a quick once-over before she turned out the light and shut the door, but tonight Maggs was hovering.
Claire straightened the lampshade that Abby had bumped into. Maggs didn’t seem to be making any moves to leave, so Claire glanced over her shoulder at her, just in time to see Maggs finish taking a quick nip from her hip flask and hide it back in her handbag.
Claire frowned, but didn’t say anything about it. Instead, she asked, ‘George not giving you a lift this evening?’
Maggs shook her head. ‘I told him to go on without me.’
Claire stopped fussing with the shade, which would just not consent to stay horizontal. ‘Oh? Are things okay between you two?’
Maggs shrugged.
Claire turned to look at her. She’d thought Maggs and George might have been developing a little ‘thing’. Maybe she’d been wrong, but she hadn’t failed to notice the way that at some club meetings, as the film rolled, George wouldn’t be watching Doris on the fifty-two inch screen all the time. Sometimes he’d be watching Maggs.
It wouldn’t be such a bad thing, even though Maggs had scoffed at the suggestion. Claire knew how lonely she’d been after Sid had died. They’d been married for thirty-eight years, after all. It had to leave a horrible hole.
She put a hand on Maggs’s bony shoulder. Maggs, her full height at five feet and one inch, looked up at Claire, her expression guarded, eyes searching. ‘I just don’t know,’ she said quietly, revealing more than she ever had on the subject before. ‘He’s a sweet man, but he’s not …’ She looked away.
He’s not Sid, Claire finished for her silently. She got that.
‘Well, I’ll give you a lift back if you want,’ Claire said and continued to bustle around while really doing nothing. It was better if she pretended she hadn’t seen that mistiness in Maggs’s eyes.
When Claire had been a child she’d always thought of her grandmother’s best friend as ‘that funny lady’, but as she’d grown into an adult, she’d come to appreciate the other woman’s dry humour, her mastery of the snappy comeback. They’d found a new kind of closeness since her grandmother’s death, bound together by her absence in a much stronger way than they had been by her presence.
Maggs sniffed and gave Claire a faux-offended look. ‘I’m not too old and frail to get the two-seven-one, you know. Those louts who like to ride on the top deck don’t scare me!’
Claire turned to have one last go at the lampshade, mainly to make sure Maggs didn’t see her smiling at that comment. If anything, those ‘louts’ were more likely to be cowed by Maggs than the other way round. ‘I know that,’ she said, turning back, ‘but my car has air conditioning and I can give you door-to-door service.’
Maggs adjusted the light cardigan she’d slung over her shoulder. ‘I suppose I can keep you company, if you want. There’s something I need to talk to you about, anyway.’
‘Club business?’ Claire asked absent-mindedly as she flicked off the lights and they both exited onto the landing.
‘Not exactly,’ Maggs muttered as she followed behind.
*
Given the fact she had something to say, Maggs was very quiet on the drive home. She didn’t speak until they were almost there. ‘I had a letter from your father,’ she announced suddenly, staring straight ahead, looking for all the world as if she’d just told Claire she had a hairdressing appointment in the morning.
Claire didn’t decide to brake hard – she just did – causing both her and Maggs to fly forward until their seat belts engaged, digging into their chests then flinging them back into their seats again. She turned to stare at Maggs, only half aware her fingers were making dents in the steering wheel.
‘What …? I mean, how …?’ She shook her head, kept on shaking it. ‘How did he know your address?’
Maggs shrugged and glanced at her. Now that Claire was looking at her more carefully, she could see that Maggs wasn’t as blasé about the whole thing as she’d first thought. There was a tension around her mouth, as if someone had pulled a drawstring round it, crinkling its edges.
‘To be honest, I have no idea, but he wrote to me anyway.’
Claire realised that her little Fiat was blocking the narrow Victorian street, lined with parked cars on both sides. It was only a matter of time before some other motorist started honking their horn or swearing at her. She slid the car into gear and eased away slowly. ‘What did he want?’
‘To see you.’
The urge to brake hard again was strong, but Claire managed to beat it. Instead, she concentrated on indicating left and turning into Maggs’s road. ‘Why now?’ she whispered, more to herself than her passenger.
Maggs sighed. ‘He didn’t say.’
Claire’s brows lowered and pinched the skin at the top of her nose. Of course he hadn’t said. Her father had never felt the need to explain anything he did, had only saw fit to issue orders. She stewed on that thought as she performed a perfect parallel park outside Maggs’s house.
‘But reading between the lines,’ Maggs continued as the car came to a halt, ‘I’d say he’s ill.’
Claire realised she was squeezing the life out of her steering wheel again and deliberately peeled her fingers from its warm surface. ‘I don’t care,’ she said. She could feel Maggs looking at her, and Maggs kept looking until Claire gave in and twisted her head to stare back at her. ‘I don’t.’
‘He’s your father,’ Maggs said simply.
She nodded. She knew that.
‘If anyone knows the pain of not taking an opportunity to make things right while you can, it’s me.’
Claire sighed. There was a difference. Maggs had had a silly quarrel with Sid the day before he’d died and the following morning she’d been monosyllabic with him at breakfast. He’d told her she was being childish then went out to fetch a pint of milk from the corner shop. She’d never seen him again. Not until she’d had to identify his body. Heart attack. No one had seen it coming, not even Sid, who’d declared himself as fit as an ox until the day his body had so unceremoniously contradicted him.
‘It’s not the same,’ Claire mumbled. She hadn’t seen her father since she was eleven. But she’d never been sad she hadn’t had the chance to say goodbye properly; she’d been glad. Glad he’d never come back. Glad she didn’t have to go and spend weekends and half the school holidays with him. Glad her mother slowly stopped being the quiet, shrunken woman he’d turned her into.
Maggs made a noise of grudging agreement, then she delved into her ever-present patent black leather handbag and pulled out a crumpled envelope and held it out to her.
Claire stared at it. She didn’t even want to touch it.
When she refused to respond, Maggs folded the envelope in two and tucked it into Claire’s handbag, which was nestled in the passenger footwell. ‘Never say never,’ she said quietly before she kissed Claire on the cheek, then reached for the door handle. ‘Because never is a very long time,’ she added, as she gently unclipped her seatbelt and got out of the car.
Claire tried to look cheerful, but it felt wrong, as if her smile was sitting wonky on her face. She waved her farewell and, when Maggs had disappeared inside, she put the car in gear and drove away.
Claire slid her key into the bottom lock of her front door, only half aware of what she was doing. An image of her father,