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.’

  ‘No,’ disagreed Maggie. ‘This is Leon. It’s just that you’ve always wanted him to be someone else.’

  Angie considered this for a moment.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I want him to be true to himself. And this . . .’ She waved her arm in the direction of the street. ‘This is not it.’

  Maggie got out of the car and popped open the boot from where she took out a small box exquisitely wrapped in blue paper with white curling ribbon. Angie looked at it curiously for a moment. Then it occurred to her what it was.

  ‘Shit!’ she said. ‘Am I supposed to have brought a present?’

  Maggie looked at her, eyebrow raised. ‘Well, it is a birthday party,’ she said sarcastically.

  ‘Oops,’ said Angie. ‘It never even crossed my mind. I don’t suppose . . .’ She looked balefully at Maggie’s box.

  ‘No!’ said Maggie indignantly. ‘This is my gift.’ Then she sighed and rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, I suppose so. I haven’t sealed the card, suspecting that something like this might happen . . .’ She eyed Angie like a schoolteacher with a disappointing pupil. ‘And . . .’ She went back into the boot and brought out a second box identical to the first. ‘I do have this one spare.’

  She grinned at Angie.

  ‘It’s a train and there were some carriages too, so I bought both and got them to wrap them separately. You owe me fifteen quid. Pay me when you’ve got it,’ she added.

  Angie felt humbled. Not only did Maggie know her well enough to know that buying a gift would never have occurred to her, but she had fixed the problem for her too. That was why cool, organised, slightly anal Maggie was her friend. Why she was Maggie’s friend she had absolutely no idea.

  20

  There were blue balloons with Happy First Birthday written on them tied on to the gatepost and attached to the knocker of Leon’s neat front door.

  ‘I love the way people do that with the balloons,’ said Maggie. ‘It makes the birthday into a real community affair. I always smile when I see them.’

  Angie had never seen birthday balloons on houses before. She assumed that this was because having children was so far off her agenda that she had never noticed or maybe it wasn’t something that they did in York, although that seemed unlikely. Then again, Maggie had no children either, so Angie wasn’t sure why it was a practice that had registered with her. They had talked about children from time to time, most recently on the arrival of the birthday party invitation.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s strange that of the four of us, only Leon has settled down and had a kid?’ Angie had asked.

  ‘Not really,’ Maggie replied.

  ‘But I’m thirty-one, and you’re not far behind me,’ Angie had continued, ‘and yet we’re both still single and childless.’

  ‘Child-free,’ corrected Maggie. ‘Happily child-free in my case. And no, I don’t think it’s strange. Unusual maybe, but not when you look at who the four of us are. None of us has taken the traditional path, except Leon. I’m not saying that it won’t happen. Thirty-one is no age and there’s still plenty of time for you to have a baby if that’s what you want.’

  ‘But you don’t want?’ asked Angie. She had always assumed that Maggie wanted children, but now she came to think about it, she realised that it wasn’t something she had ever actually said.

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ Maggie had replied thoughtfully. ‘I love my work and I could only carry on with that and have a child if I employed a nanny. Why have a child if I never see it because I’m always at work?’

  ‘Plenty of women use childcare,’ objected Angie. ‘It doesn’t make them a bad parent.’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Maggie. ‘I think it might even make them a better one. I just know that I wouldn’t want to divide my attention like that. And it’s all immaterial anyway because I don’t have anyone to father a child.’

  ‘Well, that’s easy enough to fix,’ said Angie.

  ‘How? With carefully timed one-night stands? I’m not sure that’s for me,’ laughed Maggie. ‘What about you? Do you still want kids?’

  Angie had thought for a moment. She wasn’t sure that Jax was the fathering kind, but then she didn’t exactly have a lot of experience of fathers in general to know what the fathering kind might be. She did want a baby, though. Or, to put it another way, she couldn’t imagine a future without children in it.

  ‘Yes,’ she’d said. ‘I think I do.’

  Maggie knocked on the door of Leon and Becky’s neat house. They could hear the ear-piercing screeching of small children coming from inside.

  ‘It’s not too late to change our minds,’ said Angie with a smirk.

  The door opened and there stood a harassed-looking Leon, a plastic toy lawnmower in one hand and a disposable nappy in the other.

  ‘Oh, it’s you two. Thank God. Please, come in and talk to me. If I get caught in another conversation about baby signing or swimming lessons for newborns, I shan’t be responsible for my actions!’ He opened the door wide and ushered them in. ‘And on top of all that it’s the bloody funeral and half the mothers are watching it and bawling their eyes out. I was expecting crying children but not crying parents. Hang on.’

  He disappeared into what appeared to be the sitting room and returned a moment later sans nappy just as Maggie was depositing the gifts on the hall table, balancing them carefully on top of a huge pile of others.

  Seeing the identical wrapping, Leon smirked at them both and winked at Maggie. ‘Thanks, Mags.’

  Angie rolled her eyes. ‘And me,’ she said, but she couldn’t quite pull off the fake indignation and grinned back at him. ‘You got me. Presents are always Maggie’s department.’

  ‘You should have pushed the start time back,’ said Maggie pointedly, clearly still irritated about missing the funeral.

  ‘Becky said that,’ said Leon. ‘But I was sure that it wouldn’t make any difference. I mean, the woman’s dead!’ He shook his head in mock despair. ‘How wrong can you be?’

  Maggie raised an eyebrow at Angie but didn’t say anything. ‘Well, it will be over soon enough. Is there anything we can do to help?’

  Leon grinned at her. ‘You always were great in a crisis, Mags,’ he said. ‘But no, I think we have it under control. Becky tried to get the pass the parcel started but no one was interested so she’s given up and gone to join the rest of them gathered around the TV. And the babies are with their mothers so it’s all good. Drink?’

  Maggie looked at her watch as if to question the earliness of the hour, but Angie ignored her.

  ‘Yes, please. What have you got?’

  ‘Red, white, beer and then some organic, non-sugary juice. And water.’

  ‘Beer, please,’ said Angie without missing a beat.

  ‘Coming right up. Mags?’ Leon asked her, but she shook her head.

  ‘Driving,’ she said. ‘I might just go and . . .’

  ‘It’s through there,’ said Leon, nodding in the direction of the television, and Maggie scuttled off.

  Angie followed Leon through the house to the kitchen where a group of men, she assumed the dads, were standing around holding bottles of beer and chatting. Leon was still grasping the lawnmower as if his life depended on it. Suddenly noticing that it was there, he deposited it by the back door next to a little blue plastic truck that also appeared to have been a birthday present, judging by the ribbon adorning its steering wheel.

  ‘This is Angie,’ he said to the assembled crowd. ‘Mate from uni. No kids. Lucky sod.’

  Angie bestowed a grin on them all and then took the proffered beer.

  A few pleasantries were swapped for a moment, but then the men drifted back to their own conversations leaving Angie and Leon to one another.

  ‘This is a great set-up you’ve got here, Lee,’ said Angie, gesturing vaguely. ‘And a garden too. Shall we go outside for a bit? You can show me round your estate.’

  Leon threw a glance towards the sitting room, but everything seemed to be calm in there for the moment, so he nodded. There was a stairgate blocking the way to the back door that he released with a deft flick of his wrist, then opened the door and stepped outside.

  The sky was a pale elephant grey with darker rainclouds looming on the horizon and threatening to roll in.

  Leon looked up appraisingly. ‘It just needs to keep dry until one o’clock, when they all leave,’ he said. ‘Becky wanted to do the whole party outside, but that seems to have fallen by the wayside, what with the funeral. I don’t suppose there’ll be much time left by the time they’ve finished with that, but then we can go back to plan A. Maybe we’ll just end up going on for longer.’

  Angie wasn’t sure exactly what kind of party a bunch of one-year-olds actually required. Could they even walk, let alone run around? She had no idea. Babies were a totally closed book to her. If she had remembered that a birthday gift was required, she would have had no idea what to buy. She wasn’t interested enough to ask Leon about it, though.

  The garden was, like the rest of the house, very ordered, with a green striped lawn in the middle and tidy beds around the edges. There were patches of colour everywhere, all clashing wildly with one another but at the same time creating an overall impression of cohesion.

  ‘Does Becky garden as well as everything else?’ she asked with a smirk. ‘I suspect she is actually Wonder Woman in disguise.’

  From what she had seen of the place so far, Becky seemed to be superhuman. Nothing was either out of place or less than beautiful, although from the little Angie knew about her, this wasn’t surprising. Becky was definitely the kind of person who would make sure that her house radiated just the right vibe.

  However, Leon shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘The garden is all my work.’

  A fond smile crossed his face, as if he saw the garden as an additional child.

  ‘Bloody hell! Really?’ exclaimed Angie. ‘You never fail to surprise me, Lee, but I didn’t have you down as a budding Alan Titchmarsh.’

  Something crossed Leon’s face that might have been hurt at being underestimated, but it was so fleeting that Angie wasn’t sure it had been there at all.

  ‘I’ve always liked growing things,’ he said. ‘When I was a kid, my dad gave me a patch in his garden. I grew veg to start with. Nothing complicated. Carrots, radishes, that kind of thing. But after a couple of years, I switched to flowers. I love putting the colours together, keeping the interest there all year long. It’s dead easy in summer, of course, but from now until spring it’s more of a challenge. Like pitting your wits against Mother Nature.’

  ‘Well, you seem to be winning,’ said Angie appreciatively. ‘It really is lovely, Lee. Really.’

  The barest wash of colour flushed across his cheeks and then was gone.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘It’s a kind of escape. From . . .’ He cocked his head in the direction of the house. ‘Well, you know. Babies can be exhausting, and they don’t respect anyone else’s needs.’

  Angie recalled that he had once said much the same to her about his music when they had been living on opposite sides of a corridor.

  ‘And what about your sax?’ she asked, certain that it couldn’t be far from his mind, either.

  He shrugged sadly. ‘I don’t play much these days. There never seems to be the time. And I used to play at night but that keeps Thomas awake. Apparently.’

  This final word was added in a tone that suggested that he wasn’t convinced it was true, and Angie had to agree. In her experience, there was little more soothing than listening to Leon play jazz.

  ‘Sounds to me like you’re under the thumb,’ she laughed, but she was only half-joking. Leon had always been a bit stiff, not really wanting to step that far from the path, but this wasn’t the life that she had envisaged for him, not even close.

  ‘No, not really,’ he replied. ‘I know you had big dreams for me, Ange, but they were your dreams, not mine. I always wanted something much smaller, more in line with what my family expected of me. And we’ve worked hard to get what we have, Becky and me. I’m proud of it.’

  Angie had no concept of doing what her family wanted her to do. In fact, she couldn’t even imagine what that might be, but she could feel Leon slipping away so she changed direction. ‘And so you should be,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s lovely what you’ve made, the pair of you.’

  He smiled at her, grateful, it seemed, that she was not going to criticise his choices, but Angie thought that she could see regret there, too. Surely a part of him must wonder, must have played through the ‘what if’ scenarios in his head. He had such a talent, of that there was absolutely no doubt. And now he wasn’t even playing music at all. It was such a waste and he must know that in his heart, if he ever dared to look there. There was nothing, however, to be gained from pointing that out to him now.

  ‘And what about you, Ange?’ he said, turning the tables on her in a way that she hadn’t seen coming. ‘Do you have any regrets?’

  Did she? Looking back wasn’t an occupation that Angie had ever wasted any time on. What was the point? She couldn’t change the past.

  ‘No! Of course not!’ she replied breezily. ‘When you’ve got no plan then what is there to regret? Life is just one long adventure. I love what I do. My business is building up nicely and my clients are great. It’ll be a little holistic empire soon.’

  Leon put his arms around her and squeezed her tightly. ‘It’s so great to see you, Ange,’ he said. ‘Don’t ever change.’

  Angie was a little taken aback, but she squeezed him back.

  ‘You remind me of . . .’ he continued. ‘Well, it’s just great to see you. Let’s make sure we don’t let things slip too far.’

  ‘Maybe we can meet up some time, just the three of us,’ she suggested. ‘It’s been ages. We could go to a bar in Leeds, get some food. It’d be just like old times.’

  Leon nodded, but something about his face told Angie that he didn’t think it would happen.

  ‘They’re not small forever, Lee,’ she added. ‘Kids do grow up, and then maybe it’ll be a bit easier for you to get away. And even you must get some time off for good behaviour.’ She doubted that it was Thomas’s age that was the stumbling block here, but she’d taken comfort from the fact that Leon did seem to want to see them more often, even if the logistics were tricky. ‘I’ll tell you what,’ she continued. ‘Next time Tiger shows his face, let’s all go out. It’ll be great. I know we’re all busy but I’m sure we can manage one night off without the world coming to an end.’

  Leon gave her a rueful smile. They both knew that she was really talking about him.

  ‘Don’t you worry,’ she added. ‘You’ll have to run pretty fast to shake me off. I’m not going anywhere.’

  They were still outside, happily chatting about life’s inanities, when Maggie joined them. Her face was red and blotchy and her eyes had narrowed, but her make-up appeared to have remained perfectly in place. She had probably worn waterproof mascara especially, Angie thought.

  ‘Hi, you two,’ she said as she approached.

  ‘Is it all over?’ asked Leon.

  ‘Not quite, but there’s only so much emotional upheaval a girl can take, so I’ve bowed out early. What are you up to?’

  ‘Just setting the world to rights,’ said Angie.

  ‘Is the world all that wrong?’ asked Maggie. ‘It all looks pretty good from where I’m standing.’ She let her gaze wash over Leon’s glorious garden.