In Bloom. C.J. Skuse
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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 it and it’s okay. I love him. End of.’
‘No not “end of”. Did he make you stop dancing?’ She didn’t answer. ‘Does he hurt you?’
I tried to think of something women’s refugey and supportive to say, but nothing came. All I saw was her eyes not daring to water and the only way I could think of helping was to go straight round to that plastics factory and anally violate the gutless little piss-tray with some sort of pointy thing.
She started down the escalator.
‘Uh, what am I supposed to do, get the bus home?’ I called out.
She waited at the bottom. I went down and stood beside her in silence.
‘He doesn’t hurt me. I promise. He needs me. But I don’t want to talk about this anymore, okay? I’m asking you, please.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Just be a friend today.’
For some reason that word ‘friend’ changed my outlook. I didn’t want her to leave and I didn’t want her anger. I wanted to stay being her friend.
‘Let’s go somewhere else, yeah? How about the museum?’
‘Why the museum?’
‘I used to go there all the time when I was a kid with my friend. Shall we do that?’ She checked her phone. ‘Oh sorry. What time does Goebbels want you back in the Stalag?’
She laughed at that. I didn’t think she would. ‘Six.’
‘Bags of time,’ I said. ‘Come on. It’s not far.’
We drove across town without another word about He Who Must Not Be Named and I gave Marnie a potted tour of Bristol and the harbour side. We took a slow walk up Park Street, tried on hats in a hat shop, shoes in a shoe shop and finally we went to my favourite place: the museum. I showed her all the best bits first – the gift shop, the Egyptian mummies, the rocks and gemstones, the amethyst the size of my head and the stalactite that looked like a willy. Then the stuffed animals gathering dust in their enormous glass cases – The Dead Zoo, as me and Joe called it. I could smell the Dead Zoo before we got to it – musty and pungent with age – and I was drawn to it like a moth. We found Alfred the gorilla, arguably Bristol’s most famous son.
‘Me and Joe used to imagine we were in the jungle and