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Weddings are”—Sandra waved her hand above her, frowning—“hectic,” she concluded. Piglet nodded, eyes fixed on her hands clasped in her lap. “When I got married the second time,” Sandra continued, “I only invited a few people and I still took a whole week off beforehand.” She smiled, tilting her head to one side. “One of the many life lessons that comes with remarrying, I suppose.” She sighed.
“Have you had a chance to look at the menu?” he asked. “I have.” Piglet nodded, not looking up at him, perusing. “But I would appreciate your recommendations.” He gave them. She ordered every dish on the menu.
They could have a child, she thought, imagining his declarations of love, his public adoration. It was something to stay together for, something to move things along.
“If you get married again, can there be less early mornings? Or can they at least be nearer home?” Piglet said nothing. The train rattled, and the silence reverberated between them. “Joking!” Franny said.
On that long night, there had not been time. After he had told her, peeling back his flesh like a gill—showing her what she had not seen—there had not been a moment to think. Between his bouts of confession, she had been preoccupied. As his truth ripped at her, she had held together the tatters of her body, picking up her shredded personhood from the bed around her like fallen confetti.
Gorgeous imAgery
Piglet, momentarily, felt a flare of impatience. Ask me how I am, she thought, ask me how I am feeling.
the cracks of herself papered over, her heart, newly knotted with scar tissue, closed to confession.
“and I do think she’s worried about the journey next week. She’s eighty-seven.” Piglet nodded, her eyes back on the road. “I said that I’d talk to you about staying over.” Piglet stole another look at her mother, who was looking out of the window, biting her lip. “Why didn’t she say?” Piglet asked. “The rooms at the Ardington are all taken now.” “They were a little rich for her blood,” her mother said, eyes flicking as she watched cars pass. “I couldn’t ask Kit’s parents to pay for everyone, Mum.” “No,” her mother said, turning away from the window, meeting Piglet’s eyes in the mirror. “I
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Rsvp no if you are over 70. Its a pity invite anyway
“I’m hoping champagne isn’t a silly question?” “Not for me, Allegra,” Margot said, pointing at her stomach, performing a comedy eye roll. “Allegra Joy,” Allegra Joy corrected, smiling, before she disappeared through a door concealed behind a shelf of veils. Margot snorted.
“Mum, I said no!” Piglet tore her body from her mother’s hands. Margot gasped. Had Piglet shouted as she had freed herself? Had she screamed? She stumbled on the hem of her dress, organza catching between her toes. She fell; she heard ripping. Her mother stepped back. The cream carpet was soft beneath her fingers. “I’ll do the fast, Mum,” she said from her knees. Her mother wasn’t looking at her, her eyes fixed on the mannequins in the shop window: elbows sharp, cheekbones gaunt. Piglet could hear Margot from the sofa, still inhaling sharply, panting, sucking in air. Allegra Joy crouched
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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.
nobody knew; two years, maybe three; he’s sorry, he says he’s sorry,
“You’re late,” Kit called from the kitchen. “Margot went into labour,” Piglet said, and Kit ran into the hallway, his mouth hanging open. “And she knows,” she said, closing the door behind her.
He had started to spit when he spoke, tongue catching on sharp syllables, and she had been disoriented: unable to access their shared moral code, which, since his confession, had become tarnished, soiled, and no longer available to her. 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.
</3 real
She had wanted to scream, but, even now, they prided themselves on their ability to argue without alerting the neighbours. What self-control, they would congratulate themselves once the scores had been settled. What composure.
She could feel her pulse in her fingertips as she picked up her bowl. She felt his eyes on her as she lifted it over her head, brought it down, smashing it onto the tiled floor. Shards of ceramic and congealed oats sprayed across the kitchen. Kit drew his feet up onto his chair. They both looked at the floor, and in the quiet she felt the rawness of her throat, the pounding of her head. She walked upstairs. “Very mature,” he called after her.
She had expected Kit to pull out the chair alongside her, as he always did, Cecelia opposite, but as she sat, Kit moved towards his mother, and she was across from them, alone.
Cecelia watched Piglet watching her son.
Piglet, her stomach tearing, lining splitting, turned to her future mother-in-law to say no, no thank you.
The baby, when old enough, would call her Aunty, would beg to sleep over with her. Margot and Sasha, grey-haired and tired-eyed, would sigh: “Could you?” And she would. She would be a treasured, indispensable part of their family. But since Sasha’s text, there had been no mention of Layla, and Piglet felt aware of her absence.
Since Kit had confessed, she had imagined people’s responses, and, in her mind, Margot had been angrily sympathetic but resigned. She would shake her head at Piglet’s martyrdom, raise her shoulders, and say, “It’s your life.”
She and Kit had not been speaking. After the smashed porridge bowl, the lunch at Cecelia and Richard’s, something had broken between them, something more than before. She imagined their engagement like a bone: previously fractured, now snapped under strain, splintered in two.
Sad
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.
Imagery :(
“So, we’re doing this?” he asked. “Yes.”
It had been planned for months—since before what had happened. He would meet her, on her last day in the office before they were married, and they would walk along the river together.
His parents knew, he had confirmed, and that embarrassed her.
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.
If people could just leave her to get through the next few days, she could get everything back under control. Then, with her husband, she would be ready, again, to help: lend an ear, a shoulder, a couple of thousand pounds. She would be herself again.
“One marriage and one baby.” She smiled. “Which one’s which?” someone called from the back of the crowd, and Piglet stopped breathing.
“was in the first trimester. All beige food—obviously—but I couldn’t eat enough pork scratchings if I tried. There was something about the little hairs on the crisps,” she shrugged, jubilant in her unpleasantness. The women laughed and began to speak louder and louder, competing to tell their own anecdotes, about the time, once, when they were disgusting.
When they were disgusting
To have rules was to have awareness, and she didn’t have any desire to inspect what she was doing.
“It looks like you’re a hungry little pig,” Kelly said without missing a beat. “Let me guess—you want one of everything? What would your dad say about that?” She affected a Derbyshire accent. “Typical Pig.” “What?” Piglet said,
the kissing couple who were compensating for something,
Classic
“Such an awkward spot,” she said, as the young waitress stepped back. As she did, her uniformed body removing itself from Piglet’s line of sight,
She looked back to her food—seven burgers, fries, nondescript deep-fried somethings—
People from Fork House could not be here. Toni could not be here. There was no Savoy, no friends. They could not be walking towards her table, not when she was surrounded by so much food, so many empty seats.
Omg
She noticed her hand, which was no longer a hand. Her fingers had fused together. They were short and swollen and ended in a sharp point. She stared at it, this appendage resting on the door. It was not a hoof, but it was not a hand.
She felt her phone vibrate in her bag. It buzzed and buzzed again, and Piglet imagined emails from Toni, missed calls from Sandra, and voice notes, voice notes, voice notes from Margot.
The pebbles beneath her were silty, and she had to steady herself as she reeled. She had the urge to strip, to soak her clothes, to beat them against the shoreline rocks. She wanted to slip into the water, wash her skin, and emerge renewed.
When he had found her, sitting in a corner seat, grit beneath her fingernails and her Calvin Klein rucksack soaked with river water, he had rushed forward. She had been told to wait, and he had placed a hot chocolate in front of her, whipped cream high, wobbling as he set it down. He sat opposite her and watched her, waiting for her to drink. “Are you in trouble?” he said when she did not lift the mug, nodding towards her dirty hands.
:(
“When I told you, I didn’t think we’d be getting married this weekend,” he said, his hand drifting into the air to his right, his words starting to trail. “I … I thought … Well, I didn’t think we’d be here.”
“We are,” he said, taking her hand. “No matter what my parents say.” Piglet felt her face twitch, a fishhook pulled into her lip. “No matter what anyone says,” he corrected.
“She won’t be coming, she needs to recover. Nor will I, I expect it goes without saying. We need to be at home,” Sasha said. She paused. “We can’t watch you do this to yourself.”
She piped three-centimetre rounds onto her first baking tray. She left space; they would spread. This, she knew how to do. This, she could talk about, if anyone asked.
Love
The custard was thickening. She tasted sweat: her tongue poking from her mouth in concentration, just as her father’s did. “You did all this, Pig?” he would say. “Your own custard too?” “Crème pâtissière,” she would correct him, a hand on his arm.
“What does she know?” he asked, and Piglet privately thought, worried: perhaps as much as I do.
“Whose cars are those?” Richard was saying. “Piglet’s family are here. You’re late.” There was muttering in the hallway before Richard stepped into the living room: red-nosed, red-jumpered, clad in Barbour, and wearing the mossy green, worn-at-the-knees chinos of the upper-middle classes. Piglet cringed as he took in the sofa bed, her mother and Franny half-reclined. It must have looked terrible to him, with its rumpled, greying bedding. Had he ever slept on a sofa bed? Had he ever seen one? Piglet felt embarrassed by her gathered family
“I’ll see you tomorrow, I guess,” he said, one hand on the door. She opened her mouth, her lips parted, and waited for words to present themselves. 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.” She felt his breathing, uneven, and she held him tighter, aware of the buttonhole roses crushing against her back, of her parents looking on from the next room. She inhaled in the familiar
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Real. I feel like i am piglet!!
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said again, picking up his packed suitcase, his garment bag. “You will.” She nodded. He exhaled.
