Free Aunt Margaret's Lover by Mavis Cheek

said when the receiver was safely back in its cradle.
    Chapter Ten
    He mentioned my mother for the first time when we went to Niagara. I could hardly hear what he said in the rush of the water, but I know that he was meaning to say he was sorry. Th ere were tears on his face and I know you will say it was the spray, but it wasn't. The Falls seemed the natural place to say such things and it was OK. We haven't talked about it again. I wished you had been there with us.
    I confess, yes, that I did saunter down to the post office. It was my first official engagement as predator and I wanted to see what it was like. I mean, I argued with myself, as I pushed at the door and went in, even Gerard Depardieu must post his letters sometime.
    If he did then he did not choose the main post office in Chiswick. The queue was long and I stood behind a cross man in an anorak that gave off the slight smell of not being quite washed. He had a red face and was talking loudly.
    'Post office. Huh! Post office. I tell you, if this was a business they'd go bankrupt! Ten windows and only three of them lit. And look at this queue . . .' He gesticulated to his audience most of whom were finding the carpet unusually interesting and shuffling their feet like chain-gang slaves. Too late, I did not swing my eyes carpetwards quickly enough. Our eyes met. He moved closer. He opened his mouth to speak and something told me that this was not going to be Depardieu.
    'I'm unemployed, I am. Why don't they give me a job, eh?'
    'Well ...' I said, but of course it was not answers he required, merely encouragement.
    'I'm fifty-one -' he peered closer - 'fifty-one . . .'
    I wanted to show him some solidarity. 'I am unemployed too,' I said meekly.
    'There you are, then, there you are.' He looked over towards the smug, amused counter staff. 'Here's another one for you. Two of us, out of a job, and willing . . .' He took my elbow. 'You are willing, aren't you?'
    'Oh yes,' I said gamely and feeling an absolute shit.
    'Here you are , then,' he called again. 'We'll have six first-class stamps and two jobs please...' He laughed a bitter laugh.
    'Excuse me,' I said, detaching my elbow from him as gently as I could, 'I have forgotten something.' And I fled.
    Outside, leaning against the wall, I took some deep breaths. Well, he'd have made a lover all right, I thought reproachfully - plenty of time on his hands. Good grief. What was I doing? Trawling the post office? Why didn't I just go and beckon superciliously at a selectee from the dole queue?
    'Margaret?' said a voice. 'Fancy seeing you here.'
    It was Verity and I just about stopped myself from saying, 'Don't tell me you're back on the look-out, too' when decency and a sense of proportion prevailed.
    'What a way to spend your day, propping up the post office!' She laughed. She looked better. Not entirely her radiant self of yore, but distinctly better. She held a letter in her hand in such a way that made it seem important. She waved it about. She looked at me pointedly. I was being asked to inquire.
    'Who are you writing to?' I asked dutifully, nodding at it.
    'Mark,' she said, and with a flourish worthy of Sarah Siddons she dropped it into the box.
    We had a coffee. I needed one and I also needed to get away before my new-found employment agent came out and took me into Sainsbury's for an assault on the checkouts. She needed one because she had, she said, just done a wonderful, liberating, definitive thing. 'What?'
    'I have returned the keys of Mark's flat to him. That's what. And that is it. The letter says it all. Goodbye and farewell, may you please rot in hell.'
    I stirred my coffee. 'You're a poet and you don't know it,' I said absently.
    'Oh, those bloody cliches of yours,' she groaned. 'He asked me back, you see.' If ever the light of triumph and vengeance was illuminated in face of woman, it was now. 'And I have told him no. And I mean it. No! Rotten, lousy, stinking, opportunist bastard. Pass the sugar ...'
    And