Page 100 of Mad About You

Nina was great. From what Harriet could glean from their social media acquaintance, she was a good-natured, ex-art-school stoner who taught night classes on how to draw seagulls and had signed up to a community scheme where she took infirm pensioners around on outings on a rickshaw.

Nina sent Harriet funny memes every few days, as if they were now mates in general and Scott Dyer was merely an incidental method of introduction. After all the torment of the man, someone who simply hooted at his memory,what a fucking nob, was an absolute tonic. Nina was the human equivalent of when golden autumn sun breaks through the clouds on a cold windy day, unexpectedly warming your chilled face.

‘Evil H, that’s me,’ Harriet said, standing up to greet her in Waterstones caff. ‘Nice to meet you in person! I don’t know why I’ve stood up.’

They guffawed and hugged.

‘I’ve got to say, bit disappointed you’re not wearing a Hamburglar-type outfit with the black mask across your eyes,’ Nina said. ‘You need to lean into your online alter ego.’

‘I’m going incognito as a regular human woman.’

Nina dropped her coat and went to get herself a drink, returning with a pot of loose-leaf tea and round wafer biscuit on a tray.

‘There’s still no actual plan for this awesome Avengers Assembling of his nemeses, yet?’ Nina said.

‘Nope. Only we agreed more tit-for-tat Facebook outing isn’t the way,’ Harriet shrugged, and felt a little guilty she’d obliged Nina to get a train from Prestwich on a Wednesday for ‘yeah, dunno’.

An unbothered Nina nodded, unwrapped her Stroopwafel and balanced a tea strainer on her cup.

‘I know I said I wanted to him to suffer, but I hope she’s not going to suggest hardcoreDragon Tattooshit, because it’ll be hard to resist but also, I’m not going to prison for him,’ she said.

Harriet laughed. She was also starting to sweat a little at what was coming next. Ouija boards were supposed to ‘work’ because everyone pushed the glass as a collective effort and yet didn’t detect the pressure they were individually applying. What if they in their own way ended up egging each other on, pouring their joint energies into a plan they’d separately recognise as insane?

In a small flurry of jasmine-heavy perfume, Marianne took the third chair at their table, wearing no coat and holding aphone. Gone was the bedraggled urchin in the cagoule. She was in a black work uniform bearing the Estilo logo, and her butter-coloured hair hung in immaculate, hot-tonged ringlets, the sort only an expert could achieve. Harriet believed her when she said the old Marianne was on her way back.

‘Hi, sorry I’m late,’ she said, at a careful volume.

‘Marianne, Nina; Nina, Marianne,’ Harriet gabbled under her breath, and they said hello to one another.

‘I’m not going to get a drink. I can’t stay long, sorry. I’ve got a client in foils.’

‘Of course,’ Harriet said. Marianne glanced from side to side, no doubt making sure there were no faces she recognised here.

Sensing her inhibition, possibly a reluctance to even be present, Harriet paused.

‘You know if you’ve changed your mind and want to get married, we won’t hold you to anything? We can go away and never mention this again, if that’s what you want.’

There was a pause which lasted for a couple of weeks.

‘That said, don’t fucking marry him,’ Nina said, with a hiccupping laugh, pouring out her tea and breaking the tension beautifully, in a Nina way.

‘I’m not going to marry him,’ Marianne said, calmly, as if she was dismissing the idea of whether she’d have time to go to the big Sainsbury’s later. ‘Also, I’ve got it. I know what we should do. If you are both up for it. Though I won’t mind if you don’t want to do it.’

She spread both hands flat on the table, for a sense offocus up. ‘I worked out why posting online feels a bit lame. We’donly be telling strangers. Maybe they’d believe us, maybe they wouldn’t. To be honest, who cares?’

Harriet’s eyes widened. ‘Go on.’

She felt like she was in a courtroom drama, they’d been on the ropes, and now the hotshot maverick attorney was explaining how, against the odds, they were going to switch tactics and win.

‘The people who need to know what Scott’s like are his friends and family. The ones who take his side and cover things up and think the sun shines out of his harris.’

‘His enablers,’ Nina said. ‘Then there’s us, demonstrating the Missing Stair theory.’

‘What’s that?’ Marianne said.

‘We secretly warn each other to avoid him. We manage the problem but we don’t expose it or fix it. Which I guess makes us enablers too? I don’t know.’

‘His friends and family don’t know they’re his enablers, that’s how good he is at compartmentalising,’ Harriet said.

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