It had seemed like a good idea when James phoned and suggested getting the old gang together and spending a weekend at Crickley Hall, his estate in the countryside.
Now we all sat in the cold next to David, crouched down in the heather, as he waited to get the perfect photograph of a wild grouse. We’d been here all afternoon and I’d had enough of David’s endless photography lessons.
Maybe it was too much to expect us to all be the same people as we had been studying creative writing as students. James had gone into publishing and earned his modest fortune, and now pretended to be part of the gentry. Teresa and Robert were still together, both accountants, but all Teresa kept talking about were her weight issues, while Robert nodded occasionally to pretend he was listening to her.
Seyi was the only one of us to have a novel published, some sort of trashy science fiction that we all would have sneered at when we were students. Now Emily and Steven hung around him like groupies, in awe of his every utterance. Greg, who’d been the life and soul of the party in the past, had now found God and spent a lot of time judging us and quoting the bible.
I suspected I wouldn’t come along to the next reunion. Perhaps it’s best to leave some parts of our past on the bookshelf and move on to  a new chapter.
Written as part of Sunday Photo Fiction. Write a story of around 200 words based on the photo prompt given (above). For more details visit HERE.
For more stories based on this week’s prompt, visit HERE.
IAIN KELLY 
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