Girls catch up over lunch, is what we do. Once upon a time we were all in blue pinafores in the same place at the same time; and all of a sudden, some twelve years later, over noodle soups at Madam Saigon, we are New York and London and Singapore, me and Henny and Andrea, a King Chiku shake and a lime-mint ice blended and a sour plum drink.

It’s like Jacq said the other night, after dinner at Da Paolo, where the chef—hello, dark eyes and stubble—kept looking over and smiling. We like boys, what can you do. Oh, Da Paolo Pizza Bar, everyone don’t waste time and go there immediately. The ceiling is furry with cowhide, and the bottles of Aranciata are lined up at the ready. There is pizza with smoked salmon and pesto, and pizza with ham and little mushrooms, and pizza with mascarpone and truffles. And when the waiterman comes by after to ask if you are interested in dessert, you can, if there are six of you, say, as Ren did, “We’ll take one of everything except the ice cream.” Among the chocolate cake and the profiteroles and the mousse, the lemon meringue tart—a thin layer of tart topped with maybe eight centimetres of cream, browned just so—is that kind of good that, really, it might not be so bad to say, “We’ll take six lemon meringue tarts.”

Hummm. You see what we have been up to, out here.

But.

I was trying to say,

sometime after one in the morning, after dinner at Da Paolo, (after the chef, the pizza, the lemon meringue tart), after sitting around at Jessica’s sister’s place with horoscopes and too many fashion magazines, I was walking Jacq back to her apartment while she walked me to a cab, and, a propos of nothing, she said, “Life is funny lah.”

And the thing is, it is.