Silence hung in the fading afternoon light. When she set off again, I jogged to the top of the road, fearful I’d lost her. But then I saw her in the distance. We crossed the road in tandem, at an even pace, with less than twenty metres between us.

Then she disappeared. I panicked. I crossed the road to shelter from a persistent drizzle and ducked into the doorway of a chemist’s shop; a sad little affair, I might add, in comparison to my former emporium. I looked around, floored at where she might have gone when suddenly I saw a light switch on across the road. It shone in a little room one floor up. My mystery woman’s silhouette was outlined in the window.

I lit a cigarette, bent over my lighter, aware that she’d looked out and might have seen me in the doorway. I was confident, however, that she wouldn’t recognise me in my professional costume. I was such an expert spy.

35

Rebecca

The biting north-east wind sliced through my bones. My eyes smarted from the icy blast. I braced against the bitter chill, head bowed, and looked into the ground.

I wondered what was in the coffin. It certainly wasn’t my father. He was long gone. My mother gripped my arm and leaned heavily against me in her misery. As I stared at the box I could see my father’s face, puckered in sadness, lined with years of disappointment at not being able to fulfil his wife’s dreams. Perhaps on that cold dank November morning my mother finally realised his worth but I found it hard to care. My father had been my idol, my mother the spoiler.

Jodi made the journey north for my father’s funeral. She was delighted to have me back from down under. She was accompanied by her new partner, Taylor. Their new-found happiness offered me a lifeline, a way to start again.

‘Come back to London,’ Jodi said. We huddled together for warmth. ‘Taylor and I’ve moved in together so my flat in Muswell Hill is free. It’s waiting for you.’

She splayed one arm round Taylor, the other round me, as we walked back to the pub for the wake.

‘My mother thinks I’ve come home to look after her.’

‘It’s your life. What would you do up here anyway? It’s the back of beyond. Go on, come back. It’ll be like old times.’

If I’d seriously considered coming home to be with my mother, the ramifications of such a move suddenly became too apparent. Family friends came and went, kissed my mother reverently on the cheeks and offered condolences and insincere promises of help. She would suffocate me the way she had done Dad.