Authors note: Just the usual disclaimer – I don't own anything mentioned here that's mentioned in Ann M Martin's books. Any characters not in there are mine.
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Dear Shannon
I'm sure we can schedule the reunion for when you're in the USA. And in reply to your questions, yes, Mallory is 26. And yeah, her house is pretty chaotic. I don't know how she does it. You'd think she would have learnt from living with 7 siblings, but I guess she must love it. She and William got married 7 years ago (when Mal was only 19!). I don't think her parents were too happy, but there wasn't a lot they could do. She had her first child two years later, and since then they've been coming regularly. (Except for the year before last, she missed that one, but made up for it by having twins the next year.) So in their house they've got William, Mal, (of course), Stephanie, (5) Kate, (4) Mark, (3) Devon and Jennifer (the twins, 1 ½) and Lisa (4 months). I really don't know how they do it.
As for me, James and I got married the year after Mallory. Brooklynn is 5 and absolutely adorable. Don't even get me started. You'll see her at the reunion anyway – if she doesn't run off and hide with all the people there. She's incredibly shy. I have no idea where she gets it from – neither James or I are shy, and its so frustrating pulling her off my legs any time we leave her at home with anyone else, or take her to kindergarten. But I'll get her out of it somehow.
Now, come on, don't just leave me hanging, tell me about you! And what do you mean you don't think you're going to have kids? How can you not want kids? You're an ex BSC member!
Better go, I'm relief teaching at SMS today. Hope to hear all about you soon!
Kristy
I sighed as I folded Kristy's letter and slipped it back into its envelope. Across the breakfast table my friend Èlodie looked up from her croissant.
"Bad news?" She asked lifting an eyebrow. I've roomed with Èlodie for 5 years now – pretty much since I moved here from America. We were both working as interpreters for the same government department, and her flatmate had recently gone to England. When she heard I was still living in a motel, she offered me the second bedroom at her apartment. We both got on really well. We are very similar in many ways – we're both highly focused, career orientated women. We share a love of languages and watch the same TV shows, and read the same books. We have arguments like all roommates, but they never last long.
"Let me guess…" Èlodie continued. "It was your mother?" Any letters from my mother tends to get me sighing or moaning about something she's said.
"She's asked you when you're going to settle down and start a family again, hasn't she?" Èlodie said sympathetically. That's another similarity. Our mothers are both constantly harping on about weddings and how we need to settle down with "a nice young man."
"Close." I replied. "It was an old friend of mine. She's demanded why I don't want kids."
"So?" Èlodie asked. "Just tell her why. You don't have a problem telling anyone else why."
"Kristy's not a person you just tell things to." I said. "I really don't know if I want to go back there."
Not surprisingly, Èlodie looked confused.
"Back where?"
"Stoneybrook. Where I grew up. Some friends of mine are organizing a reunion."
Now here's where we are totally different. Èlodie went to school in Paris, where she still lives. So her best friends are still close and she sees them regularly. She would never understand that I never belonged properly to the BSC in the first place, and that I would be even more out of place now. By the sounds of things they all had children. And were married. And some of them still lived in the small town they grew up in, where as I had moved on. I lived in one of the biggest cities in the world, and I loved it. I knew I had changed since middle school and I was happy with who I was now. I didn't want to go back and feel even more like a fish out of water than I had with them back in middle school.
Èlodie now looked even more confused. "You don't want to go back?" She asked slowly.
"No." I admitted. "I like where I am now." Now, poor Èlodie looked totally confused.
"But you're not going back for good!" She exclaimed. "You leave Paris for work all the time!"
"Yes, but I haven't gone back to Stoneybrook since I left. And I'm not sure I want to now."
It's true too. For 5 years I have managed to dodge going home. I have met my parents in various other cities in America, always coming up with some reason not to go back to Stoneybrook. But now there was no way out. I sighed again.
The door opened and a small, dark haired woman breezed in, holding a small child by the hand and a baby in her other arm. Èlodie jumped up to take the baby, exclaiming "Eva! You're early!"
We laughed. Eva is never early any more, with two small children to get ready whenever she goes out. Now, I hate to say it, but Eva's one of the reasons I've decided I don't want children. Back when all three of us, Èlodie, Eva, and I, were starting out as interpreters we had talked about children. All of us were at the "maybe" stage. We had figured we had plenty of time to decide, and we had reassured each other that having children did not mean we had to give up our careers. Eva had got married a few years ago, still undecided on the children issue. Then without warning, Eva announced she was pregnant. The plan was for her to take a few months off to have the baby, and then she would come back to work and leave the baby with a nanny. Her husband owned a chain of stores across France, so she didn't have to come back for financial reasons. She just loved the work. But then she had Nicolas, and that all changed. We were shocked when she announced she wasn't coming back. I know it's not all that unusual for a woman to decide to give up work for good to be a mother. But Eva was the best interpreter in our department. Having been born in Germany, with an English mother and a German father, she grew up bilingual. She moved to France as a child, and so was soon trilingual, and to add to that she had learned Italian and Spanish at school and Japanese at university. But I doubted she'd used a Japanese word in years, and not a whole lot of Italian or Spanish.
Ok, I know that's her choice, even if I don't agree with it. But that's one of the reasons I don't ever want to have kids. I would never want to let my years of learning go to waste like that, using my Spanish for nothing more than "I'd like to book two rooms for three weeks please," or other tourist phrases. And I have to admit, I wondered how fulfilling she found her life now, compared to work. But I knew the rest of the ex BSCers wouldn't understand that. Back in school they had all known they wanted children. But while I enjoyed babysitting, and I even enjoy spending time with Eva's children, I'm always glad to hand them back.
I was brought back to the present by the mention of Stoneybrook in Eva and Èlodie's conversation.
"Yeah, Shannon's friends from school are having a reunion. She doesn't want to go though."
I sighed. "Can we just drop it?" I asked. I was relieved when they turned to other subjects. Now I could forget about it too.