I was there when it happened. He had a heart attack while he was swimming. He liked wild swimming. I was on the bank, watching him and I didn’t do anything. He drowned.’
‘Oh my god,’ she said, as the lights went green. ‘How old were you?’
‘Eleven.’
‘Well of course you couldn’t have done anything, you were only a child. That’s a terrible thing for an adult to put on such a young person.’
‘Yeah, I guess. She’d taken me to meet Mr Blobby that summer too. Proper sadist, my nanny.’
She didn’t laugh but patted my knee. I was going to tell her. The words were locked and loaded and ready to come out – I was going to tell her how I’d watched my grandad hit Seren that morning for not bringing in the eggs and how much I wanted to kill him. To push him down the stairs or into the slurry or to drive an axe right down deep into the back of his neck while he was stacking the logs. But I didn’t say a word. I didn’t tell her that watching my grandad drown had been an exquisite pleasure. I kept that to myself because Marnie had patted my knee and seemed to care that I was the innocent one. And I liked the feeling. I wanted to hold onto it.
The Mall was heaving with people and though Marnie was more than happy to mooch about trying things on, I couldn’t find a single atom of my body that cared about maternity clothes. She didn’t buy a thing, even stuff she said she loved. Dresses she’d point out as ‘stunning’ or ‘exquisite’ she would hold up against herself then return them to the peg. When I called her on it she said, ‘Oh I’ll probably never wear it again anyway. It’s a waste of money.’
‘Bet he gives you an allowance every week, doesn’t he?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘This is my money.’
‘My nanny used to get an allowance and she’d never spend it either. She used to squirrel it away. I never found out why.’
We hit the John Lewis café for lunch. I got a lemon and vanilla ice cream crepe, Marnie got a salad.
‘Get some carbs down you for god’s sake,’ I said as we stood in the line waiting for the assistant to scoop my vanilla. ‘You’re drooling over mine.’
‘I shouldn’t,’ she said, biting her lip.
‘Why not?’
‘Slippery slope, isn’t it?’
Marnie’s phone was out next to her plate the moment we sat down.
‘So tell me more about Tim then,’ I said. ‘What’s he like?’
Again, her manner changed, her voice lowered. ‘He’s Area Manager for that plastic shelving place on the ring road. Quite long hours but he loves it.’
‘What did you do before you went on maternity?’
‘Admin, council refuse department. Only for the last seven months though. Before that 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
