She has a large detached house in Dagenham but she tells people that she lives in Barking: well there’s only a mile and a half between them, and the towns, like two lumps of twisted metal are melded together by a mess of riverside industrial estates.
This has not been a happy house for Joan. It was purchased in haste and with little emotion when Mike left her. The rooms are too large and they were decorated by professionals who thought they knew how Joan would like to live. Gaudy chandeliers and yards of fake silk, marble floors and bath taps shaped like golden dolphins.
She read about Toby Fielding’s death in this morning’s paper. It was only a little piece with an old photograph and a list of his films but it made Joan’s coffee cup pause on its way up to her frosted lipstick. And she felt her heart do a little flutter – you know how it does sometimes when you see a ghost.
Sixty-four apparently and living in a council estate somewhere up near Manchester. Heart attack. Body discovered by a neighbour who kicked the door in because Toby’s bath was overflowing through their bedroom ceiling. The people on the estate were young so they didn’t know who he was.
Or who he had been.
1955: Mangold’s Army
1956: Mangold’s On the Move
1957: Mangold’s Abroad
1958: Mangold’s Up the Creek
There were several more films planned in the series and if Joan had curbed her jealousy, if she had been less vindictive, they would probably have made them all. The films were a huge success in the UK and they still show them regularly on TV even now. They have become something of a British institution like fish and chips and naughty postcards and they made household names of Joan and Toby along with a host of other actors who appeared in all four films. The scandal of 1960 saw the end of their short success.
She married Mike that year. It was a shotgun wedding but they made a go of it and it lasted almost thirty-eight years. Not bad for a wedding based on lies and deceit.
Joan’s lies. Joan’s deceit.
You see she didn’t love Mike. Not back then. She was on the rebound from Toby. If Joan had kept her big trap shut she would still have Mike today but drink loosened her tongue and she retaliated with the only ammunition that came to hand.
“He’s probably not your son anyway!” she shouted: ugly and bloated with unjustified indignation. She regretted the words even as they spilled out of her mouth. She would have taken them back if she could. But it was too late. And now Mike is gone.
Toby’s funeral is on Thursday.
Joan’s scalp itches under the webbing of her wig.
With the panto’ season over and nothing but a taping of Blankety Blank on Wednesday her week is virtually empty.
Would it be hypocritical of her to go up to Manchester on Thursday to pay her last respects to the father of her son?

Of course people recognise her.
They poke her in supermarket queues and think she doesn’t notice their greedy stares from behind newspapers and magazines on the train. You see Joan is something of a British icon and even now, at sixty-one, she’s still seen as the blonde bombshell that she played in all her films. Pathetic really because there’s nothing more undignified than a woman her age wearing short skirts and false eyelashes.
Even in this weather she’s not wearing a coat and her cleavage divides the scooping neckline of her stretch top beneath a crimson waist-length jacket with black lapels.
It is too early for the bulbs to come up and there’s a smell of snow in the air so the scene at the crematorium is one of desolation. Inside the cold stone foyer there are precise arrangements of chrysanthemums on tall iron stands but they have no smell.
Joan feels a bit daft quite honestly, standing here in her high heels with nobody but the undertakers to acknowledge her. They nod their heads in her direction and lean against their car, lighting up cigarettes while they wait their turn. Rooks scream from the highest branches and the sun makes a smudge of very pale yellow in the otherwise colourless sky. She shouldn’t have come. It is a waste of time after all these years and she doubts that Toby would see the point.
She could do with a cup of tea.
On the way up here, watching the world go by in streaks of green and brown, she tried to remember the last time she had actually seen Toby. It must have been a couple of days before the police burst in on him and Eddie Thompson at Toby’s flat in the King’s Road, that was the last time Joan saw him.
He came round you see, came round to Joan’s place to spill the beans. They were supposed to be going to the pictures to see Saturday Night and Sunday Morning but Toby was agitated and said that he’d got something important to tell her.
And then he burst in to tears.
Said that he was being blackmailed, that he’d been paying money to somebody who knew all about him and Eddie.
Him and Eddie!
Joan turned him away and told him that she didn’t want to know about his sordid little secret. She told him to see a psychiatrist – yes she actually said that. And when she closed the door on him she had to rethink her strategy. She was three months pregnant.

There are a few more cars arriving at the crematorium and people are filing past her in to the foyer. She stands awkwardly in the chilled February air and people are gawking at her crimson jacket.
It is quite a full house for the service and two or three people get up to say a few words about Toby. The last person to get up there on the stage seems vaguely familiar to Joan, but she’s sitting right at the back and her eyes aren’t as good as they used to be. The fella on the stage is wearing a terrible toupee: either that or it’s a bad dye job. His dark suit has flared trousers and wide lapels, and to top it all he’s got his shirt collar spread open to reveal several gold chains. What a tosser!
But as soon as he begins to speak Joan feels nauseous.
It’s Eddie Thompson.
“I love him Joanie, and I know that sounds queer, but I love him like crazy...”
What an unfortunate turn of phrase Toby. Joan can remember even now how she thought that, even as he spoke. Couldn’t he have thought of a better word to use? Or was he somehow trying to be clever and funny, even in his anguish?
She listens to Eddie going on about what a lovely bloke Toby was, about how he helped out at the old folk’s home and raised money to clean up a local park. No allusion to his stint in the nick and no mention of his film career.
Eddie recognised her of course. Cornered her at the back of the hall before she could get away. He acted friendly but Joan could tell he was dying to say something sarky. His mouth smiled but his eyes glittered with malice.
“What a surprise! Didn’t expect to see any of the old gang up here. We haven’t heard anything from anybody in thirty years. You’re looking good Joanie.”
“So are you,” she lies, breathing in his hostility.
“Toby would have been pleased to see you, he always had a soft spot. We always had to watch the telly when you were on. A ritual it was. ‘Our Joanie’ he always called you.”
“I’m sorry Eddie, I should have kept in touch, but things were hectic with one thing and another, you know how it is.”
“Yeah, I know how it is Joanie,” grins Eddie with a reptilian sneer that reminds Joan why she always disliked him.
“Funny,” he continues, “we had a little visit from your hubby last year, he came banging on our door in a right old state. Said he had to talk to Toby, said it was important.”
“Oh Christ!” Joan has to steady herself against the edge of the wall.
“Said that Toby was the father of your boy. Honestly! It was a bit of a shock but we had to laugh! We told him he was barking up the wrong tree. We told him that it couldn’t have been Toby’s kid because Toby was sterile you see. He had hospital tests years ago when we wanted to help out some lesbian friends – artificial insemination, you know. Turned out he was firing duds.”
“So Gary was Mike’s all along?”
“Unless you were having it off with somebody else darling!”
Joan doesn’t wait to finish this conversation. She turns away from Eddie and his cruel laughter and she pushes her way through the small crowd outside.
What a fool she has been.
But who would have known that one boozy, forgettable night with Mike could have resulted in her getting pregnant when she and Toby were at it two or three times a week?
Joan walks to the station and the cold numbs her senses. Her nose is running and the wind pinches her cheeks.
Toby Fielding.
They say that you can only really hate if you have loved.
And oh how she loved him, how she wanted him. She thought that the baby would make him love her like she loved him but he went and spoilt it all with his sickening admission. It wasn’t fair! It wasn’t natural. And in those days, just like abortion, it wasn’t legal.
She called the police, anonymously of course. Tipped them off as to the best time of day to catch them at it. She even told them where Toby hid his spare key so they wouldn’t have to break down the door.
It was a huge scandal at the time – headline news. Two of Britain’s best-loved comedians sent down for committing ‘unspeakable acts.’
The film they were working on never got finished. They interviewed Joan for the evening news and she cried for the camera. “He was my friend,” she said.

The London train is quiet at this time of the day. Joan has a ploughman’s sandwich and a cup of weak tea and she eases off her shoes so she can press the soles of her feet against the warm air vent.
She wants to talk to somebody, to hear a familiar, friendly voice.
She uses her mobile phone to call Gary – he works from home on a Thursday – but it is Phil who answers.
“What are you doing home on a weekday?” she asks, enjoying the pleasant sensation of the brass grille against the sole of her foot.
“Skiving off,” he replies with a chuckle, “it was Gary’s idea, you might not know it but your son has a very romantic side to him sometimes.”
“Romantic?”
“It’s Valentine’s day Joan, had you forgotten?”
“Actually love I’d rather forget it these days. Did he get you something nice?”
“He’s taking me out to dinner tonight – Chez Maurice. I’d get him for you but he’s in the shower.”
“That’s all right darlin’, it wasn’t anything important. I’ll see you both on Sunday. Enjoy your day off.”
And Joan folds up her phone and slides it back in to her handbag where it belongs.
Funny really.
She’d always thought ‘like father like son’.
But it doesn’t work that way does it? And Joan, with expert precision, reapplies her lipstick and blots the excess on to a Kleenex.
She’s just been recognised by the woman in the green anorak.
And she’s got an image to uphold.

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