Knowing Me, Knowing You

by Brian Finnegan

Genres: Friendship; Romance

Synopsis

1983 - the summer of ABBA, first love and shared secrets for four teenage friends high on life and music. Over three decades on, when Maggie decides to reform the old crowd for an ABBA reunion concern in Stockholm, much has changed. Mother and wife Maggie is coping - alone - with life-shattering news. Daniel, once a major pop star, now a recluse, is reluctantly back in the limelight, and wants nothing more than to escape. Once-wild Dee is a force to be reckoned with in the boardroom, but her marriage tells a different story. And for Charlie, personal happiness has come at a heart-breaking price. As each is about to discover, old friends know you better than anyone. And sometimes, you have to reconnect with who you once were to find out who you can be, if you're just willing to take a chance...

Release date: May 1, 2013

Publisher: Hachette Ireland

Print pages: 426

Sample

Maggie takes a pull on her cigarette with puckered lips, and emits three perfectly formed rings of blue smoke. ‘If your life was an Abba song, what would it be?’ she asks, her voice puncturing the silence, like the pop of a helium balloon.

She’s trying to ignore the insistent, buzzing headache at the front of her skull and the fact that her mouth is as dry as the Mojave Desert. It’s probably something to do with the two bottles of her father’s homemade wine she nicked from the garden shed yesterday evening – which seems a lifetime ago. It was ‘absolutely vile’, according to Dee, but they drank every last drop, passing one bottle and then the other between the four of them as the sun went down over the pointed tips of the pine trees on the eastern side of the lake.

Beside Maggie at the front of the boat, Daniel is silent. He hasn’t opened his mouth since they woke up this morning, their hair strewn with leaves, gritty traces of soil in Maggie’s mouth. Maybe it’s because he’s so quiet that she can’t stop talking.

Charlie’s saying nothing either, but he’s hardly what you might call a chatterbox. He’s taken off his windcheater, sweating with the exertion of rowing, and Maggie can see the flex and release of the muscles under his T-shirt as he pushes and pulls the oars through the soupy water, the rhythm bearing them relentlessly towards the shore and home.

She leans over the side of the boat to peer at her reflection. Even though it’s muddled by eddies from the oars, she knows she looks different from yesterday.

She takes another pull on her cigarette. ‘Bloody Hell,’ she says. ‘Don’t all speak at once!’

‘I’m just thinking,’ says Dee, who’s sitting behind Charlie at the prow of the boat. She’d plonked herself there when they’d got in, insisting she’d be the navigato’.

A thin film of mist hovers just above the surface of the lake, mirroring a hazy white sky that will turn blue and cloudless before long. Even the birds are quiet. A twitter here or there as the oars cut soundlessly through the water’s surface, not the usual cacophony that greets the dawn.

‘Mine’s “Head Over Heels”,’ says Maggie, and when nobody answers, she adds, with an exaggerated sigh, ‘Anyone want to know why?’

‘Because you’re like the girl in it?’ says Dee.

‘Exactly!’ Maggie laughs, the words of the song playing in her head. ‘I’m a leading lady. Pushing through unknown jungles every day.’

‘Mine’s “Money, Money, Money”,’ says Dee, ‘because I’m going to marry a millionaire. He’ll have more money than Rod Stewart and we’ll live in a mansion in Beverly Hills, with a maid and a gardener and a pool and a Rolls-Royce …’

Maggie shifts her weight from one buttock to the other on the hard wooden seat. She’s had a hundred conversations like this with Dee, stretched across their beds in each other’s houses, flicking through issues of Abba magazine with their chins in their hands. Abba split up six months ago, but in letters Maggie and Dee wrote to each other, they swore to keep their love and devotion for them alive until the day they died. They’ve been Abba’s number-one fans since ‘Super Trouper’ was number one on Top of the Pops. And that was yonks ago, long before Dee was sent away.

Charlie shakes his head. ‘You’re a lunatic,’ he says to Dee, the corners of his mouth twitching. Any moment now he might crack a smile.

‘Takes one to know one,’ Dee retorts, shoving his shoulder.

Maggie wonders if something went on between them last night when they were at the rock pools on the other side of the beach together.

Originally she had come up with the idea for the Abba fan club because Dee had blurted that she fancied Charlie, the week she came home for the summer holidays. ‘I’ll tell him you fancy him,’ Maggie had suggested, jumping at the idea of helping her best friend, but Dee had squealed, ‘No! Please! Don’t!’ So instead they’d sat in the Coffee Bean, eyeing up Charlie and his twin, Sam, over mugs of hot chocolate, while Maggie tried to come up with some alternative plan.

Charlie and Sam Jones. Identical straight blond fringes, spot-free sallow skin and big white teeth, like Americans, although they’d moved to Sligo from Ballinasloe, which was the arse end of nowhere. Brand new in town since Easter, they’d already been snapped up for the grammar-school football team.

‘I don’t think they’ll be into Abba,’ Dee had said, when Maggie suggested her new strategy. ‘Look at them. They’re so cool.’

At the Coffee Bean, Charlie and Sam were already surrounded by girls who wore royal blue Mercy Convent uniforms when they weren’t on school holidays, not muck-brown Ursuline ones, like Maggie’s. Girls who had giggles that rang out like pealing bells, books clutched against their perfectly pert chests and hair that fell in bouncy, honey-coloured curtains down their backs, as if they’d all just stepped out of a salon. Girls who looked nothing like Maggie, with her bush of carrot-orange curls. Or Dee, who was at least a foot shorter than every other girl their age.

Dee had been right. Sam had given a derisive snort when Maggie had walked up to the twins and suggested the Abba fan club. ‘Get lost,’ he’d said.

Later, outside the Coffee Bean, Charlie, who had said nothing at all during the exchange, was waiting for them. ‘Can I be in the club?’ he’d asked, in a voice that was a little deeper than his brother’s but also a little less sure of itself. Maggie linked her arm in his and said, ‘Of course.’

They’d walked partway home with him, Maggie chatting about ‘The Winner Takes It All’ and how she knew all along it meant the absolute end, and that no matter how uncool people thought Abba were, no other band in the history of the world was as good, including The Beatles.

Typically, all Charlie’s attention was on Dee, who was walking on his other side. She barely came up to Charlie’s shoulder and she was a bit chubby underneath her oversized sweatshirt, her Levi’s 501-clad bum sticking out from the bottom of it, like a Zeppelin (Dee’s word, not Maggie’s). But boys always went for her, much more than they went for Maggie.

‘We’ll call for you tomorrow,’ said Maggie, when they’d got to the bottom of Charlie’s road, which she did after breakfast the next day, even though from that day on it was plain as the nose on his face that Charlie had eyes only for Dee. He never said much, but most of the time he was taking her in.

Daniel’s hand is flat, his fingers splayed on the peeling red-painted seat of the boat, almost touching Maggie’s. Last night, when they were lying together on Daniel’s PLO scarf, spread across the ground as a makeshift blanket, he had begun to cry. Maggie had put her arms around him and made soothing sounds as his body was racked with silent sobs. She hadn’t asked him why he was crying, but she thought she knew. It was about his mother. The memory makes her want to reach over and put her arms around him again, to pull him close. She feels a surge of something, the same waves crashing through her blood that she experienced last night when they were doing it.

She catches his eye and sees that he’s smiling, as if he’s thinking the same thing.

It’s funny. You couldn’t call Daniel handsome, not in the way Charlie’s handsome anyway. His black hair hangs lankly down over his eyes, which are too close together. His front teeth stick out a little over his bottom lip and his chin has more acne on it than hers but, bizarrely, when he first showed up Maggie was reminded for a fleeting moment of a man from one of the black-and-white films her mother likes to watch on Saturday afternoons.

‘What do you think your parents will say?’ he asks, reminding her that they are approaching the shore.

‘I don’t give a fuck,’ Maggie replies, and grinds the butt of her cigarette out on the floor of the boat with her heel.

She’s going to be in big trouble, though. The wine, the boat, the island were all at her instigation. She’d giggled as she untied the boat from its moorings, insisting no one would notice it was gone and they’d be back before anyone knew it. Then it had been her idea to stay the night, even though they’d told no one at home that they were going anywhere. They’d just disappeared.

At the time, buoyed up by the wine, she was thrilled by the recklessness of the adventure that staying on the deserted island would be, but now that Daniel has mentioned her parents, her heart is sinking.

‘So, what’s yours?’ she asks him, in an effort to lift herself back up.

‘My what?’

‘You know. If your life was an Abba song …’

‘I’m still thinking,’ Daniel replies. On the wooden seat, his little finger reaches out and touches hers. She hooks her pinkie around his, and squeezing tight, experiences an exquisite burst of happiness.

‘Let’s make a promise,’ Dee pipes up. ‘Let’s promise that if Abba ever get back together we’ll go to see them.’

‘They won’t get back,’ says Maggie. ‘Björn said it would never, ever happen. And Agnetha. I think they all hate each other now.’

‘Never say never,’ says Charlie, resting the oars for a moment.

Daniel shrugs. Suddenly the couldn’t-care-less boy from England, who’d replied to their ad on the supermarket noticeboard because he had nothing better to do, is back. ‘In ten years’ time nobody will have heard of Abba,’ he says.

‘I’ll still love them,’ says Dee. ‘In a hundred years I’ll still love them.’

‘When you’re a hundred and fifteen,’ Charlie quips, and half smiles again.

‘I promise!’ says Maggie. She feels it fervently.

‘Me too,’ says Charlie, stretching out the oars again.

‘Me three,’ says Dee.

‘What about you?’ Maggie asks Daniel, her finger still linked around his.

‘Trust me. They’ll be history,’ says Daniel. ’But if they’re not, I promise too. If you promise to shut up.’

Maggie guffaws. ‘I’ll shut up when you tell me what your Abba song is,’ she retorts. ‘You can’t fool me, mister. You definitely have one.’

‘That’s for me to know and you to find out.’ Daniel smiles again and his eyes are boring into Maggie’s.

Maggie experiences the waves in her blood again, pushing out through her chest. She’s never felt anything like it before. She turns and holds her hand over her eyes to shade them so she can see how close they’re getting to the shore. It’s about five minutes away, she figures.

Turning back to Daniel, she laughs again, even though a cold shudder has made its way up her spine. ‘I think I know what it is,’ she says. ‘It’s dead easy.’

‘Go on, then,’ says Daniel. ‘Guess.’

She glances at the approaching shore again. She doesn’t know that, after the boat reaches its mooring, Daniel will disappear from her life so completely, it will be as if he hadn’t even existed. She doesn’t know that she will never again be the Maggie who is on this boat in this perfect moment, trying to work out what Daniel’s Abba song is.



The clock on the bedside table read 01:43 as Maggie Corcoran struggled out of the kind of deep sleep she hadn’t had in months. Somewhere in the room her mobile phone was ringing.

Benny, who was curled up on the pillow next to her, lifted his head. If cats had eyebrows, he might have crooked one.

The phone stopped ringing the moment Maggie located it in her dressing-gown pocket, which was in a bundle under a pile of clothes on the armchair beside the chest of drawers. She’d just had time to read that the missed call was from William when the ringtone shouted again she almost dropped the phone.

‘Jesus, William!’ she answered it. ‘It’s two o’clock in the morning.’

There was silence at the other end of the line and then a sob. ‘Maggie,’ William said, his voice like a lost child’s, ‘I think Rita’s having an affair.’

Maggie pushed a clump of sleep-dense hair behind her ear and sank back down on to the edge of the bed. The carpet around her feet was strewn with clothes, shoes and balled-up tissues. From the corner of her eye she could see a discarded pair of knickers, like a wilted parachute.

‘Maggie?’ William said. ‘Are you there?’

‘Yes,’ Maggie replied, trying her best to sound detached.

Benny stalked across the bed to sit beside her, his short tail curled neatly behind him, his one eye closed. He yawned, showing his wonky bottom teeth.

Poor Benny. She didn’t know exactly what age he was, but the vet said somewhere around sixteen, which in cat years was over the hill and far away. He’d arrived at her door one day five years ago, with his right eyeball hanging out of a gruesome mess on his face. A fight with another cat, probably, the vet said. Since then Benny had been permanently at Maggie’s side. She felt an affinity with him that she’d never had with another animal, and now his one-eyed, lop-sided predicament echoed inside her all the more.

‘Can I come over?’ William asked, choking up again.

Benny opened his eye and gave her one of his don’t-even-think-about-it looks.

Maggie turned away and pushed a stray bra into a small bundle of clothes with her foot. ‘Where are you now?’ she asked.

‘In my car, outside his house. She’s in there with him, I know it.’

‘In where? With who?’

‘Roger Collins.’

Maggie tried to picture Roger Collins. Was he the heavy-set guy with the unkempt beard and the dog-hair-covered parka? Or that fellow from West Yorkshire with the stutter, the one who never stopped talking? Truth was, Roger Collins could have been any one of the men from the composting group, all of whom hovered around Rita Wilde as if she was the Madonna (the pop star, not the mother of Christ) of Decomposed Matter.

Maggie had gone along with William to the first few meetings and watched how all the men tried to second guess the nugget of composting wisdom Rita would bring forth next, hoping to impress her with their knowledge of how to get a fine grain, but for the life of her she couldn’t fathom what they saw in the woman.

Benny stretched out and put the pad of one paw on her knee, his claws out.

Rita might have been the same age as Madonna, exactly ten years older than Maggie, but there the resemblance ended. She was like a cake that had been left out in the rain. As shapeless as the tent-like, rainbow-coloured clothes she’d probably worn to Stonehenge for midsummer 1970, she was one of those women who clung to a version of themselves they should have let go a long, long time ago.

Maggie had said something to this effect almost three months ago to the day, when William told her he was leaving to shack up with Rita in her probably patchouli-scented flat in Hackney.

William had snorted. ‘Rita doesn’t go around pretending to be something she’s not,’ he’d said, in a maddeningly even tone. ‘She’s the real deal.’

Trying not to raise her voice, Maggie had replied, ‘What are you talking about? She’s as real as an Oompa Loompa!’

William had greeted this with a look of disgust. He’d zipped up the case he’d been packing, then pronounced: ‘Rita’s more real than anyone I’ve ever known.’

It was like the final line in one of those awful West End ensemble plays about life in the suburbs, the kind William had been so keen on when they’d first moved to London.

The inference was that by comparison Maggie wasn’t ‘real’. That she wasn’t honest. Her reaction to the accusation was like being caught in a tunnel in a crosswind: she’d tried to keep her balance, but felt like she was being buffeted from all sides. No matter what she said, how much she begged him not to go, her voice couldn’t be heard above the roar.

He’d said, ‘Goodbye, Maggie,’ with awful, deadened finality and walked out of the front door with his suitcase, leaving her barely able to stand in the instantly silent hallway. Without warning, in the space of half an hour, everything she had imagined to be real and secure had been ripped away from her.

But William’s goodbye had not been the last line in the play. Not by a long shot. The last line had been delivered by a doctor with a polar-white beard and Sigmund Freud spectacles, in an office that could have been a bank manager’s, except for the light-box lined with mammograms of Maggie’s right breast hanging on its wall.

The last line was: ‘Stage Three A invasive ductal carcinoma, Mrs Corcoran.’

Or maybe it wasn’t.

Maybe that was the last line of the first act, and there was a second act to come. For here was the real Rita now, having a real affair with a man in a dog-hair-covered parka. Possibly.

And here was the cancer-stricken woman’s husband coming back to her, in her hour of desperate need.

Maggie stroked Benny’s head and experienced an unexpected surge of purpose, a feeling she hadn’t had in so long it was like coming upon an oasis after months of thirsty trudging across a vacant, dry desert. At the beginning, after William had left, she’d tried to come up with all sorts of strategies for getting him back, but she’d hit dead ends at every turn her mind took, until she’d just given up. But now, Rita, simply by dint of her unfathomable attractiveness to the opposite sex, had played right into Maggie’s hands.

Or maybe the gods had thrown a dice. Maggie could tell her husband about the cancer now. In blind shock, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to say anything to anybody about the diagnosis. It seemed like eternity, although it had been just over a week, since she’d sat in Dr Snow’s office, gaping in silent horror at the offending mammograms.

Maggie could almost taste the sweet relief that would come with unburdening herself at last. ‘Okay, William,’ she said, into the phone, still trying to sound lackadaisical. ‘Come home.’



As Maggie pushed a bundle of dirty clothes into the bottom of the wardrobe, and cherry-picked the balled-up tissues from the floor, Benny kept watch from his perch on the bed, unblinking. ‘Don’t give me that look,’ she warned the cat, leaning over to pick up a shoe. ‘I’m not going to do anything stupid.’

Benny jumped off the bed and rubbed himself against her shin as he passed her on his way out of the bedroom, turning once to give her a disdainful one-eyed glance before setting off down the stairs.

In the shower Maggie tried to ground herself. There was no need to leap to conclusions. William himself might be leaping to conclusions about Rita. Maybe she wasn’t having an affair. Maybe William was being paranoid … although, given his temperament, it was unlikely.

Brushing her teeth, Maggie rubbed a patch of steamed-up bathroom mirror clear with one hand. The woman staring back at her was foaming at the mouth and looked as if she’d aged ten years in a week. She tried to bring her thicket of hair under some control with the fingers of her left hand. But it was a lost cause. Since William had walked out, she’d let it go and it had grown out into the Jaffa-orange Afro she hadn’t let take root since she was a teenager. She’d let her swimming go too, and the Bikram yoga she’d been doing every Thursday morning.

What was the point? It didn’t matter any more. For all her exercise and diet consciousness, her husband had left her. And once the chemotherapy started, she’d lose her stupid hair.

She left it alone and dabbed some concealer under her eyes to get rid of her dark circles. She smeared gloss on her lips and brushed on some blusher to bring up her colour and make herself a little bit presentable.

Pulling on her dressing-gown, she went downstairs to put the kettle on. Benny, who had taken up his favourite position beside the toaster, observed her as she cleaned off the kitchen worktop, which was littered with debris from the Marks & Spencer’s ready-meal she’d had for dinner, washed down with a full bottle of Chianti, which had been on special offer and consumed against Dr Snow’s advice.

In the queue at Marks, she’d noticed another middle-aged woman unloading a meal for one and the same Chianti at an adjacent till. Her head was wrapped tightly in a washed-out scarf and her face had been deathly pale. She had had that inward look about her, as if she was completely in a world of her own, her shoulders hunched as she lined up her packages precisely on the belt. Then she’d noticed Maggie gawking at her and had half-smiled in recognition, not of who Maggie was but what she was. Someone just like her.

Maybe cancer was like having a baby. Once you joined the club, everyone else with it clocked you and gave you a knowing look.

The kettle was coming to the boil as William’s car pulled into the drive, illuminating the hallway with its photographs of the family dotted along the walls. Pictures from various holidays with the kids over the years – Poppy at her first holy communion, Harry on the day of his graduation, flanked on either side by Maggie and William looking in the full of their health, proud and confident for the future of their family unit.

That photograph had been taken just over a year ago, and how unbelievably everything had changed since then. Harry was in Australia on his year’s youth visa. He hadn’t been available on Skype for weeks. And Poppy, living in that awful squat, might never have been the freckled little girl in a communion veil, with a big smile and one missing tooth, her prayer book clutched in white-gloved hands.

Maggie went to open the front door, but at the same time William let himself in. He had surrendered his family, but not the keys to his family home.

‘Hi,’ Maggie greeted him, searching for something else to say but coming up short.

Benny, who had followed her to the door, let out a long, low miaow and darted up the stairs.

‘It’s late,’ said William. ‘I’m sorry.’ He looked like death warmed up.

‘That’s okay,’ said Maggie. ‘Come on the kettle’s boiled. I’ll make us a cup of tea.’ She turned towards the kitchen but, sensing that William wasn’t following, turned back again.

He was standing there, head bowed, shoulders heaving. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. ‘She told me she loved me.’

He was the author of his own fate, of course, and it wasn’t lost on Maggie that he was crying over another woman, but the urge to comfort him was almost irresistible. ‘I’ll make a cup of tea,’ she said again, then added, ‘unless you want something stronger?’

‘Hold me?’ William asked, his voice miserable in the dim hallway.

It was what she had prayed for, wasn’t it? What she had begged God for in the dark of her bedroom the night after getting her diagnosis, lying in a puddle of her own tears and snot, fear and isolation threatening to consume her until there was nothing left.

Her husband wanted her again – even if it seemed like now he wanted her more like a little boy wants his mother.

He walked towards her, arms outstretched, and she tentatively took him into her embrace. Bringing his face to her shoulder, she stroked his hair and whispered, ‘It’s okay. Sssh …’

William heaved another sob.

She’d tell him about the cancer in the morning, she decided, when he’d had a night’s sleep. Until then, she’d be his shoulder to cry on. It felt right and good, as if the role she’d always played had been restored to her and the curtain was up on a new act.



When she woke, it took Maggie a few seconds to become fully aware of what had happened the night before. When she’d climbed into bed with William, she’d experienced an overwhelming, gut-churning hunger for sex with him, something she hadn’t felt since she couldn’t remember when. She’d kissed him hard and ground her body into his, with a desperation she couldn’t hide, but William hadn’t responded. He’d cried again, his tears wetting her neck. And then he’d nodded off in her arms.

Still only half awake, with morning light tentatively peeping through the curtains, Maggie reached out for him and found his side of the bed empty. The yawning panic she felt every time she got under the duvet alone at night rushed back with such force that her eyes snapped open and she sat bolt upright.

Benny was sitting on the end of the bed, carelessly licking one of his paws.

Maggie rested back on the pillow and inhaled to the count of three with her eyes closed. She wasn’t alone. William was home. He was probably downstairs making the diesel-strength coffee he needed every morning to get himself functioning. The idea of it gave her comfort – how quickly their old routines could be re-established.

Her eyes were closed for less than ten seconds before she realised the house was utterly silent. There was no hiss and clank of the coffee machine from the kitchen, only the sticky sound of Benny’s tongue cleaning his paw.

She pushed the duvet back, her heart pumping dread through her veins.

‘William?’ she called.

She stood up and went to the bedroom door.

‘William!’

She half-called his name once more on the way down the stairs. In the kitchen she stopped cold. There was a note on the table, anchored there by a half-drunk glass of orange juice. ‘Maggie,’ it said, in a rushed scrawl. ‘Talked to Rita. Everything’s OK. Didn’t want to wake you. Will call later. X.’

Maggie slumped down at the table and read the note again. Angry tears pricked her eyes. He’d signed it ‘X’. Last night he’d lain in her arms telling her she was the only one who understood him.

She put her face on the table, feeling the slightly cool texture of its unpolished wood against her cheek. From this vantage point she had a skewed vision of the smiling family photographs lined up on the wall of the empty hallway. The family she’d somehow lost.

Benny, sitting on the floor now, gazed up at her sideways.

You couldn’t bring a cat for moral support to your first chemotherapy appointment, could you? It was probably against all hospital-hygiene rules.

Maggie lifted her head. Her chemo wasn’t starting for another week. She didn’t want to think about it.

Was it too early to call Poppy? The clock on the wall said 09:47, so it probably was. She didn’t imagine they went in for early nights in the squat, or that anyone had to get up for something as bourgeois as a day’s work. But hearing Poppy’s voice would be proof that the photographs on the wall actually meant something, that they were still a family, even if they had all gone their separate ways. It might make Maggie feel like a mum again – needed in the way she had taken for granted all those years.

‘Hey, Mum,’ Poppy said, picking up after one ring. ‘What’s going on?’ She sounded fresh as a daisy.

‘I’m just calling to say hello,’ said Maggie, and her chin wobbled dangerously.

‘We’re on our way out,’ said Poppy. ‘We’re going to the anti-Israel protest.’

‘The what?’ Maggie asked. Her throat was constricting.

‘Bloody Hell, Mum. You need to start reading the newspapers. There’s a revolution happening. The people are rising up against the oppressors. We’re claiming the—’

‘Your father came back,’ Maggie interrupted. ‘Last night. But he’s gone again.’

There was silence down the line and Maggie was filled with guilt. She had sworn to herself that she wouldn’t get the children involved in the separation, wouldn’t make them take sides.

‘Mum—’

‘He’s gone back to her.’ Maggie couldn’t stop herself. Hot tears rolled down her face.

‘Look, Mum, can I call you later? Orlando’s waiting with the guys in the car for me …’

Maggie wiped the tears from one cheek with the back of her hand, flattening skin that had once been taut but now felt like old knicker elastic. ‘Sure,’ she said, ‘call me later,’ knowing it was unlikely this would happen.

For a second she thought Poppy had hung up, but then she said, ‘Mum, you know the money you said you’d put into my account? I don’t want to bother you, but …’

‘Oh, honey, I’m sorry,’ Maggie said, refilling with guilt. ‘I completely forgot.’

‘Could you do it today, on-line? Only if I don’t pay up I’ll be persona non grata. Everyone else has put their share in.’

‘I’ll do it now,’ Maggie said. ‘Two hundred, isn’t it?’ At least they were going to do something about decorating that awful house.

‘Hold on for a second,’ Poppy said. While Maggie held on, she heard her daughter shouting at someone – Orlando, probably, who looked like a down-and-out surfer, even though his father was the Earl of Something or Other. ‘Give me a break, will you? I’m coming!

‘I have to go,’ Poppy said into the phone.

‘Okay, honey.’

‘And, Mum,’ Poppy told her, before hanging up, ‘Dad’s being a total patriarchal prick. The sooner you get over him, the better.’

But that was easier said than done. And calling William a patriarchal prick didn’t quite fit. Patriarchs were supposed to be powerful, imposing figures, weren’t they? William had always been the needier one in their marriage, and she’d given him whatever support he required, not because he’d demanded it but because it had made her happy to keep him happy.

Maggie read through his note again, with its stingingly casual ‘X’ at the end. Three months after he’d departed, she still couldn’t make any sense of it. Maybe Rita Wilde had special powers. Maybe, like a Macbeth witch in Birkenstock sandals, she’d cooked up a spell to lure him away. It