Script quote on the wrist

You talk about the Rhyl trip, the fire alarm during Macbeth, the way Sunita cried when the coach broke down on the A49. Helen asks where you went after sixth form. You tell her Leeds, then Lisbon, then nowhere in particular for a while. She nods as if she already knew, because she was always the one who could tell which of you would leave and which would come back for the lamp posts and the chip shop.

At closing time the caretaker is stacking chairs and turning off the urn. Helen digs a biro out of her handbag, asks for a beer mat, and writes something small in the corner. It is the line everybody signed in the leavers' book and nobody read twice: we part only to meet again. She taps it with one finger and says, 'You still owe me a Bacardi Breezer from the Christmas disco.'

You fold the beer mat into your coat pocket and forget it until Tuesday, when you find it at the bus shelter on the ring road. The rain has softened the ink into a blue ghost, but the words still hold, leaning into each other like old friends at a bar, and you stand there reading them until the bus is gone.