Impossible to Forget(37)

Angie had to swallow down her resentment when she saw Becky’s name. Becky had stolen Leon from them, or Leon had allowed himself to be stolen. Angie wasn’t sure which was worse. But at least she’d been invited to the birthday celebrations, even if she was a duty invite. Maybe Becky would feel less threatened by Leon’s old friends from now on. Angie hoped so, because she and Maggie weren’t a threat to her. Well, not really.

Then Maggie rang. At least Angie saw Maggie more frequently than she saw Leon, but even with Maggie it was hard to get together, so busy were they with their day-to-day lives. They spoke every week, though, keeping up with each other’s news. Maggie seemed to be doing well at work and when they did meet, she was always beautifully and expensively dressed (though Angie’s eye was not that tuned in to these things), and she drove a natty little convertible that Angie secretly coveted. But there didn’t seem to be much in her life outside her job. Her social life was made up mainly of work-related dinners or dull parties with her colleagues, and there was no suggestion of any romance. Maybe being a lawyer was like being a policeman. You ended up being married to the job.

‘Have you been invited to the birthday party?’ Maggie asked now.

‘What birthday party?’ Angie had replied, just out of badness because she knew the suggestion that Maggie had put her foot in it would make her squirm.

It did.

‘For Leon’s boy’s birthday, Thomas, you know.’ And then, ‘Oh my God! Have they not invited you? I’m so sorry. That’s so insensitive of me. I had no idea. I just assumed because I’d got one that . . . oh God. How embarrassing.’

Angie, grinning down the phone, let her off the hook. ‘You’re so easy to wind up, Mags. I’m only kidding,’ she said. ‘Of course I got one. Are you going to go?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ tutted Maggie. ‘You can be very irritating, you know, Angie Osborne. Anyway, I thought that if you were invited then we could go together and if it’s totally awful, we can slope off and go and get a cup of tea somewhere. What do you think?’

Angie liked the idea a lot. She was determined to try a little harder with Becky from this point on, but it would be easier to do that with Maggie by her side. Leeds was less than an hour away and Maggie had the natty car. If she drove them there Angie wouldn’t even have to fork out for the train fare.

‘Why not?’ she replied. ‘Let’s go and meet Leon’s progeny!’

So, a plan was made. On the day of the party, Saturday 6 September, Maggie would pick her up from the flat and drive them both to Leon’s house.

But that was before anyone knew that it would be the day of the biggest funeral since Winston Churchill’s.

When Maggie picked Angie up there was not a soul out on the street. Everyone, it appeared, was inside watching the service on the television. Angie had no television and wouldn’t have watched anyway, but Maggie seemed quite aggrieved.

‘You would have thought that they’d push the party back a couple of hours,’ she said as she set off down the deserted road. ‘I’m taping the service, but I would much rather be watching it in real time.’

‘Why?’ asked Angie. For once she wasn’t trying to be difficult. She really didn’t understand. ‘You didn’t know her.’

Maggie turned and stared at Angie before snapping her head back to look at the road. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Of course, I didn’t know her, but it feels like I did.’

Angie shook her head. Wasn’t this just rubbernecking of the worst possible kind?

‘And those poor boys,’ Maggie continued. ‘They’ve lost their mother.’

Angie sniffed. ‘Lots of people lose their mothers,’ she said. ‘That’s just life. And she wasn’t even royal any more. Not that that should make any difference. I can’t see why one dead rich person merits all this fuss.’

Angie could feel the irritation rising up from Maggie, who had clenched her jaw so hard that Angie could see the outline of it through her cheek.

‘Well,’ said Maggie huffily. ‘I’m just saying that I, for one, would have liked to have watched it. But we are where we are. Now, there’s a map on the back seat. I’ve written the route down on that piece of paper. Can you navigate once we get into Leeds? I’m okay in the city centre, but I get a bit lost in the suburbs.’

Angie smiled to herself. Of course, Maggie had the route written down already.

‘Yep,’ she said, ‘but don’t blame me if I get us lost.’

‘You can’t get lost. All you have to do is just . . .’ Maggie turned to face her and then realised that Angie was joking. She rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, ha ha,’ she said. ‘Very droll.’

Leon’s house turned out to be a neat little semi in a road of neat little semis, each nearly identical, with neat square gardens at the front and clean cars parked on neat driveways to the side. It was Angie’s idea of hell.

‘How has this happened?’ she asked. ‘Our lovely Leon living in this suburban horrorfest.’

‘I think it’s quite nice,’ said Maggie.

‘Nice. That’s precisely the word.’ Angie pronounced the word as if it meant the precise opposite. ‘This isn’t Leon, though. He’s got so much more about him than this.’