Heading Inland (9 page)

‘Take this. Quickly.’

Ralph snatched the pen and stuck it down his trousers with dispatch. Just in time. Paolo came strolling out of the bathroom. Tina was still staring anxiously in Ralph’s direction and so failed to detect that Paolo was holding something in his hands. Her bag. After a cursory glance at Ralph’s genitals, he sat down in his chair again and placed the bag on his lap.

‘Tina, could you possibly explain something for me?’

Tina glanced over. ‘Paolo?’

‘Could you perhaps explain why it was that when I went to wash my hands in your sink I found your handbag in there, and it was open, and inside it was the mushroom dinner I cooked you?’

Ralph turned and appraised Tina. His mouth had fallen slightly ajar. Tina looked down at the counterpane. She opened her lips to say something but then Ralph spoke first.

‘Actually, Paolo,’ he said calmly, ‘she throws up everything. It’s a medical condition. She’s an anorexic.’

‘Bulimic,’ Tina corrected him, quickly.

‘That too.’

Tina chewed on her lower lip. She felt so tired. She could barely call up the strength – physical, moral – to meet Paolo’s gaze. ‘I’m sorry, Paolo,’ she said finally, peering up beseechingly. ‘It was no reflection on the meal. Really it wasn’t.’

Paolo continued frowning for a few seconds longer and then suddenly he smiled. Tina smiled back. Even Ralph smiled.

‘Dear Tina,’ he said gently, ‘you must think me a beast. I had no right to look into your bag. I’m sorry.’

His face softened and, true to form, Tina’s heart – like a lump of semi-congealed butter on a warm hotplate – softened with it. Everything would be all right. She felt it, suddenly. Everything would be just fine. She turned to Ralph. ‘This is ridiculous, Ralph,’ she said boldly, ‘and it’s all gone on for long enough. We should tell Paolo about the pen. I’m positive he’ll understand.’

‘The pen?’ Paolo’s eyebrows rose.

Ralph’s face was rigid. ‘I don’t think so, Tina,’ he said slowly, his eyes fixed on her most expressively.

But Tina didn’t baulk. ‘It’s just got way out of control,’ she said firmly. ‘Tell him, Ralph. Get it over with.’

‘Get what over?’ Paolo leaned forward in his chair, his neck extending so that the muscles stretched and pumped with all the elasticity of chewing gum.

Tina took a deep breath. ‘It isn’t an erection, Paolo. Ralph’s got a pen down his trousers. It was all just a stupid joke. He told me while you were in the bathroom.’

Paolo got to his feet, very slowly. ‘Ralph,’ he said softly. ‘Over the past hour I have had the opportunity to scrutinize your clothes and your footwear at some length. Your shoes are very unusual. In Italy we don’t have anything quite like them. Perhaps I could take a closer look. Would you mind?’

Ralph, paradoxically, had pushed his body as far back into his chair as it would go. He took a deep breath. He shook his head. ‘Of course I wouldn’t mind.’

Slowly, stiffly, he lifted up his foot so that Paolo might see one of the shoes without bending down. Paolo took hold of the foot, pulled the shoe off and quietly inspected it.

As he did this, Ralph watched him fixedly, and then, for a split second, his eyes darted sideways, towards Tina. In that instant Paolo grabbed hold of Ralph’s jaw, prised his mouth open and rammed the tip of the loafer into it.

Ralph flailed helplessly, his jaw stretched wide, his eyes squeezed tight. Tina sprang up and grabbed hold of Paolo’s arm. ‘Stop it! Leave him alone! You’ll hurt him!’

As soon as she touched him, Paolo let go. He raised his palms to the ceiling. ‘See? I’ve let go. See?’

Tina nodded.

‘Are you happy now?’

She nodded again.

‘Good.’ Paolo smiled. Tina tried to smile but couldn’t quite manage it. Ralph? Ralph didn’t even try to smile. He was too busy choking. The loafer lay in his lap, bereaved of its fancy buckle.

Tina hadn’t yet noticed. Ralph, gagging, threw his shoe at her to get her attention. He tried to cough but his throat was blocked and he couldn’t exhale. Tina caught the shoe. She looked down at it and then over at Ralph who was slack-jawed and drooling.

‘What’s wrong?’

He clutched at his throat.

Paolo glanced down too.

‘I think he’s choking on something. Ah!’ He pointed to the shoe Tina held. ‘The buckle’s come off. He must have swallowed it.’

‘Oh God!’ Tina dropped the shoe. ‘So now what?’

Paolo shrugged. ‘I suppose we should call for an ambulance.’

He walked over to the phone and picked it up. Tina watched as Ralph’s complexion rainbowed from red to wine to damson to ivory. Then he fell from his chair and on to the carpet.

Tina felt sick. Ralph was writhing. She was panicking. Paolo, perfectly calm, spoke on the phone for a short interval and then returned to Tina’s side.

‘An ambulance?’

He nodded. ‘It’ll be a short while.’

‘But he’s choking!’

‘
Sì
.’

‘Can’t you do something?’

Paolo shook his head. ‘I am not insured to intervene in this kind of situation. If he dies I might get sued by the family. It could ruin me.’

‘If he dies?’ Tina gasped. ‘You’re a doctor, Paolo!’

Paolo cleared his throat. ‘Roughly.’

‘Roughly? What do you mean,
roughly
?!’

‘I’m a chiropodist.’

Tina fell to her knees, grabbed hold of Ralph’s head, stared up at Paolo and said, ‘So, fine, if you
were
a doctor, what would you do?’

Paolo scratched his head. ‘I suppose I would try the Heimlich Manoeuvre.’

‘Yes!’ Tina exclaimed. ‘How does it go?’

‘I have no idea. But, uh, after I’d tried that, if it didn’t work, I’d make an incision at the base of the throat and push a straw into it so that he could breathe from below the blockage.’

Ralph, meanwhile, was undergoing some kind of spasm. Tina didn’t know what kind of a spasm it was, only that it looked almost biblical in its monstrosity. His face was ashen, his eyes were rolling.

Tina exploded. ‘I need a knife. But I haven’t got one. Do you have one?’

Paolo shook his head.

‘I need something pointed.
Anything
pointed.’

Ralph clutched at his groin.

Typical, Tina thought. Even in his moment of crisis . . . But then she remembered. She grabbed at his trousers, yanked down the zip, ripped out the Bic pen and held it aloft. Ralph had started to foam and to slacken.

Tina indicated towards her own throat as she looked up at Paolo. ‘Is this the place? At the bottom here? Is this it?’

Paolo shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know, but I don’t think shoving a bone into his throat is any way to go about it. It looks dirty and it’s blunt at its tip.’

Tina scowled down at the pen. It was a pen. It was a pen. It was. She started shaking. She looked into Ralph’s face. Oh God, she thought, Rome
was
holding something special just for me. Not a statue, not an orange tree, not even a shady walkway, but Ralph. Ralph!

She stared at him, fixedly. How did she feel? She
hated
him. Ralph opened his eyes. They were the colour of two brown hazelnuts. That did it. Tina shoved his head between her knees, raised the sharp point of the Bic pen skywards, paused for one second, one long second, and then brought it down, forcefully, with as much accuracy as she could muster, into the base of Ralph’s throat. It entered so easily. Ralph arched and stiffened, but she kept her hand steady.

‘Stay still. Hold on.’

Tina yanked the pen out again, ripped the biro section from its centre and then firmly thrust the hollow pen shell back into the wound.

Glub.

Ralph lay still, corpse-like, flaccid. Two seconds, three seconds, four seconds, five . . . And then his chest started to rise. It rose, it rose, it rose. Air whistled through the pen’s shell. In, in, in and then out.

Paolo threw himself into a chair. ‘You could’ve killed him.’

‘But I didn’t,’ Tina said, almost regretfully, and as she spoke she cleared a piece of clotted blood away from the pen tip. The air whistled in and it whistled out.

‘Do you hear that, Ralph?’ Tina whispered, conspiratori-ally. ‘The pen’s making a noise like a penny whistle. Do you hear it?’ Ralph’s eyes had been shut since the pen had entered him. But now, slowly, gradually, he opened them. His mouth moved, it started to form a word. Tina stared at his lips. What was he saying? Was it ‘Thank you’? Was it ‘Sorry’? What was it? And then she realized. Chiropodist, he said. Chiropodist! Ha. Ha. Ha.

Tina felt lead in her belly. And rage. ‘Take that back, Ralph. I mean it.’

Ralph’s lips were smiling. Ha. Ha. Ha.

His head remained clamped between her knees. Tina took her index finger and waved it calmly in front of Ralph’s eyes. ‘See this?’

He blinked yes. She took the finger and placed it over the tip of the pen shell. The shell stopped whistling. Ralph’s eyes bulged. His chest stopped moving. He stopped smiling, finally.

‘Want to take it back yet, Ralph?’

Ralph struggled to nod. Tina tightened her knees around his skull.

‘Mean it, Ralph?’

Again, he struggled. His hands flailed, helplessly. His brown eyes, not blank, not empty any more, but saying something, emphatically. He was sincere. Just this once. He’d taken it back. He’d meant it.

Tina smiled, nodded, and casually asked Paolo how long he thought the ambulance would be.

‘About four metres,’ Paolo said, grinning, trying to win back her favour.

‘Did you hear that, Ralph?’ Tina asked softly. ‘Paolo made a joke. He made a joke. Ha. Ha.
Ha
.’

Ralph wasn’t smiling.

‘I can hear the sirens,’ Paolo said. ‘Can’t you?’

Tina listened carefully and then nodded slowly. ‘Yes, I think I do hear them.’

The sirens grew louder. Her eyes filled with tears. They sounded strange and strong and quite beautiful. Tina sniffed, blinked, looked down for a moment, and then, so
regretfully
, and with the sweetest, the softest, the gentlest of sighs, she lifted up her finger again.

Popping Corn

‘Oh!’ she said. ‘If I had her breasts I’d become a topless model or a cocktail waitress, or I’d go to Saint-Tropez and lie on the beach all day.’

‘And get cancer.’

Mandy was sitting on the bus with her mother. They had met up outside the gym. Her mother finished work fifteen minutes before the end of Mandy’s aerobics class. She waited outside by the bus stop, frustratedly watching the buses go by. Sometimes she waited for twenty minutes, occasionally longer. The gym was in Deptford.

‘Breasts are for milk,’ her mother said. ‘You get pregnant, they fill up, you squirt it out. Like a cow.’

I wonder if it’s erotic, Mandy thought, feeding babies.

Her mother added, ‘When I had you my nipples cracked. They were chapped and they bled. Every time you sucked on them it felt like I’d shut them in a suitcase.’

Mandy imagined this. Breasts bare, suitcase open, packing for holiday, breasts jut forward, suitcase accidentally slams shut. Whap! Chop! Nipples sliced neatly off. Inside the dark suitcase; two soft, pink jellytots.

Then she remembered Imogen’s breasts. She had seen them in the showers, and then after, when Imogen patted them dry on a pale blue towel, 36C. Small tan nipples. No unsightly blemishes or stretch marks.
She didn’t wear a bra! No! Not even in the class
! Only a tight, high-cut leotard like the one Jamie Lee Curtis wore in
Perfect
.

By rights they should be down by her knees, Mandy thought, and secretly, in the back of her mind,
I wish they were!

But the truth of it was this: Imogen could easily have no inkling of how fantastic her breasts were. She probably wished they were smaller, or that her nipples were a different shade.

I hope she thinks that, Mandy thought, imagining how it would be to carry two breasts like those around – light, soft trophies.

Mandy’s own breasts were much too heavy and much too round. She wore a bra to exercise in, a terrible contraption like the kind of restraining garment people were strapped up in at mental hospitals. To stop them from hurting themselves. Surgical.

Mandy pictured herself wearing no bra for the class, her breasts bouncing so much that after half an hour the skin holding them to her ribs becomes slack, thin, sticky, eventually tears. The breasts break free and travel downwards in her leotard, eventually settling either side on top of her hip bones, like two fistfuls of cellulite.

Her mother said suddenly, ‘When you were a kid, three or four, we were sitting on a bus, on the top deck, close to the front, and a brassy woman came up the stairs and sat close by. She had on a tight skirt, heels, blonde curls piled up high and a low-cut top, with her breasts on display, shoved together, like plums, shoved up. You stared at them for a while, all solemn, and then you turned to me and said, very loudly, “Mummy, why has that lady got a front bottom?”’

Mandy laughed. She had heard this story before, many times. Another breast story. Ha Ha. Funny breasts, tits, boobs, dugs, knockers.

One good thing about my breasts, she thought – focusing on herself again, on the two soft pieces of fat in flesh under her sweatshirt – when I drop off food from my fork, it lands on my chest instead of on my lap. Why was this so good? She couldn’t decide, only knew that it was. Her breasts were a buffer zone, they protected her, padded her, covered her heart. If she ate popcorn at the cinema, eating in a scruffy way, fistfuls shoved in at once, to avoid embarrassment, she had to take care to remember to collect and consume the formal white line of fluffy kernels before lights up.

Water Marks

‘You think just because you’re getting married you can say that word in this house? You think that?’

Susan had repeatedly pronounced the synonym for ‘copulate’, loudly, unashamedly, with emphasis, and Margaret, her mother, wasn’t pleased.

‘For heaven’s sake, Mum!’

‘Fine. That’s it.’ Margaret picked up Susan’s breakfast tray and took several steps towards the door. ‘If you want to speak like that in this house then you can go and eat your breakfast in the garden.’

‘Mum!’ Susan started to wheedle. ‘It’s my wedding day. I can’t eat in the garden on my wedding day.’

A sheen of perspiration had appeared through Margaret’s make-up. She hadn’t yet had time to apply powder.
That’s
how hectic it had been all morning.

Susan added, ‘Anyway, I’m not stepping outside with my hair like this. Call Leanne.’

Margaret held on to the breakfast tray, eyeing the half-finished glass of Buck’s Fizz, and then swallowed down her irritation. It is her wedding day, she thought. Let her get away with it. She dumped the tray down on to Susan’s bed and went to call her second daughter.

Leanne was downstairs giving Dad his pep-talk. Scott, her son, was playing on the stairs, bumping noisily up and down, one step at a time, on his skinny, bony rump. He came when Margaret called. He popped his head into Susan’s room, took stock of the situation and said, ‘Why does Aunty Susan’s hair look so funny?’

Susan slammed her hair brush down on to her dressing-table. ‘Mum, get that little sod out of here before I wring his neck.’

Margaret placed a firm hand on to the top of Scott’s head. Her fingers could almost grasp his crown in its entirety. His head felt cool, like an ostrich’s egg. She applied pressure, twisted him around, his head first, his body following like a small spinning top. After she had turned him 180 degrees, she pushed him gently with her knee out of the room.

‘Go,’ she muttered. ‘Go find Grandad. Ask him if the cars are sorted.’

‘OK.’ He didn’t seem particularly bothered.

Leanne passed him on the stairs. ‘Watch out,’ he said, ‘Aunty Susan’s got a cob on.’

Leanne stopped. ‘A cob,’ she said, ‘is a kind of loaf, a round loaf, sort of twirly. Or it’s a male swan. That’s a cob.’

Scott continued his descent. ‘Grandad said Nan had a cob on this morning when the champagne cork went through the kitchen window.’

‘Fair enough.’ She turned and climbed up, making her way into Susan’s room.

Margaret was standing in the doorway, her hands on her hips. Leanne squeezed past her.

‘Now what?’

‘Guess.’

Susan turned to face her.

‘Susan, I’m sorry, but that’s exactly what you asked for.’

‘What?’

‘You wanted it Elizabethan.’

‘I wanted Elizabethan, but I didn’t want it looking like I’d shaved three inches off the hairline. It looks like I’m going bald. The top’s like a bloody . . .’

‘It’s a bouffant,’ Margaret interjected. ‘That’s what you’d call it.’

Leanne added, ‘It’s like Glenda Jackson in that film about Elizabeth I.’

‘Bloody great. She looked like an old sow in that film. I hated that film.’

Margaret sighed. ‘I quite liked it.’

‘You would.’

Susan put up a savage hand to her hair, but only patted it. Leanne said, ‘Maybe it’ll look better when the veil’s on.’

‘Piss it.’

Margaret picked up the tray again. ‘Are you going to eat any more of this?’

‘No. I’ve got indigestion.’

Susan turned and stared into the mirror. She didn’t, she decided, look anything like
herself
. Maybe that had been the idea in the first place, to look
unlike
herself. My face, she thought, looks like a bee sting. Red and puffy.

A beautician had called around first thing to do her hair, her skin, her make-up. Even her nails. She inspected her hands. The nails, at least, looked pretty and polished. She said, ‘My face is still all red.’

Leanne had been pilfering the breakfast tray. She was holding a large, brown sausage between her finger and thumb, readying herself to take a bite. Susan’s comment distracted her. The sausage wasn’t yet quite cold.

‘A facial,’ she said, ‘wasn’t a very good idea. I mean, you should’ve had it two or three days ago. A facial brings out all the impurities. As soon as I have one I always get loads of spots.’

‘I was spotty before.’

‘You look fine.’ Margaret managed to sound convinced of this, adding with equal certainty, ‘This is your day.’

‘You should’ve got married in hot-pants, like me.’ Leanne grinned, remembering.

‘Yeah, well, I wanted to be a traditional bride. I wanted a traditional wedding. Now my face looks like a cow’s arse, I don’t suppose that’s going to happen.’

Margaret said, ‘You’ll be wearing a veil. You’ll look fine.’

‘Where’s the dress?’

Leanne was eating the sausage. It was pink at its centre. Downstairs she could hear Scott slamming the glass-panelled door between the living room and the kitchen. He’s going outside, I bet, she thought. He’ll mess up his suit. She said, ‘I told Scott about holding your train again this morning. He promised to try and be more careful with it.’

Susan scowled. ‘The little sod’ll probably sit on it and have me dragging him down the bloody aisle. Where’s the dress?’

‘On my bed. It only arrived an hour ago. I’ll go and get it.’

Margaret took the tray downstairs, knocked on the kitchen window at Scott, who was poking around in the pond with a twig, then returned upstairs to her bedroom to fetch the dress. She had laid it out on the bed earlier. It was covered in plastic but glossy inside; a pale creature in its transparent chrysalis. She picked it up carefully and took it through.

Leanne was fiddling with Susan’s hair. She was saying, ‘If you just leave the back down then it’ll look like it always does.’

‘Well, do a French plait or something, then.’

Margaret interjected, ‘Simon doesn’t like it when you do it that way.’

Leanne smiled. ‘Last time I did it for you he said it looked like you had a randy armadillo clinging to your scalp.’

Margaret tutted. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. That’s strange, she thought, I must be nervous. She lay the dress across Susan’s bed and then checked her watch. ‘Fifteen minutes before the car comes. I’ve not even powdered yet.’ She put her hand up to the front of her fringe to check that she’d taken her curler out.

Leanne said, ‘Don’t worry, I’m doing a pleat.’

Susan grimaced at her reflection. ‘Make sure it doesn’t stick out. I hate it when they stick out. Makes you look like one side of your head is bigger than the other.’

Inside Susan, waging a battle with her irritability, was a little voice saying: It’s going to be fine. It’s going to be all right. She said, ‘Leanne, switch the radio on. They always do dedications and a song for people getting married on Radio One at this time on a Saturday. Gary Davies or someone.’

‘Let me pin this in first.’

‘I’ll miss it.’

She yelled, ‘Mum! Can you come back in here? Can you come and switch the radio on?’

Scott wandered in. ‘You want the radio on?’

Susan nodded. Leanne almost dropped the pieces of hair she was holding. Scott sat on Susan’s bed and fiddled with the small radio on her bedside table.

‘Just switch it on. Don’t mess with the tuning.’

He switched it on. A voice said ‘. . .
especially Mandy and John in St Albans from the gang down at the rowing club. This is for all of you
.’ The dedication was followed by the opening few strains of ‘Endless Love’.

‘I don’t believe it. I bloody missed it. I waited twenty-four years for this moment and I missed it.’

Leanne pushed the final hairclip into the pleat and then stood back. ‘Rubbish. You hardly ever listen to the radio any more.’

Susan kicked at the leg on her dressing table. ‘I bet there was a request for me and I missed it.’

‘I don’t think anyone sent a request in. Simon didn’t mention it either.’

‘Maybe everyone in the office or down the pub . . .’

Leanne laughed. ‘You never even mentioned it before now.’

Scott switched the radio off. Very tactful for an eight year old, Leanne thought. He then said, ‘Only gits listen to Radio One.’

‘Go and look up “git” in the dictionary.’

‘I did earlier. It means . . .’ He considered the word he was about to use. ‘A comptemptible person.’

‘Contemptible.’ She thought about this for a minute. ‘I bet it means more than that.’

Leanne was doing an evening course in Old English. She was reading ‘The Nun’s Tale’. Lately she’d become fascinated by the origins of words. She was considering a course in linguistics, but wasn’t absolutely sure whether linguistics had anything to do with the history of language.

‘Give me the bloody dress.’ Susan raised her voice so that Leanne should realize that this was
her wedding day
. As a bride she had authority.

Leanne picked up the dress. Susan watched her. She took hold of the dress, bending over to grasp it, holding it in her arms like a dancing partner. When Susan snatched the dress from her, it was like she was stealing Leanne’s partner in a Ladies, Excuse-me. She yanked the plastic off.

Leanne joined Scott who was standing next to Susan’s small bookcase looking for a dictionary. She said, ‘You must’ve had a dictionary for school, Susan.’ Then she saw one and pulled it out. ‘Git,’ she said. ‘Look it up again.’

Scott was grouchy but did as he was told.

‘G-I-T,’ she said.

Susan was surrounded by a broken blancmange of cream taffeta. She was fiddling with the seed pearl buttons.

‘A hundred sodding seed pearl buttons,’ she said furiously. ‘Traditional my arse.’

Leanne said, ‘Do you want a hand with those?’ As she said this she noticed a strange stain, like a water mark, on the back of the dress. ‘Scott?’ She spoke casually.

He said, ‘I haven’t found it yet.’

‘Why don’t you go downstairs and let Grandad help you look? Aunty Susan’s got to get dressed now.’

Scott sighed, exasperated, but closed the book and left the room. Susan was still grappling with the buttons.

Leanne inspected the stain more closely. It was seven or eight inches in diameter. It did look like a water stain. This was bad news, because water, as a consequence, probably couldn’t be used to remove it. If I tell Susan, she thought, she’ll go mad. But if I don’t tell her . . .

‘What the hell is that?’

Too late. Susan had seen it.

‘I think it’s a water stain or something.’

‘Call Mum.’

Susan dropped the dress and sat down on the bed, thoroughly disgusted.

Leanne was accustomed to the rapidity with which Susan responded to things. For Susan, everything happened immediately – it
had
to – or not at all. If she had been a flower – her dad regularly said this – she’d be a passion flower. She’d bloom for a single day and then die. Passion flowers are beautiful, Leanne thought, but when it comes down to it, I’d rather be a lilac. The little flowers start off a dark, rich purple, fade into a lovely mauve, then turn into a bright white. Three flowers in one.

Leanne called Margaret. Margaret came in after several seconds, only half-way into her suit. She wore the skirt, a searing shrimp pink, on the knee, a nice length, good fabric.

‘What?’

‘The dress.’

Susan pointed. Leanne had picked the dress up. She indicated towards the water mark.

‘I don’t believe it. It must’ve been like that when they sent it.’

‘I’m going to sue them.’

‘You only tried it on two days ago. I didn’t notice a stain then.’

‘Phone them and tell them I’m going to sue.’

Leanne said, ‘Is there any way of getting out a stain like this?’ Margaret didn’t really have a clue. She didn’t know much about stains on the whole. What sort of a mother does that make me? she thought. Susan was glaring at her as though it was all her fault. She was the oldest. The oldest person was always responsible. Susan said quietly, ‘I’m not going. Ring Simon. Tell him it’s off.’

Leanne stared at Susan. Her nose and chin were red and her eyes were doleful. This is like a game of MouseTrap, she decided. Scott had the game at home; a brightly coloured plastic contraption with a large silver ball. She couldn’t remember how you played it, what the rules were, but she did know for certain that once the silver ball had started to roll, the course of events was pretty much determined. She said, ‘You can hardly notice it, really. There’s so much material. Once your veil’s on it’ll stretch down way below . . .’

‘Phone them and tell them I’m going to sue.’

Margaret said, ‘You could probably pin a couple of folds together if the veil didn’t cover it.’

Leanne watched Susan’s face. This could go either way, she thought. Anger or self-pity. She hoped it would be the latter. The corners of Susan’s mouth began to turn down. Her chin trembled.

‘It’s a botch-up. It ruins everything.’

Secretly, Susan was almost pleased. The hair, the radio . . . these things hadn’t been a sufficient cause for dejection, but the dress . . . well!

Margaret stopped herself from uttering platitudes. She wanted to say, ‘It doesn’t matter’, but, of course, it did matter.

Leanne said, ‘Simon asked you to marry him that day you vomited in his car after Alton Towers. Remember? It won’t make any difference to him.’

Scott rushed in. He was now wearing a button-hole. Margaret said brightly, ‘The flowers have arrived. That’s something.’

Scott shouted over the top of her words, ‘Git. A bastard. In the sense, to beget. Hence, a bastard, fool.’

Damn, Leanne thought, that wasn’t very successful.

Susan matched his yells with her own. ‘Scott, bugger off!’ Every time I get some attention, she thought, that little brat ruins it.

Scott stuck out his bottom lip, looked from Susan, to his mother and then back again. Margaret snatched hold of his hand and led him out of the room. She’s my daughter, she thought. It’s her wedding day.

Leanne said, ‘Susan, just because you’re the bride, doesn’t mean you can get away with being rude to everybody.’