‘Sorry. Course. Inappropriate of me to have said that. And um … if you’re up for taking part in the programme, I know this might sound a bit offbeat …’
‘Spit it out, Sara.’
‘How about a visit to a medium or psychic? Our researcher Lauren suggested it. She said some of them help the police with looking for missing persons. We could see if we can find one who can give us any clues about finding Mitch. You could stay with me in Notting Hill, if you’d like.’
The angel card lay on the table next to the phone. Say yes to invites.
‘Great idea. Yes. Let’s do it, give my lot a chance to fend for themselves. They won’t know what’s hit them. Talking about friends and all your research into different angles, have you thought about a feature in one of them about learning to be your own friend? That’s what I’m learning how to do for the first time in my life.’
‘Excellent idea, Jo. Sounds good to me.’
Chapter Eighteen
Sara
Present day, January
I drove down to see Ally, take her out and see how she was doing. The house seemed quiet and Ally subdued and diminished. At five foot six, she appeared to have shrunk and, though I could see she was making an effort to be fine, it was clear that behind the mask she was hurting.
‘So how are you doing?’ I asked, as we sat on the leather Chesterfields in her sage-green sitting room, where the walls were lined with shelves heavy with books. ‘I know, stupid question but …’
She lifted her arms indicating the house. ‘I’m rattling around in here,’ she replied.
‘I suppose it’s too early to know what you want to do,’ I said.
‘It is. I can’t think straight. I doubt I’ll stay here, though. It’s way too big for just me. It’s so weird; you trundle along a particular path for a while then, with Michael not being here, it doesn’t make sense any more. Suddenly single again. I don’t know where I want to go or how I want to live, but I don’t think it will be on my own.’
‘Alice?’
Ally laughed. ‘I wouldn’t move in with either of my kids. They have their own way of living and I have mine. Spending Christmas with my daughter and family was lovely for the first two days, and they clearly wanted to take care of me, but it didn’t take long before I felt like a spare part. I value my independence and I’m not used to being waited on.’
‘Come and stay with me for a while,’ I said. ‘That’s if you’d like. I have a spare room, so you’d have some company and you can do your own thing there. I think Jo may be coming too. Stay as long as you like, until you have a better idea of where you’d like to be.’
‘That’s kind, Sara. Let me think about it. So how’s the series coming along?’
‘OK – good, in fact, but we’re still looking for the right group of women for programme one. Our lovely young researcher Lauren has come up with some unusual choices: witches, a group of cancer survivors who want to get in touch with a friend who passed away—’
‘But you want something more normal?’
‘We do. A group of strong women, ordinary but extra-ordinary. The heart of the series must be friendship.’
‘I know a group that might work,’ said Ally as she got up. She returned a few moments later with some papers and a photo of an elderly and stylish woman.
‘That’s Katie Brookfield,’ I said, recognizing her as soon as I looked at the picture. ‘I met her briefly at Michael’s funeral. God, I love her books. I’ve read them all and I loved the TV series too. It saw me through my first weeks of redundancy.’
‘So you know that the TV adaptation of her books was about a group of women, what they got up to and the letters they wrote to each other, signing off with funny pseudo-names.’
‘I do. The Bonnets of Bath.’
‘How about using them for your programme?’
‘They’d be just the sort of group I’m looking for, but the women in it are fictional.’
Ally shook her head. ‘That’s where you’re wrong. They’re all real. The characters in The Bonnets of Bath were based on living women. I know that for a fact because I’ve met most of them, though they’re older than the women portrayed on TV.’
‘Wow. So The Bonnets were based on people she knew?’
Ally nodded. ‘Remember the characters in the show?’
‘Of course. There were five.’
‘Katie Brookfield, Gabrielle Bise, Rebecca Fraser, Bridget O’Mara and Jenny Harkin. They’re all in their eighties now, but they’ve known each other most of their lives. In the books, Katie wrote about them when they were in their fifties, then of course the books were adapted for TV. Be great if you could get them to take part, because how they live now could be of interest as well.’
‘How come they called themselves The Bonnets?’ I asked.
‘It came about when Katie moved to Bath over thirty years ago. Part of the reason she moved to the area was that Gabrielle, Rebecca, Bridget and Jenny, her closest friends, were living in the area. I remember Katie saying that life had changed for her in London and there had been a great exodus of people she knew, heading for pastures new, to the point she found she’d lost all her group. She came into my office one day and said, “Acquaintances, I have many. True friends, apart from you dear Ally, all gone.”’
I can relate to that, I thought. ‘So she moved to Bath?’
‘She did. She would have been in her early fifties then. On the day the removal trucks arrived at her new house, her friends turned up with their husbands, the women wearing brightly coloured bonnets with feathers, ribbons and flowers that they’d made especially for the occasion. They’d even made one for her.’
‘I remember that
