Piglet

by Lottie Hazell

her parents still ate her mother’s roast chicken every Sunday. On Saturday it was a takeaway—Chinese, from the shop in town—and on Friday it was fish. No matter the weather, no matter the time of year. These routines, which had once cradled their familial bonds, their Sunday traditions, now made Piglet feel a crawling embarrassment, a creeping pity. She had learned since she left Derby, left her parents, that the only way to serve a dessert from the frozen aisle was ironically.

The linen was light against her bare skin and, in the warmth of the early evening, she felt a power in her body: strong and beautiful in her own home.

Piglet noticed her eyes had started to become small with drink.

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.

It was the only distasteful thing about the Summertown house: the television on, always on, the volume too loud.

Onions, carrots, celery, and garlic smelled like a school night: the beginnings of cooking for a crowd.

They were still close—of course they were close—but Margot’s family was growing in a direction away from Piglet, as she had planned it, as she had always known, and there was something hurtful about this choice: Margot striving ahead, as she always did, sure of herself, making a unit of her own rather than waiting for Piglet, leaving her behind.

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.

felt small. It was the house, the town, the minds of the neighbours, the minds of her parents.

In the space where she was both at once her parents’ daughter and Kit’s fiancée, she did not know how to be.

Her size seemed to invite men who didn’t know her to ask if she played basketball.

There were some things that you could not tell your family. She knew that truths, once spoken, had the power to return her to them.

She tipped the shelled chickpeas into a food processor and added four tablespoons of tahini, the same again of the good olive oil, two cloves of garlic, lemon juice, and a teaspoon each of ground coriander and cumin before pinching in large crystals of Maldon salt. Kit took a seat at the set table.

weight of her body: a stone in her office chair. Olivia had questions, and she answered. Toni had jokes, and she laughed. Kit had apologies and apologies and apologies, and she read them.

She did not want to cook for him, but she did want to eat.

She was proud, in a way, that she could still smile as the delicious life she had been savouring turned maggoty in her mouth.

As she walked, smelling the air, stepping over littered napkins, Piglet imagined what life might have been like, how different it could have been, if she had been eating food like that at their age.

The feeling of lightness in her limbs, the thrill at asking for what she had wanted, had gone, replaced by a heavy self-consciousness.

They slipped back into their skins, shrugging on the familiar feeling of self-satisfaction. I have never questioned whether we should be together, she said, and they nodded as one, finding comfort in their lie.

She, Piglet, conscious of the hollowness in her gut that made her want to fill the space between them.

Piglet exhaled, disappointed, relieved, realizing that Margot’s crisis was one of her own confidence.

Lost, she wondered what she was doing, and what, if anything, had ever given her a sense of satisfaction?

She hadn’t left, hadn’t packed up a bag, hadn’t taken the car. He had stopped lowering his eyes when she entered a room. Her staying, her infallible presence, had seemed to heal his sense of wrongdoing. Their conversations evolved: If only you had … if only we had

Since he had confessed, much had become unavailable, and her life—their life—was like walking a familiar path after an earthquake, a bridge of rotted wood: questioning every step. 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.

She could feel the thump of impending conflict in her chest as their conspiracy to carry on as normal, their commitment, began to crumble.

He beat the porridge with a plastic spatula—the one she reserved for cooking with onions. They would be able to taste another night’s dinner on their breakfast, the allium echo of a meal from the past.

They had tried: one offering tea, but then the other saying no, and their feeling of resentment towards one another would swell anew. She had been confused in the recent days, as she travelled to work, sitting alone on the train to Paddington. She was sure that she had been wronged and was unable to trace how they had arrived at a mutual displeasure.

The threads of her life were unravelling like the beaded corset from Allegra Joy’s boutique: fraying, sequins scattering on the floor, boning brittle, starting to break.

She could cry, sitting next to him in their home. This was too hard. She had come too far, she had isolated herself from so many people, detaching herself from her support network in favour of a sense of superiority: perfect coupledom, bliss. And for what? How much of this life could be true when it had been built around a lie? But she was drained, she was done.

She swallowed, tasting nothing, feeling the bulk drop into her stomach, quelling a hunger.

She only had herself to blame: speeding towards a disaster of her own making, propelled by a momentum she had whipped up.

Marriage is a commitment, but a lesser one than a mother has to her son.

She was avoiding people, she knew, but she had started to feel irritated by the opinions of others, their needs, their insistence on sharing them all with her when it was her wedding in two days’ time.

The women laughed and began to speak louder and louder, competing to tell their own anecdotes, about the time, once, when they were disgusting.

But her eyes were still watering, and the only way she could think to stop them was to eat until her stomach felt like it was made of stone, until she was so full, she couldn’t feel anything else.

To have rules was to have awareness, and she didn’t have any desire to inspect what she was doing. Le Bun broke her maybe-rules. She had half-consciously promised herself: no chains, no restaurants within lunchtime-walking distance of the office, nowhere someone she knew might see her and she couldn’t explain away her eating as research, as essential, impressive work.

she could not return to receive quiet, consolatory facial expressions from Olivia. She would not meet their eyes, not now they had seen her. The woman she had been, eating alone, was no longer anonymous. Now she was someone else, someone sadder: “A woman I work with was in Le Bun today with seven burgers lined up in front of her! I’m pretty sure

What do we know, really, about each other’s private lives?

Margot sometimes disclosed details of the arguments she had with Sasha and, while Piglet had always been careful to listen, to nod sympathetically, she had never responded with her own grievances. She had never told Margot everything. Surely, surely Margot also kept elements of her life—the unsavoury and pallid—private too?

When she asked herself what was worse—what he had done, or what it would be like for people to know what he had done—she was reassured by her inability to answer.

Even the poet, who Piglet had only met once, turned up with her toothbrush and ate Margot’s mother’s cooked breakfast in the morning. Piglet remembered the camaraderie of it all, the frothy inevitability of returning to a parent before detaching from them.

She had felt detached from her parents for a long time, although now, when she let herself think about it, she felt adrift, unable to inspect the details of her mooring to Kit for fear she was no longer attached, and instead, at sea, alone.

Then he pulled her close, crushing her into a hug, and, pressed into his neck, her eyes stung with tears. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. For what? The wrongly purchased sugar? Margot slipping away from her? The lies? “I still want to be in this together if you do.”

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.

rubbing as they speared spinach leaves. She smelled like the same fragrance she wore when Piglet was a child: Davidoff Cool Water, the blue bottle pushed back on her dressing table.

“Because we’re your family, and you’re our Piglet.”

Piglet felt the heft of her father’s body beside her. It was not as substantial as it had been when she was a child—her smaller, him larger, muscles thick—but it was here. He was still here. We will always be here for you. Because we’re your family, and you’re our Piglet.

How do you tell people, when the invitations have been sent, the crème pâtissière made, that the fullness of your life has been a pretence; your pleasures, you realise, posture?

Her shoulders jumped high, suggesting hysterics, but what could be done now? She was committed. Everyone would be expecting her, her homemade wedding cake, her husband. She was expecting the same.

He laughed, Darren too, and Piglet wondered whether her father would have wanted more for her if she were a boy.