Chapter Two

‘Imogen? What are you doing here?’

‘You didn’t make it to bed last night then?’

‘What?’

‘You’re too spruced darling. No one, not even you looks this good this early on Saturday. Unless they got up at some ungodly hour, or they didn’t go to bed. Besides, your eyes say you didn’t sleep.’

Imogen has invited herself around. She’s in full battledress – jodhpurs, tweed jacket, polo-neck, hair scraped back in a vicious bun. She hasn’t gone for the full slap, but there’s enough make-up to alert the world, let it know she means business. Already I’m making her tea as she settles in the lounge. I watch her from the door as the kettle boils. She is not what she was whenever that was. She’s not quite as slim as she wants to be, but her tall frame disguises any excess she might feel obliged to moan about. She’s wearing her business voice too. The ‘darling’ she tosses out at me has been in her posher, distant voice. Nothing in there that speaks of the closeness we share.

‘Biscuits?’

‘Choc digestive?’

‘What else?’

‘Yes please.’

‘So what brings you here Imogen, it’s barely nine, couldn’t you sleep either?’

‘There’s no either about it. I can sleep and so can you.’ Her voice, raised to meet me in the kitchen, moderates to a warmer tone as I bring the mugs and biscuits through. ‘Bet you sat in that bloody chair and chewed over an increasingly distant past. I bet someone said something, you heard a song, or saw some shit movie that gave you the perfect excuse to… to hang on to it all.’

Her frustration with me isn’t new. It swings between kind concern and exasperation. Sometimes she shouts and swears at me and then throws her arms around me and hugs me in a flood of tears. But that’s not why she’s here today. Even Imogen doesn’t tear herself from bed on Saturday morning purely in my interest.