Turning Thirty by Mike Gayle Page B

questions of a more personal nature.
    â€˜Anyone special in your life?’ she began. ‘Any kids? Any pets?’
    â€˜Special people, one ex-girlfriend back in the States. Kids, definitely nil, and, er, pets, nil.’ I was relieved to get it over. ‘What about yourself?’
    She took a deep breath and began. ‘Er . . . special people, one boyfriend who is extremely late. Kids, none – that’s discounting the hundred or so I teach, of course. Pets, yes, two boy cats – Larry and Sanders.’
    There was a break in the conversation again while the barman checked the drinks order with me. I used the time to make a decision. The question was: do I want to see her again? The answer was: yes.
    â€˜Listen,’ I began, ‘how late is your bloke?’
    â€˜Put it this way,’ she said, ‘when he arrives I’m going to have to have a right strop with him for at least half an hour.’
    â€˜Well, feel free to say no, if you want to, but why don’t you come over and say hello to Gershwin? He’s here as well. It’s his thirtieth today. He’d love to see you.’
    â€˜Thirty,’ she said, ‘I had my thirtieth back in December. It was all right, actually. Good fun.’ She paused. ‘Are you sure?’
    â€˜About Gershwin having his thirtieth birthday?’
    She stared at me menacingly. ‘No, about joining you. I don’t want to crash the party.’
    â€˜You’d be doing me a huge favour,’ I explained. ‘It’s just me, Gershwin, Zoë and a whole bunch of new Gershwin friends who I don’t know and who don’t listen to my supposedly amusing anecdotes.’ Ginny looked confused. ‘I’ll explain on the way. Come and join us, or I might be forced to do something really drastic.’
    â€˜Like what?’
    I raised my eyebrows, grabbed a tray for the drinks and left the question hanging there. Ginny followed behind.

twenty-six
    â€˜Gershwin!’ I called, as I reached the table. ‘Guess who I’ve just bumped into?’
    He looked up and, once his brain had got into gear, practically leapt out of his seat to hug Ginny.
    â€˜I haven’t seen you since our wedding!’ said Zoë, giving her a kiss too. ‘Oh, it’s great to see you.’
    â€˜It’s good to see you both too,’ said Ginny. ‘I should’ve kept in touch. I’m just really crap at it.’
    â€˜I think we all are,’ said Gershwin.
    â€˜I’m the reason for the delay in your drinks,’ Ginny explained, for the benefit of the rest of the table, who didn’t know what was going on. ‘I bumped into Matt and we were just trying to fill in the last six years or so.’ She laughed and looked over at me. ‘Gershwin, Matt and I used to go to school together.’
    â€˜Everybody, this is Ginny,’ said Gershwin, gesturing to the entire table. ‘And, Ginny . . .’ I could see from his face that he was trying to work out whether it was worth introducing them all individually. He decided against it. ‘ . . . this is everybody.’
    Once Gershwin sat down, conversation at the table started up again almost immediately. The first topic of conversation that sprang up was an offshoot of Ginny’s arrival: what had Gershwin been like at school? Out of politeness everyone looked to Ginny to give the first illustration, so she told them the story about when we were thirteen and Gershwin, Pete, Elliot and I went to see Breakdance – The Movie . Even though we couldn’t dance, let alone spin on our heads to save our lives, we were so worked up by the film that we thought we’d be able to do it right there in the cinema. We thought we looked fantastic in our silky tracksuit bottoms and heavily logoed T-shirts, but all we got for our troubles were carpet burns, headaches and a four-week ban from the cinema. This started off a