Page 7 of Joker in the Pack

The pain they brought simply wasn’t worth it.

When I didn’t answer Maddie’s calls on Saturday afternoon, she used her key and found me slumped on the sofa, surrounded by empty wine bottles and the remains of a family-sized tin of Quality Street.

“Come on—we’re going out.”

“I haven’t got any money.”

“My treat.”

“I have to work.”

She leaned forward and sniffed my breath. “When you’ve been drinking?”

The last time I’d tried that, I’d got Longacres Garden Centre mixed up with Hair by Camilla and accidentally uploaded a banner reminding Camilla’s clients it was time to get their bushes trimmed. That little mistake had taken a lot of apologising.

“Maybe not.”

Maddie pulled me to my feet and shoved me in the direction of the shower. “Chop-chop. I’m not taking no for an answer.”

She wouldn’t give up; I knew that. Her tenacity in the face of my mother’s disapproval had kept her by my side since childhood.

While my mother had been a firm advocate of “keeping up with the Joneses,” she’d made an exception for Madonna Jones and her family. Maddie had worn hand-me-down clothes and lived in a council house, and my mother had never managed to see past that to the person underneath.

“Who on earth calls a child Madonna?” she’d asked one day. “It’s bordering on child abuse.”

I kept my mouth shut because my opinion wouldn’t have mattered, anyway. But no matter what my mother thought, Maddie and I had been inseparable.

When my father went through his midlife crisis, announced he was marrying a woman ten years his junior, and moved to Spain, it was Maddie who’d brought around the darts for us both to throw at the wedding photo he’d thoughtfully sent me.

After that, my mother had suffered her own breakdown, and we moved from our nice four-bedroom detached in Notting Hill to a pokey terraced shoebox. The doctors said Mother made a full recovery, but I knew better. Appearances meant everything to her, and giving up her life of luxury meant taking a huge hit to her social standing. I’d often wondered whether that was why she’d piled so much pressure onto me.

I’d been shunned by the popular set too, and I spent most of my GCSE year cowering behind the bike sheds to avoid their name-calling. Of course, then I’d failed my exams and hidden at Maddie’s for two days straight before I plucked up the courage to go home.

“You’re grounded, madam. Do you hear me?” Mother screeched when she found the results slip in my bag. “How could you do this to me?”

To her. Always to her. My feelings didn’t matter, and I couldn’t do anything right.

When I turned eighteen, Maddie was the one by my side when Mother lost her battle against lung cancer, blaming my father’s smoking habit to the end. And even as she slipped away, her remaining hair had been neatly curled, her lipstick perfect.

Now Maddie was here for me again. The least I could do was go out with her for the evening, and now she wandered into the bedroom while I finished getting dressed, a glass of wine in her right hand and a digestive biscuit in her left.

“You can’t go out wearing that. You look as if you’re in mourning.”

I glanced down at my black pencil skirt and matching blouse. “I am. My relationship died.”

“Stop thinking like that. I can tell I still have work to do.”

She rummaged through my closet, coming up with something sparkly that had somehow missed the eBay pile.

“Here, put this on.”

I unfolded the garment. Did I even buy that? “I’ll need some trousers to go with it.”

“Don’t you bloody dare!”

I put the offending item on, and it didn’t even come to mid-thigh.

“I can’t go out like this. It’s positively indecent.”

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