19
Princess Diana was dead and the entire country, as far as Angie could tell anyway, had gone completely mad. She had never heard so much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. The carpets of flowers placed outside Kensington Palace also had to be seen to be believed. There were more flowers strewn on the ground than must have been grown in an entire summer, or so it appeared. 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.
Angie did feel sorry for the little princes though, following behind their father to look at the floral tributes. They looked like miniature adults in their ridiculous grown-up costumes, keeping a stiff upper lip as they must have been taught to do. All this repression of grief would only store up problems for them in later life, Angie was sure. She wanted to shout at them to scream and cry and release those pent-up emotions in whatever way felt most natural to them, but who was she to tell them anything?
But despite all the oddness, normal life had to continue. Long before anyone had known what was coming down the track for the princess, Angie had received a bright orange envelope through the post. It contained a cheerful invitation, also orange but with jaunty blue elephants scattered across it, inviting her to attend Thomas’s first birthday party. Initially Angie had been confused by it, not being immediately sure who Thomas was. She didn’t know any children and certainly none well enough to be invited to their birthday party. The RSVP request cast light on the mystery, however – Leon and Becky. Was their child one already? Angie supposed he must be. It was hardly the kind of thing that you made up.
Angie had to swallow down her resentment when she saw Becky’s name. Becky had stolen Leon from them, or Leon had allowed himself to be stolen. Angie wasn’t sure which was worse. But at least she’d been invited to the birthday celebrations, even if she was a duty invite. Maybe Becky would feel less threatened by Leon’s old friends from now on. Angie hoped so, because she and Maggie weren’t a threat to her. Well, not really.
Then Maggie rang. At least Angie saw Maggie more frequently than she saw Leon, but even with Maggie it was hard to get together, so busy were they with their day-to-day lives. They spoke every week, though, keeping up with each other’s news. Maggie seemed to be doing well at work and when they did meet, she was always beautifully and expensively dressed （though Angie’s eye was not that tuned in to these things）， and she drove a natty little convertible that Angie secretly coveted. But there didn’t seem to be much in her life outside her job. Her social life was made up mainly of work-related dinners or dull parties with her colleagues, and there was no suggestion of any romance. Maybe being a lawyer was like being a policeman. You ended up being married to the job.
‘Have you been invited to the birthday party?’ Maggie asked now.
‘What birthday party?’ Angie had replied, just out of badness because she knew the suggestion that Maggie had put her foot in it would make her squirm.
It did.
‘For Leon’s boy’s birthday, Thomas, you know.’ And then, ‘Oh my God! Have they not invited you? I’m so sorry. That’s so insensitive of me. I had no idea. I just assumed because I’d got one that . . . oh God. How embarrassing.’
Angie, grinning down the phone, let her off the hook. ‘You’re so easy to wind up, Mags. I’m only kidding,’ she said. ‘Of course I got one. Are you going to go?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ tutted Maggie. ‘You can be very irritating, you know, Angie Osborne. Anyway, I thought that if you were invited then we could go together and if it’s totally awful, we can slope off and go and get a cup of tea somewhere. What do you think?’
Angie liked the idea a lot. She was determined to try a little harder with Becky from this point on, but it would be easier to do that with Maggie by her side. Leeds was less than an hour away and Maggie had the natty car. If she drove them there Angie wouldn’t even have to fork out for the train fare.
‘Why not?’ she replied. ‘Let’s go and meet Leon’s progeny!’
So, a plan was made. On the day of the party, Saturday 6 September, Maggie would pick her up from the flat and drive them both to Leon’s house.
But that was before anyone knew that it would be the day of the biggest funeral since Winston Churchill’s.
When Maggie picked Angie up there was not a soul out on the street. Everyone, it appeared, was inside watching the service on the television. Angie had no television and wouldn’t have watched anyway, but Maggie seemed quite aggrieved.