says Alison. Which wasn’t the answer Ruth wanted.

‘Shall we go and join the reunion?’ she says.



For one panicky moment, Ruth thinks that she doesn’t know anyone in the room. There seem to be middle-aged men everywhere, grey-haired or balding. To her surprise one of these old men – these dads – immediately comes up to talk to them.

‘Ruth?’

Ruth still doesn’t recognise him. It’s Alison who says, ‘Daniel? Daniel Breakspeare?’

‘Danny. Yes.’

Ruth looks dumbly at the bald man in a suit. In the sixth form Daniel Breakspeare had been her boyfriend. They went out together for almost a year. Her mother had liked him and never failed to tell Ruth that he’d ‘done very well for himself’ since school. He’s a plumber, Ruth seems to remember, and now runs his own company. That explains the suit and the Rolex watch protruding subtly, but not modestly, from Danny’s shirt cuff. Ruth wouldn’t have been able to pick him out in a police line-up.