A Clubbable Woman by Reginald Hill

life goes on because of it.’
    ‘My, college has made you even sharper,’ said Sheila with a thin smile.
    Jenny sensed she was losing a friend, or rather, cutting the last few strands which held their friendship together. She and Sheila had been very close at school up to the Fifth Form. They had both planned to stop on in the Sixth, then at the last moment, half way through the summer holidays in fact, Sheila had announced she was getting a job.
    That had all been more than two years before. They’d seen each other fairly regularly since, but more and more competitively as time went on.
    Now it didn’t matter who won or lost.
    ‘Thanks, Stanley,’ she said, taking the pint which had been deposited rather ungraciously before her. ‘Cheers.’
    She took a mouthful, coughed and grimaced wryly at Sheila, who smiled back with something of their old affection.
    In fact Jenny was really very fond of beer, but she recognized that while an attempt to show off could be tolerated, careless expertize would only antagonize further.
    ‘What’re you all up to, then?’ she asked.
    ‘We, that is Mavis and me (or I, should I say?) are being entertained by these young gentlemen. Lavishly, as you can see.’
    ‘What about you, Stan?’
    ‘He’s waiting,’ interjected one of the boys quickly.
    ‘For what?’
    They all laughed. Stanley shrugged and tried to look unconcerned. He made quite a decent job of it too.
    ‘Cheer up. She might be along later,’ said Sheila.
    ‘He fancies Gwen Evans.’ It was Mavis who spoke. Jenny remembered that the joke had always stopped at Mavis.
    ‘All the men fancy Gwen,’ said Sheila.
    But not all the women, eh? thought Jenny. She knew Gwen Evans only slightly, she had seen her at the funeral, and previous to that a couple of times, but the memory stuck.
    ‘I’d have thought she was a bit old for you, Stanley,’ she said.
    Sheila wrinkled her nose scornfully.
    ‘It’s all in the mind anyway. This lot read about all these teenage orgies and think they’re missing out somehow.’
    Joe and Colin grinned unconcernedly.
    Now you don’t look as if you’re missing out, my lads, thought Jenny.
    ‘Anyway,’ Sheila went on, ‘it’s all happening at the universities and colleges, isn’t it, Jenny? The intellectual-sexual bit.’
    Here we go again.
    ‘Yeah,’ said Colin with some enthusiasm, ‘all those wild birds. It’s all wiggle-waggle and jiggle-joggle at those places.’
    ‘We have our moments,’ said Jenny. She looked around the room. She wasn’t quite sure why she had come here at all, but it certainly wasn’t so she could sit and chat with this lot. They were too young for a start. Whoever it was that was menacing her with letters (a letter, she corrected herself, but feeling certain there would be more), whoever it was that had anything to do with her mother’s death, that person, or those persons, would belong to her father’s age group.
    What do I want anyway, she thought. To find out who wrote that letter? To find out if there was any truth in it? He could have denied it, he could have been positive, but all he did was tell me he loved me, that it didn’t matter. Not matter? Something matters. If it doesn’t matter, that matters. Miss Freud, that’s me. Shortly to be Miss Sherlock Holmes. But how to start? What do people like Fat Dalziel and Popsy Pascoe do to get things moving? On the telly they just talk to people and find things out. But how do you know who to talk to in the first place?
    ‘There she blows, Stanley,’ said Joe.
    Jenny turned her head. Her first impression was of an exotically beautiful woman lightly covered in a very revealing dress. But this was only for a second. Gwen Evans wore neither less nor more make-up than most other women in the room, her skirt was by no means the shortest there, her dress zipped up the front right up to the collar and she had a cardigan draped casually over her shoulders.
    It was the way she moved, the animation of her