Tiger put his arm around her and held her tightly. ‘Oh Romes, don’t. I can’t stand to see you sad. But just so I’m clear. He didn’t actually tell you he was your dad. In so many words, I mean?’
Romany shook her head into his shoulder, her voice muffled by his shirt. ‘Well, no,’ she agreed. ‘Not in so many words. But it all fits, doesn’t it?’
‘Yeah,’ replied Tiger. ‘That’s what I thought anyway.’
There was a pause whilst she tried to control her tears and Tiger continued to hold her. Then he said, ‘Do you think you should talk to him? Get it all out in the open.’
Romany considered. Running off hadn’t been the most mature response, she conceded, but she’d been taken off guard. It wasn’t the kind of situation you had a plan for. But Tiger was right. It did need sorting out and now was as good a time as ever.
‘Do you think he’s still out there?’ she asked.
‘Only one way to find out,’ he said. ‘Let me go and see?’
Romany gave a single nod.
‘And if he is, shall I bring him in?’
‘Okay,’ she said, a tiny tremor cracking the word in two.
She stepped aside so that Tiger could get past her and open the door. He flicked the latch and peered out into the street. Then he went as far as the gate, but in a couple of seconds he was back.
‘I think he’s gone,’ he said.
54
It was a long time since Maggie had been nervous, properly gut-wrenchingly nervous, but she was now. It was only an interview, she told herself. She had been in hundreds before, although, to be fair, she had generally been the interviewer and not the interviewee. And it wasn’t that important. Yes, this would be a great job to get, but there would be others. Now that she had started to look, positions that might suit her seemed to be popping up all over the place. What distinguished this one was that it would be the first. This was the benchmark by which she would measure everything that came next, all the things that were currently unknown. How would she perform under pressure? How would her career gap be taken? Was her legal knowledge still up to date? What would she be like as a team member rather than a team leader? Was Maggie Summers still relevant to the legal world at all?
She thought she had answers for some of these questions, but not all of them. She would only know where she stood after she had the first interview under her belt and was able to test their response to her. And that was about to be now.
Her phone buzzed and she snatched it up. It was a good luck text from Leon. That was sweet of him, she thought, but she was too anxious to reply just now. She turned her phone on to Do Not Disturb and dropped it back into her bag. Then she stood up, took a deep breath and set off for the interview.
Two hours later she was standing on the pavement outside the offices of what she hoped would be her new employer. It had gone well, she thought. She was fairly sure she had come across as measured and unflappable, with high levels of personal responsibility and integrity, a strong work ethic and a clear sense of team spirit. She had, in fact, just been herself. And they had liked her, she hoped at least. They seemed to respond well to her honesty when they asked her about why she had left Brownlows and what she had been doing since and, of course, her CV was impressive, her list of former clients and transactions substantial. They would let her know later, they had said. So now all she had to do was wait.
She had taken the day off from Space Solutions to accommodate the interview, so her time was her own. Having run through her options, she thought she might call on Romany and Tiger, see how they were coping. Romany’s exams had begun, and so things were likely to be a little fraught. Maggie could still remember what it felt like. Of all the exams that she had sat over the years, her A levels had been the most stressful. She had truly believed that her entire life was on the line, that if she failed to get the grades to take the next step then everything would be ruined and her life would be over. How na?ve and over-dramatic that felt now, but at the time she had been convinced it was right. There was even an A level stress nightmare that she still had when she was under extreme pressure, unchanged in its particulars since it had first haunted her thirty-five years ago. If only we could tell our younger selves what they should really be worrying about, she thought.
At Angie’s place （when would she stop thinking of it in those terms?） she rang the doorbell and then waited, half-expecting that there would be no one in, but then she heard someone coming down the stairs towards her. The door opened and there stood Tiger. He was wearing an apron, a masculine-looking navy blue affair, but it was still, most definitely, an apron.