I was a dancer.’
‘What kind of dancer?’
‘Ballet and tap. I taught classes.’
‘Why did you stop?’
‘Well, we moved down here for Tim’s job and then I got pregnant.’
‘But you could go back to it someday?’
‘Doubt it. The money’s better at the council anyway. I did love it though.’
Her phone rang. ‘Sorry, hang on… Hiya… Yep… that’ll be nice… sounds good… Yeah, Rhiannon’s still with me. Need me to pick anything up?… Okay… Love you.’ She put the phone down.
‘Tim?’ I said, chewing my crepe.
‘Yeah,’ she smiled, theatrically rolling her eyes. ‘He’s booking the hotel for next weekend. Our sixth anniversary. Bit of a babymoon.’
‘Six years,’ I said. ‘That’s wood, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘A wooden garden ornament or something?’
‘He’s not into ornaments. I inherited a load of china ones from my mum but I’m not allowed to display them.’
‘Not allowed?’
‘Well, it’s only a few ballerinas with their buns broken off. I used to play with them as a kid. My mum bought me one each time I passed an exam.’
I pride myself on a few things: my ability to defend the defenceless, to maintain The Act that I am a normal human being in polite society, and to trace vulnerability in people. I can sniff it out as easily as curry plant in a garden full of roses. And it was coming off Marnie in waves.
‘Are you sure it wasn’t Tim who made you give up dancing?’
She frown-laughed. ‘No, my choice. He was right though; the pay was crap.’ She stroked her bump. ‘No regrets. I have everything I want. A great house and steady job and a healthy baby boy coming soon—’
Grandad used to fill Honey Cottage with his stuffed animals. Weasels and stoats and tiny birds that he’d shot out of trees with a pellet gun. Nanny never liked them. She said they looked like they were in eternal pain. Nanny liked Capo di Monte teapots and cherubs and porcelain roses, but she kept them in bubble wrap in boxes because ‘they keep getting smashed’.
‘I think you should put the ballerinas on display,’ I told Marnie, mopping up my vanilla puddle with my crepe.
‘It’s no big deal,’ she said, tucking into her salad again.
I was going to ask what she meant but she jumped into another conversation as she stabbed her lettuce. ‘So will you stay on with your in-laws when the baby comes?’
Before I’d even opened my mouth, her phone rang again.
‘Hiya, Hun… uh yeah I can pick some up… okay… yeah, still with Rhiannon. Oh great. Yep, I will. Thanks, love, see you later. Love you… Bye.’
My eyebrows rose.
‘We need potatoes. Where were we?’
‘We were talking then the guy you live with called twice about nothing.’
She carried on crunching her lettuce. We sat in silence, watching mums struggling with pushchairs, kids skipping along beside them, old friends meeting and hugging. On the next table a dad was talking his two-year-old daughter through the menu choices, like he was teaching her to read. Their meals arrived – he cut up her chips and taught her to blow on them. The child wanted him to feed her instead of doing it for herself so he was eating his meal with one hand, feeding her with the other.
A while later, our conversation restarted and we were back being easy together – I was telling her about WOMBAT and begging her to come along to the next meeting to save me from certain kindness brainwashing. I told her all about the little names I’d given them all—
When her phone rang again. I saw the screen – Tim calling.
She gurned apologetically. ‘This is the last time, I promise… Hi, love… yeah, I think so… oh, that’s good, well done… yeah that sounds—’
I grabbed the phone out of her hand and hit the End Call button.
Marnie shot up, grabbing at her phone. ‘Why did you do that?!’
‘Well for one because it’s rude when you’re talking to someone—’
‘He’s on his lunch break! It’s the only time he can call!’
‘—and two, your husband’s being an endless little bitch.’
She called him back and spent the next ten minutes apologising and eating shit like an absolute pro while I finished my crepe and sipped my tea. When she came back to the table she breathed out long and slow.
‘He’s fine. He’s fine.’
‘Thank god,’ I said, still chewing. ‘I was so worried.’
‘Why did you do that, Rhiannon?’
‘Cos you’re sleeping with the enemy. I staged an intervention.’
‘Please don’t ever do that again.’
A silence fell.
‘Allison, the childminder at Priory Gardens, she was a battered wife.’
‘I’M NOT A BATTERED WIFE!’ she shouted.
Faces looked. Marnie sank down in her seat.
‘I never said you were.’
‘You don’t understand him, I’m okay with it.’
‘Make me understand it. I dare you.’
Marnie frowned. ‘It’s actually none of your business actually.’
‘Two actuallys.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘Show me your phone.’
‘What?’
‘Show me your phone.’
‘No.’
I grabbed it out of her hand again and she tried to snatch it back.
‘Give it to me. Rhiannon! Now, I want it, give it!’
‘Uh, pregnant woman being accosted here!’ I shouted, garnering glances as I fought her off me, but nobody in the café paid much mind. Typical. Pregnant women are pretty much invisible to the human eye.
There was a selfie of Marnie and Tim together on her screen saver. She was smiling and he was hugging her from behind – like a chokehold. Hmm, attractive in an Aryan kind of way but a bit too much pulse for my liking.
I checked her call log and messages and once my suspicions were confirmed, I handed the phone back. She was hot in both cheeks, grabbing her jacket off her chair and flinging it on.
‘Fifty-seven calls. In two days. And you live with the guy.’
She wouldn’t look at me. She threw her handbag strap over her shoulder and shuffled out of the banquette.
‘One hundred and seventy-six messages in a week,’ I called after her as she waddled back through café, as fast as she could.
She snapped her head around. ‘So what? He’s protective. I told you.’
We got to the top of the escalators. ‘Just cos you’re married, doesn’t mean he owns you. That kind of thinking went out with McBusted.’
‘He’s not your grandad, okay? He’s not that Priory Gardens guy either. He’s ex-army so he likes things just so and he fusses a bit, that’s all. I get him. I get why he’s like