Full of trepidation - people you think of as forever 14 turn out to be 60; like a stage make-up demo only with no make-up. Thirty-odd women, each with a life story come and gone, so will the old antagonisms, the classroom rivalries and shared teenage passions, count for anything or even be remembered?
The first thing I realised was that everyone else felt nervous too. For one afternoon we were on stage in a different school play, wearing wrinkles and grey hair. But then the talking took over and we became a group of wise, interesting and interested women, each riding on the family and career she had built but turning briefly aside to rekindle other friendships. Faces and in some respects personalities were the same-but-different: kind capable Marjorie and sensible Marilyn, who had organised the event; dreamy artistic Hilary with the flair for cake decoration, who wafted back as a fashion designer under the same cloud of fair curls; short forthright Mary, who had spent the last 40+ years having five children and raising poultry and sheep on a farm near Flagg. Little Jane Gregory and tall Jane Clemson had quietly gone on being best friends at whatever distance, and worked their way through teaching careers with steady success.
Sylvia had never seemed particularly happy at school and tended to resent the accident of money that gave our family more advantages than hers, until she discovered the violin at 15, fixed on a future in music and became a professional cellist and strings teacher. I couldn't work out whether the challenge in her gaze was reflecting that resentment or my concern over it.
Georgina I have seen and corresponded with on various occasions and we could take up where the last emails left off, on our children and her 102-year-old mother of course.
Susan Morley had defied the teachers by training as a nursery nurse instead of aiming for university, and reported with satisfaction that she was now outranked them as an early-years Ofsted inspector.
Helen, who always seemed big and determined and made me feel small, had married a farmer and spent 35 years on the dairy at Chelmorton.
Susan Evans had worked steadily and sensibly through secretarial and administrative positions since leaving school at 18, and had been school bursar at St Anne's since her children started there 30 years ago.
Several had become teachers, with great success; some were civil servants, one a librarian, few if any were scientists, apart from Georgina - less surprising given the atrocious science teaching at the school (except for Mr Richardson in Biology, whom everyone liked).
The person who had done most and travelled farthest was Linda Phillips, now a charity organiser in South Africa running orphanages and AIDS clinics in a life so vivid with colour, warmth, needs, demands, rewards and frustrations that coming back to Buxton must have been like re-entering a frigid cage. But her best friend Belinda, along with five others from our class, had died years ago - a thought that cast a chill, as the rest of us neither looked nor felt our age.
Georgina and I had left after O-levels and to some extent missed out on the special bonds that linked survivors of Cavendish sixth form. It was disconcerting to find that people remembered me first for being a year younger than most of them - as if that should make a difference at 59/60 - and less surprising that they remembered my father's name. Maybe I came over as the shy anxious second-former I always felt I was, a late-comer and late developer - but I hope not, as for me it was a day of realising the warmth and supportiveness of women and the value of keeping up friendships over the years and miles.
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