Piglet

by Lottie Hazell

People eat their dinner, just eat their dinner, and all the while their happiness is taking form, or their lives are falling apart. —Anton Chekhov

It was too hot for a roast chicken, but Piglet had once heard Nigella say something about a house only being home once a chicken was in the oven.

It had reached the point in the evening when the plates were empty and the atmosphere was souring like Piglet’s tongue, dry from wine. The drink and conversation were no longer pleasurable and instead, they made her head throb. She closed her eyes as Kit’s voice rose, untired by company, the alcohol, or the hour.

There were some things that you could not tell your friends. She knew that truths, once spoken, had the power to strip her of the life she had so carefully built, so smugly shared.

She always felt bigger than should be allowed, but next to Sandra’s petite frame she felt especially huge. Her size seemed to invite men who didn’t know her to ask if she played basketball. This question would come arbitrarily: on the tube, at the checkout of a grocery store, in the doctor’s surgery. Surely, these men must think, this woman has good reason for being so large.

“I’ve made you breakfast,” he said at the bottom of the stairs, “and coffee.” He was holding a bowl of porridge and her usual mug, face haggard, dressing gown loose. Piglet looked at the bowl and was not moved by the banana neatly chopped, the honey carefully swirled. She found she didn’t have a single word to say to him. He stood there as she pulled on her trainers, the coffee cooling. She picked up her bag and rolled her tongue up to the roof of her mouth as she unlocked the door. “I love you,” he said. She closed the door behind her.

“I don’t know what to say,” she said. “Say anything,” he whined. She tilted her head back, and water glazed her eyes as she balanced tears. What could she say? What sentence would pierce him while leaving her intact? She had built her life so carefully around him. To say something, to do something, to feel something, would be to self-destruct.

“Let’s breathe through it together, shall we? I took Lamaze classes before I had Piglet. I’ll follow your rhythm.” Piglet watched her mother—in her cream pantsuit and pearls—hold her best friend’s hand as they inhaled together, nostrils flaring, before releasing their breath, in unison, through pursed lips, and realised this was not something she and Margot could share. She considered, as she watched them breathe, that she and her mother had never really spoken about her life before Piglet, before Franny. She watched her mother and her best friend and was unsure if she recognised either person.

But he had been indignant at her inviting a witness into their fractured coupledom, a betrayal that seemed to parallel his.

As they fought, she tried to make sense of the feeling that they had not lived a truthful life. Margot knowing had felt like a secret in the hours that Piglet had known and he had not, and she struggled to understand how he could have deceived her for so long. How had it not eaten him? She imagined his insides, empty: darkness where there had once been a heart, lungs.

“We’ll get beer,” her father said, looking between himself and Darren, not understanding or not caring about the convivial ritual that came with sharing a bottle of wine, the ceremony of pouring for your counterpart first and then yourself.