Impossible to Forget
Imogen Clark
The unlikeliest people are hiding halos beneath their hats.
Anonymous
August 2018
My dear friends,
If you are reading this, then I must be dead. (I’ve always wanted to say that – so very Agatha Christie! And please don’t cry, Leon. It’s only a bit of fun. x)
Seriously though, I want to thank you all for being there for me over the last couple of months. It’s been pretty tough, but having you lot in my corner has made it easier to cope. To be honest, I don’t know what I’d have done without you. I couldn’t have wished for a better bunch of mates.
But there’s just one last thing I need to ask you to do for me.
Obviously, my biggest concern is my beautiful girl, Romany. I will never understand a universe that lets a parent die before they have finished preparing their child to live. It’s all kinds of wrong. Yet we are where we are.
Without me, Romany will be left all alone. Even though she’s about to turn eighteen, she’s really still a child with so much to learn about the world, good and bad. She needs someone to be there for her, a guardian if you like, to guide her until she finds her feet. It won’t be forever, just until she finishes her A levels and gets a place at university, but I can’t bear to think of her struggling through school on her own. I had to do that, and I don’t want history repeating itself.
That’s where you come in. I charge you, my dearest and most trusted friends, with the vitally important task of steering her through the challenging months ahead.
I know it wouldn’t be fair to suggest that just one of you shoulders this massive responsibility, so I’ve decided to ask you all to play to your individual strengths.
Maggie – as my most highly qualified and pragmatic friend, please would you help Romany with all things legal and formal, and anything else that she should read before signing. I was never any good at that stuff and I know you’ll make a much better job of it.
Leon – to you I leave her cultural needs. Make sure that she listens to all kinds of music and not just whatever crap is in the charts. She should read loads, and write if the muse puts in an appearance, and I want her to be a regular at the theatre and the cinema. Art galleries too – basically all the things that will lift her day-to-day life above the mundane and make her wonder.
Tiger – I need you to keep her horizons wide. Make sure she travels whenever she can and absorbs different ways of life as easily as she absorbs sunlight. Help her to keep her eyes, and her heart, open.
And finally Hope. You may wonder what you’re doing here. I know we’ve only known each other for a comparatively short amount of time, but I think I know you well enough to ask you to help, and something tells me that you would be the perfect candidate to keep an eye on Romany’s relationships, friendships and affairs of the heart. Please show her how to judge people accurately and fairly, so that she can forgive the weaknesses of others.
So, even though my baby girl is setting forth on life’s great adventure without her mum by her side, she will have you four, her guardian angels, to protect her. I know that she couldn’t be in better hands.
All my love, forever,
Angie x
1
The solicitor removed her glasses, settled them artfully on top of her head and looked up at the collected ensemble. The four guardians sat slack-jawed, trying to process what they had just heard. Merely losing their friend Angie was not enough, it appeared. Now they had to step up and take responsibility for her child too, or at least parts of her. It was hardly surprising that they had turned a little pale.
The solicitor waited, giving them each a chance to absorb the letter’s contents, and as they did she eyed them all with mild curiosity. Who were these characters to Angie, she wondered, and how had they ended up being cast in these unforeseen and rather challenging roles?
Directly opposite her sat the daughter, Romany. She was tiny, built as if a breath of wind could blow her away like a cobweb, but there was something in her not-quite-brown eyes that suggested that she was more robust than she might appear. She was barely eighteen and already she had had to deal with the terminal illness and death of her only parent. You didn’t manage that without coming apart unless you had some inner resources to draw on. And she didn’t look as if she was coming apart. There’d been no drama or histrionics. She had listened to the reading of the letter calmly and without reaction.
The solicitor knew that her client’s wishes would have come as a surprise to all five of them. Angie had been very clear on the matter of secrecy, almost gleeful in fact, at their meeting several weeks before.
‘I’m not going to tell them what I’m planning,’ she had said. By then, her skin had taken on a yellowish pallor and was pulled tightly across her cheekbones, making them appear angular and sharp. ‘I’m sure they’ll all say yes if I ask them now, but I’d rather not give them the option. If they don’t know what’s coming, they’re less likely to make excuses or refuse.’
The solicitor’s training made her uncomfortable with such vagaries and she wanted to object, get Angie to put something more concrete in place for the girl; but then again, Romany had already turned eighteen and so technically, there was no need for the appointment of a single guardian, let alone four. Whether the chosen ones were prepared to step up to their allotted tasks was not a legal matter and therefore not one with which the solicitor need concern herself unduly. She had the sense that there was something else at play here, though, some greater purpose that she couldn’t quite put her finger on.