Page 98 of Mad About You

It was so starkly obvious to her now she’d said it in so many words – this was why she’d picked someone, in Jon, she’d not fall in love with. Jon was right, she’d gone in with a full suit of armour. It was so sad, this self-knowledge come too late.

‘My dad used to knock my mum around,’ Marianne said, stubbing out her cigarette. ‘Before he went – I’ve not seen him since I was three. I used to ask her why she put up with it.’ Marianne looked at Harriet with shining eyes, full of fast-consumed champagne and sincere feeling. ‘I’d have a go at her when I was a teenager, I told herI’dnever stand for it! I honestly thought it couldn’t happen to me. All these years before I met Scott, thinking I’m some sassy warrior bitch … Know what my hen do was?’

Harriet shook her head.

‘Afternoon tea. I hate afternoon tea. Cucumber and egg sandwiches are rank.’

Harriet couldn’t help herself, she laughed.

‘Stupid custard cake slices, back home in my Ugg Scuffettes by six o’clock. Because Scott would’ve kicked off at the weekend in Croatia I wanted. All my friends are bad influences, rah rah. I don’t recognise myself anymore. Where’s the girl who got barred for life from Revolución de Cuba gone?’

Marianne picked up her glass and swigged. Harriet clinked her glass and said: ‘I promise you, you’re still there.’

‘I know from your letter that you’re tons smarter than me, so I thought I’d admit that I don’t have a plan. I don’t have anything.’

‘A plan?’

‘Of what we do next.’

Harriet frowned. ‘You want to leave him?’

‘Of course.’

Marianne looked perplexed, as if that was obviously why she was sat in his ex-girlfriend’s garden, on her second cigarette.

45

Harriet’s head was spinning. ‘Don’t you get married soon?’

‘Next Saturday.’

‘Do you want someone with you when you tell him?’

Harriet was thinking:Please don’t say it has to be me, I won’t feel I can say no, but it’d be carnage.

‘No, I could ask my mum, but that’s not my problem. I know how it would go. Reading your B&Q story I thought,that’s it, that’s what he’ll do. Obviously, binning the wedding off is a big deal, but he’ll cut me dead. Then he’ll tell everyone I was a bad mess.’

‘I guess so.’

‘The row before Danny and Ferg’s wedding. What he said to me …’ She sipped champagne and tapped her cigarette tip into the holder, and Harriet saw Marianne gird herself: ‘He said, “If we have daughters, I hope they don’t turn out like you”.’

Harriet sucked in cold air. ‘Wow.’

‘So yeah, I can split up with him. I can cancel the wedding, Harriet,’ Marianne said, voice rising, gaze now direct. ‘Then what? He does it all again, doesn’t he? To someone who has a family with him. Then it’s me writing letters, in a few years’time. I mean to be fair, I’d probably do a voice note because I’ve not got your way with words.’

She smiled wanly and Harriet smiled back.

‘It’s not enough. I want other women to know who Scott is, so he can’t do this all over again. And I want to bemeagain. I want to remind him of who I am. I want to remind me of who I am!’

Of all the twists that Harriet didn’t see coming, it was Marianne being gripped by the same sort of fervour she was. The grenade over the high wall was in fact a match flicked at a lake of petrol.

‘How? Like a letter we all sign and put online? We’d get all theI Stand With Scottidiots out in force, wouldn’t we,’ Harriet said, pulling a face.

‘Those sorts of things melt away, don’t they? I don’t know,’ Marianne shrugged.

Harriet wished they melted away a bit faster, but now was not the time to sob about her job.

‘Until you came along, I couldn’t see anything clearly,’ Marianne said. ‘Now it’s like I seeeverything.It’s a cycle, and you have to break a cycle.’

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