Piglet

by Lottie Hazell

Kit, his eyes dark with desire, was naked besides his boxers, a pair of yellow rubber gloves.

What is this writing 😭 The word “and” can’t hurt you, I promise

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

????

When Sophie sank her spoon into the semifreddo, she smiled across the half-empty bowls and said sweetly, “You should go on Bake Off.” Margot caught Piglet’s eye, and she had to look away; Sophie did not realise this was not a compliment. Piglet said thank you, anyway.

I already hate this narrator

“Where did you find her, anyway?” Margot asked. “She and Seb got engaged at Christmas.” “Tacky.” Margot flicked the lighter, and it flared. Piglet lifted a finger to her lips, shushing, before nodding. She pulled a cigarette from the packet. “Yes. She calls us the WTBs—wives to be—which I find depressing.”

Why are they such mean girls 😭

They had been everything to one another—there had even been bracelets, exchanged ironically—but then there was Sasha, and not long after, Piglet met Kit. 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.

Hahaha I love this. She got a girlfriend and is pregnant and this has put distance between us (ignore that I also got a boyfriend around the same time and am now getting married, it’s all her fault)

Piglet had not told her parents that she had been forced to beg for a pay rise from her manager, Sandra, on the advice of their mortgage broker; instead, she had packaged this episode as a promotion.

Is… is it not?

But when Kit and Piglet plumped for a carafe of rioja—the sixth wine on the list, her father had noted—they had ordered the house red, and when the bill came, their steak-greased lips had tightened. “One hundred and eighty-two pounds for four steaks?” her father asked under his breath as he ripped open his Velcro wallet and began to count out twenty-pound notes. Her mother tutted quietly, and Piglet felt the eyes of the neighbouring diners.

So her (decidedly not upper class) parents offer to pay, suggest pizza, her fiancé wants steak, they order an expensive bottle of wine, her parents are displeased by the price, and SHES embarrassed of THEM??

When she had stood in front of the rows of shiny silver tins in Waitrose, she had purposefully passed over the Carlsberg and the Coors and purchased brown bottles of Westmalle, a golden beer she had read was one of the best blond ales you could buy on this side of the Channel. Piglet looked up from a ball of labneh she had been coaxing from its muslin when Kit handed Darren the bottle. He inspected the label before taking a small sip. “Nice, isn’t it?” Piglet said. Darren nodded, swallowing. “That’s a proper beer.”

I hate her 😭😭

“And this is for you and Kit.” Her mother held out a bottle of wine. “It’s from all of us,” she said. Piglet took the bottle, eyes lingering on the cartoonish label as she laid a hand on her mother’s arm. “Thank you. We love Shiraz,” she said.

I hate her x2

“Have you got a drink?” he asked, and she pointed towards her wineglass, half-empty, half-full.

Who describes anything like this

They had been saving, Piglet knew. They had moved in with her parents, and when Piglet had confided in Franny that she could never have done the same, Franny had told her that she hadn’t had to.

I. Hate. Her.

His eyes were creasing and his lips were curling. Tears, she realised, her mind slow, fear unfurling in the bowl of her pelvis. He reached out, his hand touching her thigh. His fingers crept at her, and she felt her eyes swivel in her head, looking down at his clutching extremities. She heard him talking, saw him grasping, and noticed how her flesh puckered beneath his fingers. In between the creases of their sheets, he told her what he had done. She lay broken. Her body, naked, looked as if it had been spilled.

Such gross pretentious writing. Also I hate that the author plays coy about “what he had done” and all the reviewers pretend it’s a mystery. He cheated on her. Come on guys.

Their neighbours had decorated for Halloween. Only the eighteenth of October, and the houses on their road were covered in spiders, littered with pumpkins. When had it started? When had it happened? She hadn’t noticed anything last year, the year before, the year before that.

They just moved in this year though?

This had been research, she told herself, a working lunch. She would expense it. She entered her PIN number and felt the waiter’s eyes on her: this could have fed four. It did feed four, she’d say, if she was ever asked.

INCREDIBLY surprised this didn’t come back to bite her.

Piglet felt uncomfortable on the train from Paddington to Oxford, one seat not enough to accommodate her burgeoning body.

After one meal?? This is not how bloating works

A pain grew up from her sit bones as the game continued.

Is… this a British thing?

“Hi, I’m Kelly and I’ll be your server today!” A woman had arrived at Piglet’s table: all teeth, baseball cap and pinstriped uniform. Piglet looked up. “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, eyebrows contracting. “I said, I’ll get you started with some water and give you a few minutes to take a look at the menu.”

Not the hallucinations 😭

Conscious, her stomach turned to liquid. As she lined her en suite toilet bowl with paper, she put her aqueousness down to nerves. As she sat, her bowels releasing themself in muffled thuds, she looked at her watch: a minute before 5:00 a.m.

Why

The makeup artist wore the proof of her profession on her face. Before her were bottles of flesh-coloured liquids; compacts of pastel powder; pots of jewel-toned dust; crowns of feathery, fake eyelashes; lipsticks, stains, and glosses.

So many words to say so little

When they kissed, her mouth on Kit’s for the millionth time, his lips felt cold, and the applause, the roiling cheers, made gooseflesh ripple beneath her dress. When they broke apart, she observed her body. Beneath the meshed lace, her skin was puckered, hair follicles swollen by cold and by the realisation that she was married, that she had made a mistake. Because shouldn’t she be full now? Shouldn’t she be satisfied? Despite everything, she was hollow. She was hungry.

Wow so profound and subtle

She tried to listen for their reaction as she told them what he had done, her voice echoing, but blood was pounding in her ears, and the bones of her dress creaked and groaned across the speakers, as if in reproach. She was raising a toast—“To us”—lifting her glass higher and higher, when she felt her dress give, a sick ripping snagging through the speakers. It was the seams, not even the buttons, she thought, and in a moment of wild hilarity she laughed out loud at the thought of herself. What must this look like? What would Margot say? Briefly, she imagined the story, how Margot would laugh, wave her hands—“Stop.” Mrs. Edwards peered beneath her armpit, appraising the rip of her dress, the bulge of her body, and the microphone, held away in her inspection, amplified the edges of her exhilaration, the sound echoing unevenly across the tent.

Wow this metaphor sure is subtle

Margot smiled from behind the glass, lifting a thumb in encouragement, but Piglet did not see her.

It’s first person limited though

And then, listening to her new husband’s speech about how they were meant to be, how he had known from the start, she had found herself, despite her gorging, hollow. The attention from their guests, their wedding-day admiration, had not filled her up. Her father’s pride, wrested from him, had been bitter; her in-laws’ approval soured. She had plumbed the depths of this shallow life they had constructed and found there was nothing left to do but leave it.

WE GET IT

She turned on two hobs, flames bursting into life after one, two, three clicks of the gas. She poured boiling water into the saucepan before dipping her fingers into the salt pig, scattering crystals into the steaming liquid below. She held her hand over the surface of the skillet and felt the heat of the gas ring permeate the black cast iron. She unscrewed the cap of the good olive oil and slicked the skillet. She dipped her finger into the swirl of the yellow-green liquid—her manicured fingernail, chipped, sensing the heat beneath—and lifted it to her mouth. The oil was peppery, slippery on her lips. As the oil warmed, becoming loose with heat, she dug her fingers into the garlic, two fat cloves falling to a chopping board below. She removed their dry skins before wielding a chef’s knife, slicing the cloves until they splayed out like sycamore seeds. She could smell and feel the stick of allium on her fingertips. She dropped the sliced garlic into the pan, and the oil sizzled, a sweet-savoury scent perfuming the air. With a pop, she unscrewed the lid on the anchovies and pinched at the preserved fish, dropping a shoal into the skillet with the garlic. She watched the oil spit as the hot fat bubbled at the edges of the fish until they began to erode, their bones dissolving to nothing. She sprinkled over the chilli flakes; the white garlic freckled red.

Guys this keeps going for many more paragraphs and then the book ends