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  ‘Come on, baby,’ she said, remembering how she used to soothe Becca before Becca grew prickles and became allergic to her mother’s touch. She pulled Maggie into her arms. ‘Come on, talk to me.’

  Maggie lifted her head and roughly wiped her tears away with the heel of her hand. Her large brown eyes were bloodshot, and ringed darkly with grey, which made a stark contrast against her pale skin.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry …’ Maggie began. As she talked, she felt her breathing slowly begin to even out and the edges of the room creep back into focus. ‘It’s just everything, you know? It’s this bloody time-capsule room where everything, including my life, stands still, it’s Mum and Dad always looking at me and Mum trying to talk to me, and I know she means well but if she thinks bloody ylang-ylang and positive affirmations are going to help …’ Maggie felt her voice rise hysterically and she took a deep breath. ‘It’s not having anything to do, not really. I mean, Mum said I could work in the bar, but Jesus, I did that for pin money when I was a student.’

  ‘You’ll find another job in no time, with your experience,’ Sarah tried to console her.

  ‘I know, I know I could find a job, but then if I did it’d be in catering and I know everyone in catering, and they’ll all know what’s happened, and anyway, even if that didn’t matter, it wouldn’t be the same, would it? It wouldn’t be the same as running my own business. Building something up from scratch. With someone I love.’

  Maggie uncurled herself and leaned her back against the wall. ‘Fuck,’ she said simply. ‘I’m fucked, and that’s all there is to it.’

  Sarah leaned back next to her.

  ‘I know, shall we smoke a fag out of the window?’ she said, nudging Maggie gently in the ribs, dying for a breath of smoke-polluted fresh air. ‘I mean, I know we’re thirty-two and can smoke where we like, but as it’s permanently 1987 in here, out of the window would be more, you know, nostalgic.’ She proffered Maggie the packet, more for a joke than anything else, and then covered her surprise as her non-smoking friend took a cigarette, lit it, hauled herself off the bed and opened the window.

  ‘You know,’ Maggie said over her shoulder as she leaned out, ‘it wasn’t because I was worried about Mum and Dad catching us that I made us smoke out of the window – they’d have been “cool” with it. It was because I thought they were so embarrassing with all their bloody “permissive” parenting. I wanted them to be more like your mum, you know, the kind of parents that forced you to hide your disco clothes in a Tesco bag until you got half a mile down the road. Not the sort that had sex in the middle of a muddy field with a few thousand other people. When I was a kid I used to pray to be sent to a boarding school, like Trebizon or Mallory Towers or something. I couldn’t stand it here, couldn’t wait to get out of here and make my own life, get married, have my own kids. Force them to brush their teeth and do their homework instead of saying, “life is full of choices, Maggie, and they are all yours to make.” ’

  She stubbed the half-smoked cigarette out in an empty coffee cup – something which, in a woman who was almost compulsively tidy and neat, Sarah considered to be borderline psychosis – and continued. ‘Which is bloody bollocks, anyhow, because I didn’t choose to be back here in my parents’ pub, with my as-good-as-useless brother still living off them, still wandering about like an aimless halfwit. I didn’t choose for Christian to leave me. I didn’t choose any of this, but I’ve got it and I just can’t see where I go from here, Sarah. I just can’t see what to do.’

  ‘Listen.’ Sarah crossed the small room and stood in the square pool of sunlit warmth. ‘I know that right now things seem as if they’ll never get better – believe me, I’ve been there more times than I care to mention – but things will get better. It’s only been a couple of weeks. You haven’t had a chance to sort things out yet, you haven’t let it all sink in. And what you were saying about my mum … Have you forgotten she threw me out at eighteen because she wouldn’t have a pregnant girl bringing shame on the house? I never see her, I never speak to her and she lives two miles away. At least your parents are here for you. They love you, Mags, even if they are a bit flaky. And at least you’ve got a roof over your head and a way of earning some cash until you get back on your feet.’

  Sarah reached out and tucked her friend’s dark hair behind one ear.

  ‘What you need, apart from some coppertone lowlights and some really good concealer is a plan. You need to get some direction, move things on a bit.’ Sarah paused cautiously. ‘You need to see Christian, Mags. You’ve got money in that business and in the flat. You have to be practical, get what’s yours and move on. It’s the only way, mate, trust me.’

  Maggie rubbed her hands across her face and ran them anxiously through her hair. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I know. He keeps leaving me messages on my mobile saying we’ve got to sort out the practicalities, but he sounds so normal, he sounds as if he’s ordering vegetables. Like this hasn’t touched him at all. I want to see him, but not like this …’ She stopped. ‘But I know, I know I have to.’

  Sarah nodded and checked her watch.

  ‘Mate, I’ve got to go, I’ve got a full head of colour in twenty minutes. Listen, I’ll come with you when you see him, if you like. I could thump him for you, kick him in the bollocks? Or make derogatory remarks about his sexual prowess?’

  Maggie half laughed before suffering a split-second but entirely vivid memory of Christian making love to her. She forced the image out of her mind with a small shake of her head.

  ‘No, don’t worry, I’ll do it on my own.’ She didn’t want to tell Sarah that the last thing she wanted was someone there to keep her together. She didn’t want to be together, she wanted him to see what he’d done, to realise how wrong he was. She wanted a chance to change his mind.

  Sarah scrutinised her briefly and then nodded.

  ‘All right then, but if I remember rightly, the appropriate time-capsule way of dealing with a broken heart is two extralarge slabs of Dairy Milk and two bottles of Blue Nun before a night on the town. My nan’s got the kids on Friday, so you and me are going out, and we’ll go shopping in my lunch hour and I’ll do your hair first, no arguments. Agreed?’ Sarah ignored Maggie’s terrified look. ‘No arguments.’ She grinned at Maggie as she left. ‘You just have to think of this as a beginning, not an end, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ Maggie agreed weakly, but what little resolve she mustered had vanished by the time Sarah had shut the bedroom door.

  Chapter Two

  Every time Pete thought of that evening, of that whole day really, it was always the same. He felt a sharp pang somewhere in the location of his heart, followed by a knotted feeling in his stomach. They were always brutally physical, his reactions to Stella, as if the emotions she engendered in him had seeped into each molecule of his body; as if it was only loving her that had made him three-dimensional at all.

  Looking up, he glanced out of the window of the intercity train. Birmingham had been and gone about twenty minutes ago, next it would be Milton Keynes and then he’d be properly in the south. There’d be no getting away from it then. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, his long legs crammed against his backpack. He’d wanted this more or less most of his life, to break out of two-bit TV work and get into film, but now that it was happening he wasn’t so sure. Now he was actually doing it he longed for his old small life, his telescope and Stella. The thought of her – just her name – constricted the flow of blood to his heart for a moment, and his fingers tightened on the seat.

  Pete smiled to himself as he remembered the panic of that morning when he’d realised that Stella was leaving again, the day he’d decided, for once in his life, to stop her going. After Stella had agreed to meet him at Hugo’s she had dressed quietly, sweeping her long hair off her face and tying it in a loose knot, then spent a couple of moments looking through her earrings before selecting some large silver hoops. Stella said she liked the gypsy look, said it suited her nature.

  ‘I h
ave to go out,’ she’d said. ‘I’ve got to rearrange some things so that I can meet you tonight?’ Her tone was tentative and uncertain, as if she was afraid that Pete wouldn’t let her go. Except of course Pete always let her go. He always let her go and he always took her back.

  ‘But you’ll be there tonight? At eight, won’t you?’ he had pressed her, silently thinking he was insane to try and hold her to a time and a place that would take a sizeable miracle to arrange.

  Stella had crossed the room and taken his face in her hands. For a moment Pete had been lost in the violet wheels of her eyes.

  ‘Yes. I’ll be there tonight.’ She had kissed him briefly on the lips, leaving him tingling, and then she was gone. For two thunderous heartbeats Pete had stood motionless in her wake, and then crumpled on to the bed.

  ‘How the fuck am I going to pull this off?’ he’d moaned, knowing that pretty much his entire future happiness depended on him doing just that.

  It was just past nine a.m. when he’d got to the restaurant, and it was firmly shut, grilles pulled down across the huge plate glass windows, and not a sign of life in the minimalist dining room. Pete peered into the gloom and he thought he could see the faintest chink of light blinking through the swing of what must be the kitchen’s double doors.

  ‘Kitchen,’ he said determinedly and headed round the back. The thought had occurred to him then that turning up in his weekend jeans, the ones that hung round his hips with the hole in the knee, and his Leeds replica shirt might, on reflection, not have been the best idea. But he hadn’t had much time for reflection that morning. He hadn’t had time for anything much more than running around in a blind panic like a man about to face the axeman’s block.

  The back door of the kitchen was opened on to a small courtyard and a young lad, maybe sixteen or seventeen, was taking in a delivery of fresh vegetables. Pete paused a few feet from him and shuffled.

  ‘All right?’ he asked mildly.

  The boy raised his head and nodded, turning to go in.

  ‘Um, I was wondering, like. Any chance of getting a table here tonight? It’s an emergency.’

  The lad turned back and looked at Pete, a slow grin spreading across his acne-bitten face. ‘This isn’t McDonald’s, mate!’ he said with a phlegmy laugh. ‘You have to book about three months ahead and you need at least two ton in your pocket to eat here. Sorry, try the Italian in the arcade, they can usually fit you in and their veal’s not bad.’

  Pete regarded his grey and worn trainers and wondered how it had come to this. How he, a grown man of thirty-four, had been reduced to pleading with some spotty kid for his life.

  ‘The thing is, mate, I’m going to propose to her, my girlfriend Stella, that is. And it has to be tonight and it has to be here. Otherwise she’s going to leave me.’

  The kid looked at him with a mixture of horror and contempt. ‘You’ve not heard of planning ahead, then?’ he said. He propped the kitchen door open with the veg and sat down on the concrete step, pulling out a packet of fags from his apron. He offered one to Pete, who didn’t really smoke but took it anyway, and sat beside him on the step. ‘Look,’ the kid continued, ‘I’ve been about, me. I’ve got a few birds on the go and, trust me, if your lass is that demanding you don’t want to be marrying her. You want to be sacking her. Pronto.’ He nodded at Pete’s shirt. ‘So what about last season then?’ he asked him.

  Pete winced and shook his head. ‘You tell me how we got from playing in Europe to a relegation dog fight in just two seasons.’ He shook his head glumly.

  ‘Tell me about it. I’m Si, by the way. I’m sort of dogsbody to the sous-chef, when I’m not at college. But it’s all right. Training here means I can go anywhere once I’m qualified.’

  Pete tried to look interested as he felt his small sliver of hope dissolve. He shook his head despondently.

  ‘It’s good you’re doing what you want. Just make sure you never get stuck in a rut. I guess by now I should have learnt,’ he told Si, taking a painful drag on the cigarette, ‘that I can’t stop Stella. If she wants to go, she’ll go, and she’ll leave me here waiting for her, living in the same old flat, going to the same studios every day, spending my entire life with Dougie the sodding Digger.’ Pete took another drag. ‘Sometimes I think if it was over, finally over for good this time, it’d even be a sort of relief, but …’

  ‘Dougie the Digger?’ Si’s head snapped up. ‘I bloody love Dougie the Digger!’ He leapt up and started singing the theme tune from the children’s show right there. ‘ “Dougie the Digger, Big and strong, He’ll always be there to put right what’s wrong!” Fucking ace. I fucking grew up on Dougie, man.’

  Pete stared at him and felt a curious mixture of pride and horror. ‘I never realised I’d been doing it for so long that actual grown-up kids had actually grown up on it …’ he muttered.

  ‘So then, man, what do you do, on Dougie?’ Si crouched down beside him. ‘Do you do the voice, do you? Hey, listen to this.’ He went into a faultless impression of Dougie’s rumbling Yorkshire accent. ‘ “Don’t worry, Mr Merry, we’ll have you dug out of the hole in no time. Come on, Skip!” What do you reckon? I could do your holiday cover or whatever.’ Si laughed and shook his head, so genuinely tickled by the idea, that Pete couldn’t help grinning in return.

  ‘I’m a model maker, the special effects bloke. I build and operate Dougie and some of the other characters as well.’

  Si grinned and held out his hand. ‘You wait till I tell my mates I’ve met Dougie the Digger. Fuck.’ He paused for a minute and seemed to be mulling something over. ‘Hang on there a minute, Dougie,’ he said, disappearing into the kitchen before Pete could correct him about his name.

  Pete waited, uncertain what he was waiting for or why. Twenty long minutes passed before Si came back. He dipped his chin and leaned in close to Pete, as if someone might overhear them.

  ‘Right, you’re in. Tonight at eight. Don’t ask me how I did it, and if anyone finds out, I don’t know you.’ He clapped Pete on the shoulder. ‘Oh, and Dougie, you’re booked under the name of Mr and Mrs Everson, OK?’

  Pete had spluttered a reply and thanked Si profusely before leaving. He hadn’t really believed it had happened, and he’d had to double-check before he could allow himself a small celebration. For now at least there was still hope. As he had turned into the street where his building society was just opening, he had passed a bookshop with a display of Dougie books in the window.

  ‘Cheers, mate,’ he’d said, and then gone to get out two grand for an engagement ring.

  He’d worried for the rest of that afternoon about whether 0.5 of a carat was enough for Stella. After ascertaining that Pete actually was a genuine buyer and not someone planning to do over the premises, the salesman had shown him a tray of rings in his price range. Pete had thought he’d get something with a bit more bling for his money, but apparently he’d need three times as much for a whole carat.

  ‘This ring is very good sir, good clarity, good colour and an elegant brilliant cut. Plus I’ll take off two fifty for cash.’

  It had been over so quickly. The dream that he would one day be sure enough of Stella to buy her a ring had been in the back of his mind for so long now that he’d built up the whole scenario in detail. He’d meant to shop around to find the perfect ring that would sing out to her the moment she clapped eyes on it. He’d mentioned this to his sister once, but she’d laughed harshly and told him, ‘that one claps eyes on anything she can pawn later and she’ll be singing all the way to the bank!’ But then Jess had never understood Stella.

  Well, what anyone else thought of all this didn’t matter. Pete just hoped that the ring he’d bought in less than half an hour would be good enough to keep her. After all, he hadn’t even checked the size. He’d held on to it tightly, concealing it in his pocket as he headed back through Headingly trying very hard not to look like a bloke carrying two grands’ worth of diamond. When he finally got in he found his favourite Stone Roses CD
and put it on full blast. At once he felt all the energy, vigour and promise he’d been so certain of at eighteen. He’d have to get ready, have a bath, iron something, but right then, with the adrenalin pumping in his veins and his heart thundering in his chest, he had to dance.

  And Pete remembered he had danced until his lungs were stretched to bursting and he was dizzy on the possibility of how wonderful life would be if only she would say yes.

  The train had an unscheduled stop at somewhere called Berkhamsted due to signal problems. Looking out of the window Pete saw a young couple lift a buggy off the train and wheel it towards the steps. The mother was laughing at her little girl of maybe two as she tried to put on her dad’s sunglasses. That was what he’d been dreaming of that afternoon he’d danced himself stupid, not Stella on the other side of the world and him off teaching in some southern backwater called St Albans, even if it did mean a shot at working on a film. As the train pulled out of the station he caught a last glimpse of the couple briefly touching hands and exchanging smiles before they carried the buggy down the station steps.

  He shook his head, and as the train entered a tunnel he gave his bemused reflection a companionable shrug. It was wrong, surely, and strange that he should feel like this. That he should feel so bereft and desolate.

  After all, Stella had said yes.

  Chapter Three

  ‘All right, Mag?’ Sheila greeted Maggie with her habitual East End tendency to shorten every close friend and family member’s name to one syllable, no matter what the result.

  ‘All right, She?’ Maggie returned the compliment, glad to see her.

  Sheila had worked in The Fleur for almost forty years and Maggie had grown up with her. Born in Bow, she had worked there for most of her youth – a real Bow Belle she often said, with all the young men eyeing her as she whizzed down the streets on her dad’s bicycle, her voluminous skirts billowing flirtatiously over the crossbar. When she was eighteen she had married the local war hero, a copper and amateur boxer ten years her senior. ‘Problem was,’ Sheila had told her once with her usual sanguine detachment, ‘he didn’t keep his fists to himself outside of the ring.’ For nearly two years she’d stood it, hiding her bruises from her friends and holding her head high, still playing the part of the feisty blonde. And then he’d beat her so badly she’d lost her first baby, a girl, when she was five months pregnant. The next day still bleeding and bruised, she packed what little she had and ran away, getting as far out of London as she could afford. She’d landed in St Albans, and she’d been working in this pub even before Maggie’s parents had bought it.