She thought she had answers for some of these questions, but not all of them. She would only know where she stood after she had the first interview under her belt and was able to test their response to her. And that was about to be now.

  Her phone buzzed and she snatched it up. It was a good luck text from Leon. That was sweet of him, she thought, but she was too anxious to reply just now. She turned her phone on to Do Not Disturb and dropped it back into her bag. Then she stood up, took a deep breath and set off for the interview.

  Two hours later she was standing on the pavement outside the offices of what she hoped would be her new employer. It had gone well, she thought. She was fairly sure she had come across as measured and unflappable, with high levels of personal responsibility and integrity, a strong work ethic and a clear sense of team spirit. She had, in fact, just been herself. And they had liked her, she hoped at least. They seemed to respond well to her honesty when they asked her about why she had left Brownlows and what she had been doing since and, of course, her CV was impressive, her list of former clients and transactions substantial. They would let her know later, they had said. So now all she had to do was wait.

  She had taken the day off from Space Solutions to accommodate the interview, so her time was her own. Having run through her options, she thought she might call on Romany and Tiger, see how they were coping. Romany’s exams had begun, and so things were likely to be a little fraught. Maggie could still remember what it felt like. Of all the exams that she had sat over the years, her A levels had been the most stressful. She had truly believed that her entire life was on the line, that if she failed to get the grades to take the next step then everything would be ruined and her life would be over. How naïve and over-dramatic that felt now, but at the time she had been convinced it was right. There was even an A level stress nightmare that she still had when she was under extreme pressure, unchanged in its particulars since it had first haunted her thirty-five years ago. If only we could tell our younger selves what they should really be worrying about, she thought.

  At Angie’s place (when would she stop thinking of it in those terms?) she rang the doorbell and then waited, half-expecting that there would be no one in, but then she heard someone coming down the stairs towards her. The door opened and there stood Tiger. He was wearing an apron, a masculine-looking navy blue affair, but it was still, most definitely, an apron.

  Maggie just laughed. ‘Oh my God, Tiger, you are a picture of domesticity. What on earth are you doing?’

  ‘I’m making chocolate profiteroles for Romey,’ he replied with an air of defiance. ‘They’re her favourite and she’s got another exam today, so I thought I’d make a batch for when she gets home. Are you coming in?’

  ‘Only if you’ve got time,’ Maggie replied, gesturing to his attire. ‘I wouldn’t want to interrupt.’ And then she added, ‘Chocolate profiteroles? My! I didn’t know you had it in you.’

  ‘I am a constant source of surprises!’ he said, tucking his thumbs into the straps of his apron and looking like he might burst into song. ‘Come on up and I’ll stick the kettle on.’

  Maggie followed him up the stairs. She let her eyes stray to his bum as he climbed. She told herself it was by force of habit.

  The place was, as was usual these days, spotless with not a throw or cushion out of place, and even though he was clearly in the middle of baking, the kitchen was tidy, with everything he had already used piled neatly ready for washing up.

  ‘So which paper was it today?’ she asked, settling herself into one of the chairs to watch him work.

  ‘Biology 1,’ he said as he tipped coffee grounds into the coffee-maker.

  ‘And how was she?’ Maggie asked, thinking of her own nerves that morning.

  He turned back to face her. ‘She was okay. We seem to be through the panic stage and now she’s remarkably calm. She’s just getting on with it.’

  ‘Good for her,’ Maggie said. ‘She’s a wonder, that girl. Angie would be so proud of her.’

  ‘Wouldn’t she just,’ agreed Tiger.

  ‘And you should take some of the credit too,’ she added. ‘You’ve been brilliant.’

  Tiger gave a modest little shrug, but Maggie thought she saw pride in his eyes. She had never seen him proud of something he’d done before. Was this actually a first?

  ‘And the Daniel thing?’ she asked. ‘Where are we with that?’

  It was a month since Tiger had rung to tell her what had happened on the day of the fashion shoot, but since then Romany must have decided that her A levels were more important than her long-lost father and had banished the subject from the agenda.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Tiger. ‘It’s like it never happened.’

  ‘Have you heard from Hope?’ she asked.

  Tiger shook his head. ‘I don’t know if Romey has. She’s being pretty tight-lipped about the whole thing.’

  ‘Well, maybe when the exams are over . . .’

  Tiger puffed his lips out. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘There’ll be a lot of changes after the exams are over.’

  He made the coffee and passed her a cup, and then put on a pair of oven gloves and retrieved the golden choux puffs from the oven. Their smell filled the air and made Maggie’s mouth water.

  ‘So, I suppose you’ll be heading off into the great blue yonder as soon as you get the green light,’ Maggie said. ‘You’ve done amazingly. We all know what a massive sacrifice it’s been for you to stay here and look after Romany. I didn’t think you could do it, to be honest. I bet you’ve spent the whole year planning where you’re going to go when you can finally escape.’

  He didn’t look at her, she noticed, and focused instead on checking that each profiterole was properly cooked.

  ‘Yeah, well,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a few ideas, but nothing concrete yet.’

  She could sense his reluctance to talk about it. Perhaps he was actually going to miss Romany when he left. They had clearly become quite close over the year. But a deal was a deal, and he had very nearly fulfilled his side of the bargain.

  ‘And it’s Leon’s gig soon, right?’ he said, changing the subject deftly.

  That was something else that wasn’t being discussed. When it had first gone in the diary it had seemed so far in the future that it was hard to imagine that they would ever get there, but now, as inevitably happened, the date was almost upon them.

  ‘How’s he feeling about it?’ Tiger asked. ‘I bet he’s in a right state!’

  Her grinned at her, and whilst she couldn’t possibly have admitted that to anyone else, she nodded.

  ‘God, yes. He’s all over the place. If I had a pound for every time he’s said he’s going to ring and cancel I’d be a rich woman by now. But I’ve managed to talk him down. I think a part of him is actually looking forward to it.’

  ‘He’ll be remembering the reaction he got at that open mic night,’ said Tiger. ‘That’s got to have some pull to it. It was like he was Springsteen or someone.’

  Maggie laughed. ‘Don’t tell him that. But yes, I think you’re right. It was the way that crowd cheered that’s basically pushed him forward and made him brave.’

  ‘Should have done it years ago,’ said Tiger.

  Maggie nodded. He was right. Leon could have been playing in public for all these years and been getting that reaction every time.

  Tiger pulled up a chair and sat next to her. ‘That’s what Angie used to say,’ he said. ‘She was always going on about how he was wasting his talents.’

  At the mention of Angie’s name, Maggie felt her throat thicken, but she was all right. The pain of the loss was becoming manageable. That was something else that time could do.

  She smiled fondly. ‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘she was. And she knew that when Leon finally did perform, he’d see what we all saw because of how the audience reacted. It’s just a pity it’s taken him three decades to get there.’

  Tiger shot her a wry smile.

  For a moment they sat, each in quiet contemplation. Maggie thought about Angie and the way she had continued to touch and guide their lives long after she had left them, impossible to forget.

  Tiger broke the silence. ‘I always regretted that you and me never . . . you know . . .’ He made an inappropriate hand gesture to illustrate his point and Maggie rolled her eyes. ‘Angie’s predictions went a little awry there,’ he added.

  Maggie frowned. ‘Did she predict that?’ she asked. ‘She never said anything to me!’

  ‘Every time I turned up she used to go on about how I should ring you.’

  ‘And yet somehow you never did.’ Maggie laughed sardonically.

  Tiger shrugged. ‘Yeah. Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘I wish I had done, though.’

  Maggie raised her eyes and found his and for a moment they shared a look heavy with meaning and regret.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I wish you had done too.’

  Tiger sighed. ‘You’re much better off with Leon,’ he said. ‘He’s a far better bet than I ever was.’

  Maggie nodded. ‘Yep. That’s true enough.’

  A silence fell again as they each contemplated what might have been.

  Then Tiger spoke again. ‘She knew us all pretty well, didn’t she? Ange, I mean.’

  A single fat tear escaped and rolled down Maggie’s cheek. She caught it with the tip of her finger.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘She really did.’

  55

  Her exams were over! Romany could hardly believe it. All that work and worry and sheer bloody shittiness of the year that had gone, and now it was finally behind her and a long hot summer lay ahead. It was going to be amazing, as long as she didn’t let herself think about results day, hanging like a shadow over everything.

  Still, if her mum had been here, she would have told her that there was absolutely nothing that could be done about it now, and so there was no point worrying about something she couldn’t change. Romany decided, for once, to take her mum’s advice. She was going to party! July was one long list of social engagements and if she was lucky, she might even get to go on holiday to Spain with Laura and some of the other girls. It was going to be great.

  But there was one other black spot on her horizon.

  Daniel.

  Since the day of the photoshoot, she had pushed him and what he had said out of her mind. She had no room for it, no bandwidth to deal with any of its implications, but she knew that she couldn’t just ignore him forever. They were going to have to talk and it was up to her to make the first move.

  No time like the present.

  She pulled her phone out of her back pocket and opened up messages. Then she stopped. She had only just finished her exams. Surely she could give herself a couple of weeks off before she confronted what was waiting for her.

  But she knew herself well. She needed to speak to him, get everything out in the open or she would fret about it and it would spoil her entire summer. Again, she could hear her mum in her head. ‘Just do it, Romany. What’s the worst that can happen?’

  The worst that could happen was that she would end up with no dad. No change there then.

  She didn’t have Daniel’s number, so she messaged Hope.

  Hi. I need to talk to Daniel. Can you get him to get in touch please?

  Ten minutes later a message popped up.

  Hi. It’s Daniel. What works for you?

  She suggested that they meet at a coffee shop in town. Neutral ground seemed best, so that either of them could get up and leave if the meeting didn’t work out the way they hoped. Although what exactly she was hoping for Romany had no idea. She had always said that she wasn’t interested in her father, that her mum could easily play the role of two parents for her.

  But her mum wasn’t there any more. The goalposts had shifted and Daniel was all the actual family she had. And on the surface at least, he seemed like quite a nice bloke. He wasn’t a dick or anything, so that was a good start. Romany owed it to herself to at least get the story out of him, find out what it was that had split her parents up. There was no need to make any decisions about what might happen next. She could just take things slowly.

  She ordered a gingerbread latte which arrived in a glass with a huge dollop of cream on the top. Daniel had a black americano. For a while neither of them spoke. He stirred a packet of sugar into his coffee and she stirred the cream into hers.

  ‘So,’ he said when they couldn’t reasonably stir things any longer, ‘who goes first?’

  Romany decided that she did. This was about her, after all. She didn’t want to appear weak and she definitely didn’t want to cry, so she adopted a defensive tone and chose her words accordingly.

  ‘Why did you abandon Mum?’ she asked, using everything she had to look him straight in the eyes as she spoke.

  Daniel looked hurt, and then breathed out heavily before replying. ‘Harsh but fair, I suppose,’ he said. ‘Well, it wasn’t what you’d call a conventional relationship in the first place. I was living down in Newbury and Angie came back to York after the protests because that’s where her friends were. I’d come up every few months, whenever I could get a bit of cash together. It was great. It worked for us. Things never had a chance to get stale or boring.’

  Romany imagined he was talking about their sex life, which she absolutely didn’t want to think about.

  ‘And then?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, then she got pregnant. It was a shock, Romany. I won’t lie. Not that I’m blaming her in any way, but she stopped taking her pill without telling me. I wasn’t ready for that. I mean, we weren’t young – I was thirty-one, I think. Ange was a few years older. I think she thought it was now or never for her. But we’d never talked about the future or discussed having kids. So, I just wasn’t expecting it. I mean, you,’ he clarified awkwardly.

  He picked up his coffee cup, took a sip, placed it back down. Romany watched him carefully, looking for anything that might be a clue as to how he really felt, but saw nothing.

  ‘Angie’d had time to get her head round having a baby, but I got presented with it as a done deal. She was pregnant. She was having the baby. She made it obvious that there wasn’t much room for what I thought and – and I’m not that proud of this – I was happy with that. I wasn’t ready to be a father. The commitment scared the shit out of me. So, when your mum gave me the green light to take a back seat, I took her at her word and stayed away.’

  He was being honest, at least. Romany could tell that. She could imagine her mum behaving like he’d said. When she made a decision there wasn’t much that could be done to change her mind. And she had been fiercely independent, never looking for help from anyone. Ever. If Daniel was saying that her mum had pushed him away, then that could be what actually happened. Still, her mum hadn’t been cold or unfeeling. He could have challenged her, if he’d wanted to.

  ‘Did you see me at all?’ she asked. This felt like an important question, but she wasn’t at all sure she wanted to know the answer. If he had made no effort, then what did that say about him?

  ‘Once,’ he said. ‘When you were tiny. I turned up at the flat unannounced. I should have warned her, but I didn’t. She was good about it. She didn’t kick me out or anything. She let me hold you. You were so perfect. So tiny. I barely dared hold you in case I squashed you or something. And she was so amazing with you. I couldn’t believe that she just seemed to know exactly what you needed. She was a natural mum.’

  ‘Well, she didn’t really have much choice, did she? She was all I had in the world. She had to learn fast,’ replied Romany angrily.

  ‘Of course,’ said Daniel, raising a placatory hand. ‘I’m just saying that it looked like there was a bond between you from the very start. It was obvious that she adored you.’

  ‘And you didn’t.’

  He dropped his shoulders and let out a sigh. ‘Come on, Romany,’ he said. ‘Cut me some slack here, would you? It wasn’t my finest hour, okay. I didn’t try hard enough, and I should have done better. All I’m saying is that I had no concerns about you. I could see how much you were loved and cared for. I didn’t just turn my back. You were safe. Angie didn’t want me, not really. And so I went back to Newbury and got on with my life.’

  He was trying, Romany could see that. He knew that he had made some bad choices and he was trying to paint himself in the best light possible, but he wasn’t being defensive in any way.

  ‘So how come you ended up in York?’ she asked.

  ‘We lost touch, Ange and me. The phone number I had for her was disconnected and I think you moved house. But I thought about you both, wondered how you were getting on.’

  He met her gaze, and she could see in his face that he needed her to believe this.

  ‘Then a job came up in York. I wasn’t long out of catering college and there was nothing keeping me in Newbury, so I applied and then I moved up here.’

  ‘But you didn’t look us up?’

  He shook his head. ‘I didn’t want to get in the way or spoil anything that Angie had going on with anyone else. But I looked out for you both when I was out, just in case I saw her or someone that might be you. I think I spotted you both on Parliament Street once, and I was going to say hello, but you looked so happy together, like a little unit. I lost my nerve.’

  ‘And did you know about Hope and me?’

  He nodded. ‘That wasn’t hard to work out. Angie and Romany is hardly a common combination of names. When Hope told me what Angie had asked her to do it was fairly obvious why.’