I’d just finished assembling dinner when the buzzer went. You were in your room. I couldn’t hear any music and you didn’t dash out, so I assumed you were busy studying. It was about six o’clock, and Emily wasn’t due until seven, so when I went to the door I was expecting one of those guys who sell the terrible cleaning products for extortionate amounts. You always laugh at me when I come back to the kitchen with some lurid neon cloth or a packet of anti-static wipes for the computer screen, or some other piece of crap that has cost me the best part of a tenner.

‘You may as well put those straight in the bin, Mum,’ you say, or, ‘You know that’ll fall apart after you’ve used it three times, don’t you?’

‘I know, but he’s just trying to get back on his feet, you know?’ I’m always a bit teary after I’ve spoken to these men. It’s their furrowed brows. Like someone’s etched their lives there with a chisel.

You roll your eyes at me and say something like: ‘He should sell better stuff then, shouldn’t he?’

Typical teenager, you, with your black-and-white opinions, your moral outrage, your judgement. Too young to know that life doesn’t always give us clear colours like that, that everything and everyone has been chipped at and damaged and complicated beyond imagining. No matter how happy a person’s face, you never know what battles they’re fighting behind the scenes… I’m sure I’ve seen that on your Facebook somewhere, one of your bumper-sticker philosophies. But I suppose I should have been pleased you were just a normal teenager, as black-and-white and morally outraged as all the rest.

You won’t be like that any more, will you, baby girl? You’ve experienced first-hand how life can unravel, haven’t you, my love? How it can change us, irreversibly, forever.

Anyway, it wasn’t one of those men at the door – it was Emily. I couldn’t help but smile when I saw her. She was so herself, if you know what I mean. She was wearing walking shoes, jeans that came up over her belly like Humpty Dumpty’s trousers and, even though it was warm out, a woollen sweater with a Fair Isle design running across the breast and shoulders, and over that, a navy-blue raincoat. She blinked at me through those lenses that make her eyes look as big as a bush baby’s.

‘Toni!’ she said. ‘How the devil are you?’

As she stepped into the hall, I was already fighting the urge to giggle. ‘I’m well, Emily, thank you.’

‘I’m sorry I’m so early. I was banking on traffic on the A316, but it was completely clear.’ She raised her eyebrows at me. ‘Obviously, if I’d been running late, there would have been a traffic jam from here to Timbuktu, but… anyway, I just thought… I can go away and come back if you’d prefer?’ She gestured towards the street. ‘I’ve parked out at the front there, but I won’t get a fine, will I? Not at this time? I can easily go to a café and wait, Antonia, it’s no trouble.’

So funny. So herself. Although not quite. I remember thinking that she was less sure, somehow, although I couldn’t put my finger on why I would think that. She had the big voice, yet she was small; she was full of bravado, yet full of doubt.

‘Don’t be daft, Emily,’ I said. ‘And call me Toni, please. Everyone else does. Rosie’s here. She’ll be delighted to see you.’

I shouted down the hall to you. No answer. I knocked on your door and opened it a crack.

You weren’t at your desk at all; you were on your bed, staring at your phone. I know now why that was, of course.

As soon as you saw me, you pulled the headphones out of your ears and pushed the phone against your chest. ‘What?’

‘Have you been listening to music when you should be working?’ I said.

You rolled your eyes and shrugged at Emily over my shoulder as if to say: See what I have to put up with? ‘Music helps me concentrate.’

‘Concentrate on what?’ I asked. ‘YouTube? Facebook?’

‘No-o.’ Ah, the two-syllable no, beloved of all parents of teenagers. ‘I had to research something for history. I was doing that.’

‘Come on through to the kitchen, Emily,’ I said, just to get away from you and your lip-curling, your dripping disdain, your constantly rotating eyeballs.

‘Mu-um.’ The two-syllable mum, up there with the two-syllable no in the irritation top ten. ‘Emily and me can talk in my room.’ You met me with your clear, intransigent eyes, but I was having none of it. I know our flat isn’t large, but to chat to a fully grown woman in your bedroom? I’m sorry, but that’s just inappropriate.

‘Don’t be silly,’ I said.

‘But it’s my room,’ you said. ‘It’s my only space.’

‘Oh, I’m sure the kitchen will be fine,’ said Emily. Her usual bluster had vanished. She was bouncing the tips of her fingers together and looking from left to right as if to try and figure out where to put herself. I suspected she was embarrassed, and quite right. No one wants to get caught up in other people’s bickering, do they? I know every daytime show has people airing their grievances for all the world to see, but I’m still very much of the old school. The way I was brought up, what happens in the family stays in the family.

We had just sat down in the kitchen when I heard the front door open and close. Your auntie Bridge. She had no acting work that week, so she’d picked up a couple of shifts in the Italian café as well as her website jobs.

‘Hey up, Squirt,’ she said, ruffling your hair as she came into the kitchen.

‘You remember Emily, Bridge?’ I said.

‘Agent to the stars,’ your auntie Bridget said. ‘What’s she got, the lead in the new Scorsese?’

Emily chuckled. ‘Almost.’

‘I’m starving,’ Bridget continued, wandering over to the stove and peeking into the pan where I’d prepared the broccoli. Before I had a chance to speak, she dropped the lid back onto the pan and said, ‘Emily, are you staying for dinner? Not sure what it is, but it smells good.’

Emily looked from Bridget to me to you. And back to Bridget. ‘I…’ she began. ‘I’m sorry, forgive me, but do you live here too?’

‘I do, yes.’ Bridget smiled. ‘Unless Toni’s moved my stuff out again. She’s always doing that, but I just move it back in.’

I laughed. She’s such a nut, isn’t she, your auntie?

‘Well I never,’ Emily said, eyebrows almost hitting her hairline. ‘I didn’t realise that. How funny, I mean. I met you at the theatre, of course, and Rosie’s shown me pictures of you and her at your concerts. The Promise, isn’t it, your group? Concerts? Or do you call them gigs? It’s gigs, isn’t it, for pop?’

‘Rock,’ Bridget said, but she was smiling, as amused as we always were by Emily’s way of putting things. ‘You should come along sometime.’

‘I’m sure Emily has better things to do than hang out here with us,’ I said. ‘Don’t you, Emily?’

‘No, stay,’ you said. ‘Mum always makes enough for about ten people anyway.’

Honestly, you and your auntie do gang up on me sometimes. I was hoping to save half for the next night so I didn’t have to cook again. As for poor Emily, her eyes were as round as a rabbit’s. And the headlights were flashing off her spectacles.

‘I…’

‘Emily, don’t let these two bully you,’ I said. ‘But if you’d like to stay for dinner, you’re very welcome. It’s nothing fancy – just cottage pie.’

She stayed, as you know, and I realised immediately that we’d done the right thing, asking her to eat with us like that. That’s typical of your auntie Bridge, isn’t it? Whatever the circumstances, she always does the most open, the most generous thing. It never occurred to me to ask Emily to stay, just as it had never occurred to me to think about what her home life might be like, whether she was married, or had kids. Whether she had ever wanted those things. But I thought about it then, and when I asked her about it over dinner, she said that no, she wasn’t married, and no, she didn’t have children.

‘But I’m a busy bee,’ she added with hasty joviality, and I had an inkling that, despite all her bluster, she might be a little lonely.

‘Good to stay busy,’ I said. ‘Stops you from thinking too much. It does me anyway.’

You glared at me, but I didn’t think I’d said anything wrong.

‘Oh, I’m like the proverbial whirling dervish,’ Emily went on, ‘zipping round all the youth theatres in the borough and beyond. And I have a keen interest in film, too, so if I’m not watching a play locally, you’ll find me in the cinema with my popcorn.’

That chuckle. You take her off so well, Rosie love. You make me laugh. I love it when you make me laugh.

‘Whereabouts are you based, Emily?’ I asked.

‘Richmond way,’ she said, placing her hand to her chest. ‘With my brother, for my sins.’

For my sins. Hadn’t heard that phrase in years.

‘Little two-bed terrace,’ she went on. ‘Nothing fancy. Keep the old overheads low.’

While we chatted, you set the table and Bridget pulled a bottle of lager from the fridge for herself and poured a glass of Cab Sauv for me.

‘Heavens, no,’ Emily said when Bridge offered her a glass. ‘One sniff of that and I’ll drive the car straight into the hedge! But thank you.’

As we ate, we exchanged stories, got to know each other on a personal level. Bonding, you’d call it. Emily didn’t ask about your dad or the accident and I wondered if you’d already told her, if you even bothered telling anyone about it any more. I guess I’m used to people avoiding the subject, and as for you, you’ve spent most of your life without your dad, so for you the way we live is normal.

Anyway, Emily told all those funny stories about her days on The Bill, do you remember? The pranks they pulled! I couldn’t believe my ears.

‘Ah yes, I remember one day we…’ Emily could hardly get it out for chuckling. ‘We stretched cling film over the loo seat, under the seat, I should say, on the porcelain bowl itself. We stretched and stretched it tight, tight, tight, so you couldn’t see it. We were laughing so much we were crying. And then we put the seat down and you couldn’t tell there was anything there.’ She gave a hoot, pushed up her glasses and wiped her eyes with a piece of kitchen roll. ‘Anyway, so me and my friend, we waited, her in the other cubicle, me at the sinks, pretending to, I don’t know what, fix my hair or my lipstick or something.’

‘And then?’ You were perched on the edge of your seat, desperate to know.

‘And then the superintendent, as it were, came in. I said hello, but casual, nothing-naughty-happening-here sort of thing, and she went into the cubicle. Next thing, we hear this shriek! Poor woman had peed all over her knickers, her tights, her you name it—’ She broke off, helpless.

Well, that really tickled you, didn’t it, Rosie? Your forehead was on the table; your shoulders were shaking. I hadn’t seen you laugh so much in a long while. And when she told us the one about smearing strawberry jam on the actual loo seat and that famous actor – what was her name? Oh, it’s gone. Anyway, she sat on the jam, and your face when Emily told us that was an absolute picture.

‘Sticky Bum we called her after that,’ she added, just as you hit your peak of hilarity, pushing up her glasses and wiping her eyes again. Honestly, I thought you were going to spit your cottage pie across the table. ‘Sticky Bum!’

We laughed so much that evening. The surprise of it was moving for reasons I can’t really explain. I guess, when I remember times with your dad, I remember having people over for dinner, meeting up with friends in the pub. I remember laughing a lot more. Emily is one of those people who’s funny by accident, isn’t she? Except I suspect she knows exactly what she’s doing. Disingenuous, I’d say, but in a lovely way. She kind of bumbles through what she’s saying, but actually, her comic timing is perfect. And when she showed us that picture of herself when she was twenty, well.

‘Emily,’ I said. ‘You were absolutely stunning.’ Her face was smooth, her long blonde hair fell straight over her shoulders and she didn’t have her glasses on. Really, she was quite beautiful.

‘Ah yes,’ she said, a little sadly. ‘I was never tall, but I did have a nice face. You’d never think it to look at me now, would you?’

‘Oh no, that’s not what I meant. I just meant…’

She patted my hand. ‘It’s quite all right. I know what you meant. I’m a great deal older now, and after the fall, I put on weight and never lost it. Plus the old limp isn’t exactly desirable, is it? So the television parts dried up, and I found I wasn’t as physically strong as I had been.’ She smiled and looked at you.

None of us asked her about her fall, perhaps for the same reason she didn’t ask about our set-up: out of politeness.

‘You’d be surprised how physically demanding theatre is,’ she said after a moment. ‘That’s why I was pleased that you do your karate and what not.’

‘Taekwondo,’ said Bridget, who, I realised, had barely spoken. But then, knowing her, she probably wanted to stay in the background and let you and Emily get to know each other.

‘Bridget’s a black belt second dan,’ I said. I suppose I was keen to lighten the mood. I didn’t want to go from her misfortunes to ours and end up with us all crying over our cottage pie.

Emily’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Black belt, eh? Do you teach it?’

Bridget shook her head and stood, her face deadpan.

‘Too dangerous,’ she said. ‘For the others, I mean. I’m a deadly weapon, Emily.’

You and I started laughing, and seeing us, Emily caught on and laughed too.

‘I’ll clear these plates,’ your auntie said, grinning. ‘Would you like some coffee, Emily?’

---

After you’d helped your auntie Bridge clear away the plates and make coffee, Emily got down to business and told us about your audition.

‘Now, this one is in Islington,’ she said. ‘I’ll send details. It’s at a casting agency, so it’s all above board. You’ll see when you get there. Quite an elegant suite of offices, I would say. There’s a main reception where you give your name and they’ll buzz you up. The offices are on the third floor, and the lady you’re seeing is called Kate Paxton.’

‘When is it?’ you asked.

‘This Friday at 5 p.m.’ Emily checked her watch. ‘What are we now, Wednesday? I suppose that’s tight for you, Toni, with your work, but I can take Rosie if you’d like. I don’t have any appointments that day, so it’s not a bother.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’m sure we’ll manage.’

‘Well let me know if you change your mind. I’ll send the script through with the details. It’s all pretty straightforward. You speak into the camera and the casting agent will read the other part. Toni, perhaps you can rehearse it with her?’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Happy to.’

I was thinking your auntie Bridge could take you, but once Emily had gone, she said she had a client that Friday and couldn’t turn down the cash. As Emily had said, there was no way I could get you there for five, and after all the time off I’ve had, I couldn’t really ask for more. There was no way I would have let you go all that way by yourself, so there was no choice.

We would have to rely on Emily after all.