‘Funny it took you until tonight to say anything. You never questioned things before. You sucked it all up… must have been terrible for you. Having to go on with all those awful things I organised for us – a weekend in Cornwall, dinner at Le Manoir, ski lessons at the indoor ski slope. My memory is terrible but I could have sworn that after I booked the indoor sky diving, you said that being with me was always so much fun.’
‘Fun, yes.’ Simon finally looked at her before saying coldly, ‘But not for keeps.’
‘What?’ Her heart pinched in sudden pain.Not for keeps.
‘You can’t base a marriage, or even a serious relationship, on fun.’ He peered at her like a headmaster delivering a lecture, which he then proceeded to do.
Now, even with the cold wind biting at her face, Mina paused for a moment, the words from Saturday night still ringing with hurtful shrillness in her ears:
‘You can’t spend your life being spontaneous and going off on adventures all the time. Marriage is about being grown-up, settling down, knowing you’re on an even keel. With you it’s like being on a constant rollercoaster, or in a plane and I’m never sure when you’re going to throw me out of the door. You’re too crazy, too mile-a minute, too wanting the next thing all the time. I never know where I am, and I don’t want to live like that. It’s probably from your genes, and I’m not sure I want those in my children.’
‘Genes?’ she spat.
‘Your real mum and dad. It sounds as if they were always chasing adventure. It sounds as if they were reckless and irresponsible. They didn’t take the important things in life seriously. That’s not what I want in my life.’
Her eyes almost popped out of her head with sheer rage at him bringing up her long dead parents and it robbed her of the ability to say anything. Simon was oblivious and on he ploughed, ‘It’s a shame you don’t take after your adopted parents, Miriam and Derek. I can’t believe that Miriam was your mother’s sister, she’s so normal.’
Mina had never, ever been as close to strangling anyone as she was at that moment. Her fingers actually cramped into claws, ready to do the deed. Luckily Simon stepped out of range with one more parting salvo.
‘We’ve had fun, but… you can’t have fun all the time. At some point you need to focus on what’s important. And I can’t see you ever doing that. You’re like a butterfly, constantly flitting about, looking for the next great thing. It’s too exhausting being with you.’
With that parting shot, he’d walked out of the flat, leaving her with the debris of the dinner party, which she attacked with furious energy, imaging hitting him over the head with the frying pan as she scrubbed at it. She refused to cry, although she might have suffered a slight leakage at points as she wiped down the surfaces. At last when the kitchen and dining table were almost clean and tidy, she picked up the pan of chocolate sauce and sat down, cross-legged, in the middle of the kitchen floor with it between her knees. Dipping a finger into the chocolate, she carefully licked it clean and closed her eyes. Life might be crap, but there was always chocolate. In the world of food, as far as she was concerned, it had serious super powers. She took another mouthful. Sod Simon, he didn’t deserve her.
Of course, after the event, when the chocolate had soothed her and she’d eaten the lot, she could think of a dozen witty brilliant comebacks. Chief among them: what had changed? At the time Mina had felt as if she’d been punched. The words had spun around and around her head for the remainder of the weekend like a manic merry-go-round. He hadn’t even said he was sorry once. The way he’d talked, it was as if she’d deserved his cheating on her. Talking of whom, the big, fat coward (of course, she wasn’t fat at all; if anything she was thin, with perfect double Ds and one of those 1950s waists, but shewasvery cowardly) Belinda, had slipped out with all the other guests and hadn’t so much as texted an apology or an explanation during the rest of the weekend.
Hannah had talked Mina out of marching round to Belinda’s parents’ house to challenge her, quite rightly pointing out that Mina would probably slap her. The last thing she needed was an assault charge on top of looking a complete and utter dick in front of her friends. Although George and G were about to be wiped from that list, because one of them had shared the video of Simon with the piñata and the disastrous proposal on Facebook. Even if, apparently, it had been inadvertent because one of them had forgotten to change their privacy settings.
As she left the communal front garden, a man stopped her. ‘Excuse me, are you Mina Campbell?’
‘Yes?’ she answered, with a question in her voice.
‘I wonder if you would mind answering a few questions.’
‘Sure.’ Funny time for market research, she decided – but as a lot of her work was directed by such research, she always felt she ought to stop and do her bit.
‘How did you feel when your boyfriend turned you down?’
‘What?’ Her head snapped up.
‘You are the girl whose proposal went wrong? The piñata girl.’
She stepped away from him as he gave her an encouraging smile.
‘Who are you? How do you know about that?’
‘Jamie Jenkins, I work for theMirror. It’s all over Facebook. This is your chance to put your side of the story out there.’
‘I don’t want my story out there, full stop.’
‘Bit late for that, love. The genie’s out of the bottle. Come on, give us a couple of quotes. How did you feel when he turned you down? How long have you been together? Are you still together?’
‘No, we are not,’ she spat before she could stop herself. ‘And I wasn’t being presumptuous or precipitous, we’ve been talking marriage for months. Turns out, he has a new lady friend he forgot to mention… or that she was my best friend. Note the past tense. Was.’ Even as she was talking she knew she should stop, but it all came spilling out, the indignation of the weekend, the feeling of injustice. Yes, she was impulsive and jumped in feet-first, but this time she really had done her due diligence. She could give a date and a time to the exact conversation they’d had about St Mary’s church, tell anyone where she was when Simon had talked about having children one day. What she hadn’t factored in was that Simon had started an affair, and his feet had cooled to arctic blocks since then.
Suddenly she noticed the photographer with the long black lens taking photos from the other side of the street and realised she’d told the reporter far too much.
‘That’s all off the record,’ she said, now feeling shaky and barely able to remember what had just spewed out.
‘You sound pretty pissed off with him,’ said the reporter who, as she looked more closely, reminded her of a weasel, with his sharp-eyed intensity and long neck. ‘What did you say to him? I’d have kneed him in the balls. What was your reaction?’
