To My Best Friends. Sam Baker

strove to be.

      ‘But what’s she asking, precisely?’ Mona asked, when she’d finished reading. ‘Surely she’s not leaving you custody of Charlie and Harrie over David?’

      ‘No,’ Jo laughed. ‘No,’ she said again, with less certainty. ‘At least . . . I don’t think so.

      ‘I think what she’s saying, in her clumsy, bossy, Nicci way is, since, so far, I’ve been unable to have children of my own,’ Jo paused and swallowed hard, ‘I can have first dibs on hers. You know, Christmas, Easter . . . As if I don’t have enough other people’s children to keep me busy on public holidays with Sam and Tom.’ Her smiled dropped. ‘Not that I don’t love Si’s boys, because I do.’

      ‘We know that, Jo,’ Lizzie said gently. ‘Don’t we, Mo?’

      Mona nodded.

      ‘She meant well,’ Jo said at last. ‘I’m sure of it. Nicci was a control freak but she was a good person. She meant well.’

      Mona looked up. ‘Did she, Jo? Do you really think so?’

      Silence filled the shed and cold crept under the door and through the tiny gaps in the window frame. It was as cold now inside as out.

      ‘I feel . . .’ Lizzie said, looking around, taking in her friends sitting side by side and feeling inexplicably left out, ‘. . . like I hardly knew her at all. There were hundreds of people at church I didn’t recognise, friends, maybe even family, I didn’t know existed. And this, two hundred yards from the kitchen where we spent so much time.’ She gestured at the shed. ‘I didn’t even know this was here, did you?’

      ‘I thought it was all dirty pots, plastic trays and bags of compost,’ Mona said, swiping her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘Not another little world.’

      ‘It’s like she’s gone off,’ said Jo, getting up and brushing ineffectively at her skirt, ‘and taken the map.’ She sounded lost.

      ‘She left us the letters,’ Lizzie said.

      ‘They’re not a map,’ Mona said crossly, stamping her feet against the cold. ‘They’re hardly even a clue.’

      Chapter Five

      It has to be done, Jo told herself. Someone has to sort through Nicci’s clothes and that someone has to be us. David isn’t in a fit state to do it.

      The high street was gridlocked: a snarl-up caused by the usual mix of road works, double parking, plus an icy drizzle so depressing it felt like it had been falling for eight weeks straight.

      Checking her watch, Jo sighed. Six thirty. Too early and too late. When she left work she’d thought she had plenty of time to spare. That was before it took forty-five minutes to drive less than a mile.

      She wasn’t due at Nicci’s house until seven – it would always be Nicci’s house to her – but the way the traffic dragged, one car crawling through the lights at a time, there was barely any point going home at all. Only she’d promised Si she’d put in an appearance because it was Wednesday, his night to have Sam and Tom. Si’s sons from his first marriage stayed every Wednesday night, every other weekend and exactly half of all school holidays. That was the deal.

      Supper wasn’t an issue. Wednesday night was pizza night. The same order every week: chicken dippers, followed by medium, stuffed-crust pizzas with some unimaginably disgusting meat combo on top, and brownies and a tub of Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food to finish. Cardiac arrest delivered on the back of a motorbike. Jo had long since stopped trying to force vegetables down the boys, although Si had taught her all his little tricks for concealing them. Domino’s could set their clock by Sam and Tom’s order. It didn’t thrill their mother, but that was Si’s battle. Jo had learnt that over the years. All Jo knew was carbs oiled the wheels of domestic harmony. Plus pizza straight out of the box seriously reduced the washing-up.

      At what point did it become better not to show at all than to sprint in, wave to the boys and sprint out again? If she dropped home now, she would be late to Nicci’s, and Jo had been the one who promised David they’d sit Charlie and Harrie, get them to bed, so he could have a night out without worrying.

      It was hardly a night off if the sitters turned up half an hour late. Mind you, it was hardly a night off if you suspected one of the sitters had been left joint custody of your children.

      Too late Jo noticed the news had finished and been replaced by one of those annoying comedy news programmes. Flicking through the channels, she found something classical she didn’t recognise on Radio Three and something dance-y she didn’t recognise on Radio One. She turned off the radio and groaned into the silence. When had she got so old?

      But the silence was worse. It let her thoughts crowd back in.

      Capsule Wardrobe was Nicci. That fact had smacked Jo in the face in the few short weeks since Nicci’s death. In every meeting, phone call and email, all Jo could see was Nicci’s absence. It showed in the eyes of the loyal customers; in the pity of the suppliers tiptoeing around her, in their concern.

      Oh, the company couldn’t run without Jo, there was no question of that. Jo was the organiser, the administrator, the accountant. She was the person who kept the show on the road, day in, day out. But it was Nicci’s innate sense of style that made Capsule Wardrobe what it was. Jo didn’t begin to know how to keep it going without her. And yet she had to keep telling the others it was going to be all right. The internet business was thriving. The name was strong, their reputation excellent, these things would live on.

      Kelly, Nicci’s right-hand woman, was trying – trying really hard – to fill Nicci’s shoes. Sitting up late into the night on her laptop, scouring the ready-to-wear shows look by look, noting the key pieces she thought would work for Capsule Wardrobe’s loyal core of customers. Items that nodded to the new season’s trends but would last far longer than that, making their three- or even four-figure price tag vaguely justifiable, cost per wear. Kelly was there each morning, hovering in Jo’s doorway like a puppy desperate to be stroked. Wanting praise for her list of looks, her trend notes, her buying suggestions. And every morning Jo praised her, and saw relief soften Kelly’s face. But the truth was, Jo wasn’t convinced.

      She couldn’t put her finger on the problem. She certainly didn’t know how to solve it. But despite Kelly’s enthusiasm and hard work, she just didn’t have Nicci’s taste; Nicci’s ability to sling on a moth-eaten leopard-print coat, belt it tight, and look like Liz Taylor in her golden years, not Bet Lynch in her Rovers years.

      Kelly just didn’t have it. Worse, Jo was pretty sure she couldn’t learn it.

      When Nicci was there, Kelly could take her cues from her, but Nicci wasn’t there now, was she?

      And then there were Si and the boys, and the attention they deserved, but that she knew they hadn’t been getting from her lately. Not since it became clear how ill Nicci was.

      And then there were Charlie and Harrie.

      Nicci had meant well, Jo was convinced of that. Until the cancer took hold, Nicci had watched helplessly her friend’s growing anguish as first one, then two, then three attempts at IVF failed. And now . . . what? Who knew? Not Jo, and not Si. They’d both steered well clear of the subject since Nicci’s cancer was declared terminal.

      Jo adored her goddaughters, but seriously . . . ?

      Behind her some jerk leant on his horn. Lifting her head, she saw the four-by-four in front had rolled forward a few feet, leaving a patch of rain-darkened tarmac. There were still four cars between her and the red lights. Big whoop. What difference did it make if she moved now or in five minutes?

      In her rear-view mirror, the middle-aged guy in his BMW made a show of drumming his hands impatiently on the steering wheel. It was too dark to see clearly, but she just knew that his expression screamed ‘women drivers’.

      Tosser, she thought as she eased her foot off the brake to allow her Golf to close the gap between it and the car in front.

      Charlie