As soon as she was finished, I leapt to my feet, gave her a standing ovation and told her I thought if there was any justice she’d win the shagging thing hands down. And that I was there for her if she ever wanted to rehearse in front of someone again.

‘Look, thanks for doing this,’ she said, over yet another tin of Bulmers. ‘It was…emm…nice of you.’

‘Maggie, give me a chance. I amnice. In spite of what you think, I am not the antichrist.’

‘I know, I know. It’s just…not been easy.’

‘Yeah, well. Me being back here can’t exactly have been a barrel for laughs for you. I do understand, you know. Particularly with myself and Sharon getting so pally.’

‘No. It’s not that,’ she said, surprising me. ‘Or at least, it’s not just that.’

I looked at her, puzzled. Puzzled and half pissed, if I’m being honest. Boy is this is one road I don’t think she and I could ever have attempted to go down sober.

‘I know you must have thought that I had it in for you all this time,’ she said, lighting up a fag, ‘but it was tough for me having you living back here, you know. Brought back so many memories of us all being teenagers under the one roof all those years ago. Remember?’

‘Do I remember? I’m still having therapy.’

She snorted at my gag a bit and went on.

‘It’s just, you were always Daddy’s Little Princess, weren’t you? The apple of his eye. You walked on water as far as he was concerned. But Jessie, the thing is…he was my dad too. He may not have been my real father, but he was my father figure and I…really loved him. He encouraged me in a way that Ma never did, praised me when I did well I school and was delighted for me when I got into the Inland Revenue. Meant I was set up for life, he said. Then he died and it was like you had the monopoly on grieving for him. But you weren’t the only one who loved him and who misses him. For feck’s sake, who do you think organises the anniversary mass for him every year? Only me.’

I couldn’t speak. Just sat on the sofa, actually dumbfounded and feeling about an inch tall.

To my shame, I just never thought of Maggie as someone with sensitivity and the same raw emotions as the rest of us.

‘Remember the stink you kicked up when you discovered all his things lying out in the garden shed?’ she went on, stubbing out a fag. ‘Well it was me who wanted to hang on to all his stuff in the first place. If Ma had her way, she’d have fecked the lot into a skip years ago. You know how unsentimental she is. Not to mention what she’s like for doing clearouts.’

‘I do remember,’ I said, in a very small voice. ‘And Maggie, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I just hadn’t realised that you missed him too. I mean…I never knew.’

And ever since that night, honest to God, it’s been like the iron curtain coming down between us. Maggie and I actually converse now. For real. What can I say? If Dad was looking down on us, he’d be proud of how well we’re getting on. I’m certain of it.

Night after night, she rehearses her material pacing up and down the TV room, surrounded by scraps of paper with ideas scribbled across them, testing out material on me. Then I chip in my two cents’ worth and off she goes, rewrites, and does the whole thing all over again for me the following night, without fail.

You want to see her, she’s like a completely different person these days. The old Maggie is gone and in her place is the new, improved, more energised version of her. It’s a wondrous sight to behold; the girl has a raw, basic talent that’s slowly beginning to flower as her confidence grows and boy is she getting there. Day by day, step by step. And what’s even more astonishing is that the TV guide remains lying on the sofa, unopened and un-looked at. Meantime, Sharon continues to date the long-suffering Matt, although I did challenge her on this and told her in no uncertain terms that if she’s not interested, then she really should let the poor, besotted guy down…but gently.

‘I’m not ready to,’ is her resolute answer. ‘At least, not till I’ve someone else lined up. Besides, going out on all these dates is good practice for me. And I don’t want to tell him to his face that he drives me up the walls sometimes; it’s way too early in the relationship to show him my true colours.’

In actual fact, she doesn’t want to let him go, is my conclusion. She’s having far too good a time having a single man chasing around after her and making all the running. So I say nothing more. For now.

Meanwhile, Joan’s week involved buzzing around the place in one little ‘dressed for business’ outfit after another, and spending most of her time down in the Swiss Cottage with Jimmy Watson, her ‘investment partner’. So much so that I’m seriously starting to wonder if she has shares in the place. Funny, but whether her whole IPrayForYou.com business actually works out or not is kind of beside the point. Because one good thing has already come out of it; her mood has been a bit like good weather can be sometimes; lasting for day after unbelievable day.

This wondrous humour lasts right up until Saturday afternoon, when she catches me crashed out on the sofa listening to a new riff in Maggie’s material. We both hear her thundering into the hall then clattering down her handbag and keys, instantly alerting us to a one hundred and eighty degree reversal in her mood. As bad luck would have it, I’m the first person she lights on when she bursts in, therefore I’m first in line for a tongue-lashing.

‘Why aren’t you at work?’ she snaps at me the minute she flings open the TV room door.

‘I don’t have to be there until nine,’ I stammer back.

‘Jessica Woods, have I or have I not spent the whole of last week asking you to move that mountain of stuff belonging to you out of the garage? Honestly, how many times do I have to nag and nag at you before you’ll get up off your lazy rear end?’

‘I’m doing it already!’ I groan, hauling myself up from the sofa.

‘Oh, by the way, Jessie?’ says Maggie as I’m on my way out the door. ‘Thanks for listening to my routine. I owe you one.’

And I’d swear I catch a half-wink from her. Bloody hell. Not so long ago, that was the kind of civility you’d nearly have to strangle out of her.

Anyway, as soon as I open the garage door, I realise I’d forgotten just how much there actually is here, all with my name on it. Tons of cardboard storage boxes, all full of stuff from the Jessie Wouldproduction office. Course I never went through them, I just did what I always do with unpleasant reminders of my past: dumped it in the garage and airbrushed it out of my life. Put in a pile and mentally labelled ‘To be dealt with at a later date when am a bit more able to handle sheer, unquantifiable misery.’

Right then. It’s pointless cluttering up mine and Sharon’s bedroom with a load of storage boxes from Channel Six, miles better to dump the whole lot into the green wheelie bin and let the rubbish men deal with it. I’m about to do just that, when some sixth sense stops me in my tracks.

Hang on one second. I spent the best part of three years working on Jessie Wouldand apart from the ignominious end it all came to, it was far and away the happiest time in my life. Do I really want to consign all that to the dustbin of history? Isn’t there some little memento or keepsake that could be in one of these boxes that I could hang on to, as a reminder of past glories? A mug maybe, with the show’s logo on it. Or maybe one of the Jessie WouldT-shirts that we used to hand out to all the kids in the studio audience? So I sit myself down and start at the very beginning.

Pretty boring, actually, most of it. There’s dozens and dozens of memos that would have flown around the office and camera scripts from long-forgotten shows, but not much else. No joy in finding the mug or T-shirt I’m looking for, so I move on to another box. And that’s when I first see it. A neat file, with the date of my very last show written across it. Just seeing that date in bold print makes me catch my breath. Because I remember it like a heart attack.