Impossible to Forget

by Imogen Clark

The unlikeliest people are hiding halos beneath their hats. Anonymous

how to put cats amongst pigeons.’

The music was lilting. The notes hung in the air, suspended on invisible threads and then faded and disappeared only to be replaced by others so entirely perfect that it was hard to believe that they hadn’t been there all the time. They twisted and turned, were bent in and out of shape, grew and were then dismissed

‘Actually, I know what Leon means,’ she said. ‘I’m the same. I just want to get through this and then get on with my career. I’m dying to start work as a solicitor.’ ‘But that means you don’t get the most out of this part of your life,’ said Angie. ‘You’re so busy looking forward to what is to come that you’re missing what you have in the here and now.’

It felt, Angie thought, as if everyone had channelled any bit of sadness or grief from their own lives into the mourning for this stranger. As a result, the atmosphere was weird, the energy somehow disjointed.

On the day of the party, Saturday 6 September,

(This is my birthday, LOL!)

She went back into the boot and brought out a second box identical to the first. ‘I do have this one spare.’ She grinned at Angie.

Angie felt humbled. Not only did Maggie know her well enough to know that buying a gift would never have occurred to her, but she had fixed the problem for her too.

There was something about old friends, she thought, a special depth of

understanding that you never quite managed to reach with friends made later in life. The people who knew you when you were learning to know yourself had a more honest picture. They’d seen you when you were not yet entirely formed, when your outer shell hadn’t quite sealed around you. As a result, there was less pretending.

And even though that could be scarily exposing, it was also good to be around them. You could skip past all that small talk and pleasantries stuff and cut straight to the heart of whichever matter needed to be discussed.

you never aim too high, then you never have too far to fall. It was fundamentally self-limiting though, accepting that your life was never going to be more than you allowed it to be,

At twenty, Angie had thought that she didn’t need anyone, that she was strong enough to get through life on her own. But gradually she had come to realise that sometimes you really do need someone rooting for you. Over the years, that person had become Maggie. And now, here they were with the roles well and truly reversed, Angie with her life on track and Maggie adrift and without a clue what to do about it. Angie had no magic bullets for her friend. She didn’t even know what her options might be. But she knew that she was going to be there when Maggie needed her.

It felt good, Angie thought, to pause. She should do it more often. Mindfulness was something that she talked about endlessly to her clients and she tried to approach each day being grateful for what she had at that moment, but sometimes even she got lost in the business of living.

The lust that they had felt at the outset seemed to have been replaced by something less exciting, and they had slipped quickly into a comfortable companionable pairing, rather like she imagined marriage to be. It wasn’t a bad place, but Maggie couldn’t help thinking that somehow they had bypassed ten years or so.

‘Unrequited love,’ said Angie wistfully. ‘I don’t think you’re properly human if you don’t have at least one.

‘It was the universe telling you that you needed to change direction. You just haven’t quite worked out which way up the map goes yet,

‘Mocks coming up and then that’ll be it – the actual exams. End of school! End of life as we know it!’

‘Daniel must have worked it out,’ she said. ‘Even if he didn’t find his way to York to be close to them in the first place, he must have assumed that Angie and Romany might still be living here. And if Hope told him about her role as Angie’s guardian then he would have made the connections. Another single mother called Angie with a daughter of the right age called Romany is way too much of a coincidence to be somebody else. And it’s such an Angie thing to have done, involving Hope.’ Maggie smiled to herself at the workings of Angie’s mind.

If only we could tell our younger selves what they should really be worrying about, she thought.

‘And I know I’m not supposed to need my guardians any more,’ Romany continued, ‘but please don’t abandon me just yet. I don’t know anything about anything, not really. And I’ll definitely need you all in the holidays, so please can you stick around for a bit longer?’ ‘Just you try shaking us off,’ replied Tiger, smiling so fondly at her that Maggie wanted to rush over and hug him.

peacock butterfly fluttering from flower to flower, a tiny buzz of vibrant colour against the pale background. Maggie had never believed in anything even vaguely supernatural, but maybe she could make an exception, just this once.

Finally, to my family. The family unit, in all its many guises, is at the root of my books and I am blessed that my own is so very supportive of everything I try to do. Thank you to you all.