Alice Adams - Invincible Summer

Sylvie raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘Yes, well. I’m going to stick my neck out here and say that travelling in India is going to be quite a lot more exciting than being stuck in a lab in the basement of the physics department.’

‘In some ways it’s very similar,’ Benedict said, and then laughed at her incredulous expression. ‘No, really. We’re all looking for answers to the big questions in life. Maybe you’ll find enlightenment in an ashram and I’ll find it in a particle accelerator, but the questions are the same.’

Lucien let out a snort. ‘We’re not all looking for the meaning of life, mate. I’m not, and nor’s Eva for that matter.’

Eva glanced across at the reclining figures of her friends, trying to gauge their reaction to Lucien’s comment. Normally she would have been pleased at his allying himself with her, but had she imagined it or had they been a bit sniffy when she recently announced that she’d made it through the fiercely competitive selection process to land a traineeship in derivatives trading at one of the top investment banks? During their undergraduate years she’d constantly struggled to keep pace with Benedict and lived in burning envy of the minimal hours that Sylvie’s course seemed to require, but now, exams finally over, she could at least allow herself a certain amount of satisfaction that her hard work was about to translate into something more tangible than another three years of study. Someone like Benedict might go on to discover the secrets of cold fusion but Eva was reasonably confident that the world of physics wasn’t going to be shaken to the core by her decision to pursue Mammon instead of elusive particles.

Besides, there was an intoxicating buzz around the City these days. The guys manning the Morton Brothers desk at the recruitment fair had only been a few years older than her but they were so effortlessly confident, smart and worldly that they might as well have been a different species. She’d tried for a moment to imagine them scrabbling about for a school bag in a bush in front of a jeering crowd and when she found she couldn’t, had accepted an application form for their graduate programme.

‘Oh, yes.’ Sylvie’s face spread into a smirk. ‘Thanks for reminding me that my best friend’s selling out to The Man.’

‘Are you calling me a sell-out, Comrade?’ Eva paused to search for a suitable comeback but eventually gave up. ‘Okay, fine, I’m selling out, but at least it’s to a high bidder. And do you know what, I have lived the alternative to selling out, and it’s towns full of shit buildings with nothing to do, where everyone dresses the same and has the same views on everything and woe betide you if you’re different in any way.’

Unmoved, Sylvie twirled an imaginary moustache. ‘Capitalist running dog.’

Everyone was smiling now, but each of the smiles contained a glint of steel, the flinty protrusion of a serious undertone which had been the subject of a thousand drink-fuelled arguments over the last few years. Simultaneously aware of the futility of the endeavour yet unable to resist making her case one last time, Eva launched into her spiel.

‘All you have to do is open your eyes and look around at the world: capitalism is the system that’s produced the greatest wealth and freedom. It may not be terribly equal but then, nothing is more equal, and no equality easier to arrange, than ensuring that everyone is equally fucked. Anyway, it’s all right for you,’ she nodded towards Sylvie. ‘You’re one of those people who’ll be fine wherever they go. Not all of us can just sail through life on raw talent, you know.’

Sylvie grinned but didn’t demur, and not for the first time Eva experienced the treacherous sensation that her sadness at going their separate ways was tinged with a hint of excitement about finally wriggling out from Sylvie’s shadow.

‘When do you set off on your travels, anyway? Is your mum picking you up?’ Benedict asked the others, and Eva glanced over to see Lucien’s features assemble themselves into a sort of sneering bravado. It made her think, as she had a thousand times since the night they’d spent together, about how much he hated his vulnerabilities being exposed, and how maybe the reason there had never been a repeat of that night was that he couldn’t quite forgive himself for having revealed them, or her for having seen them.

‘Do be serious,’ he told Benedict. ‘She’s working off her latest drink-driving ban. And she wouldn’t have come anyway, I’m persona non grata with her current bloke, remember?’

‘We’re catching the train up to London this afternoon and staying the night with a mate in Fulham,’ Sylvie said. ‘Our flight doesn’t leave till tomorrow morning.’

‘How about you, Eva? What time does Keith get here?’ Benedict had met Eva’s father, a lecturer in Gender Studies at what he still insisted on referring to as Brighton Poly, on a number of occasions but was still clearly uncomfortable with calling him by his forename. Keith had always eschewed ‘Dad’ as a title, imbued as it was with patriarchal associations of authority. He was another one who had received the news of Eva’s nascent investment banking career with less than unequivocal joy. He’d been so torn between paternal pride and Marxist disgust when she told him, that she thought he might implode in a puff of cognitive dissonance. But, as she’d explained, there was a third way now, a route between the heartless conservatism of old and the unavoidable impracticalities of socialism; a new world order was coming and Eva intended to be a part of it. The Berlin Wall had come down, the Soviet Union had dismantled itself, and while calling it the End of History might be over-egging it a bit, it didn’t feel too grand an assertion to say that it was the dawn of a new era, and not just for a freshly minted graduate.

‘Well, your mother would have been proud,’ he’d allowed eventually, and Eva had swiftly changed the subject, as she always did when that quality of gruffness entered his voice.

‘We’d better get going or we’ll miss the train,’ Sylvie said to Lucien, and Eva looked round at her friends with a sudden sense of something precious sliding away from her.

She didn’t have her camera with her — it had already been packed up with the rest of her things — so instead she tried to snatch the scene out of the air and etch it onto memory: Lucien, eyes darkly gleaming, Sylvie, hair flaming like a radioactive halo in the sunlight, and next to them Benedict, silhouetted against clear blue sky, turning towards her now and, catching her looking at him, breaking into his broad, lopsided smile. Hold it right there, she thought. Everything’s about to change, but just let me keep this moment.

And now there was no putting it off, it was time to say goodbye to Lucien. Eva urgently wished she could have a minute alone with him but Sylvie and Benedict were watching expectantly, so she just sat there as he leant down and dropped a kiss on her face, not quite on the mouth but not quite on the cheek either.

‘See you around, kiddo,’ he said with a grin, and it was all she could do to stop herself reaching up and pulling his face down towards hers, but already Sylvie was tugging at him and off down the hill they went, turning back to wave but still heading inexorably away from library days and party nights and mornings-after and endless afternoons spent huddled together laughing and clutching steaming cups of terrible coffee and everything else that had formed the fabric of their old lives together and which had seemed all along as if it would never end but was now, suddenly and irrevocably, over.

‘Minuscule, isn’t it?’ yelled Benedict cheerfully above the roar of a landing plane as he tossed Eva’s rucksack into the boot of the battered old Peugeot. ‘Best sort of car to have out here, though, you’ll soon see why. The air con doesn’t work, I’m afraid,’ he added as they lowered themselves into their seats.