The Perfectly Imperfect Woman

by Milly Johnson

  Chapter 37

  The day could not have gone more bizarrely if the landlord had ridden towards them on the back of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. It was like the trip Marnie once had at college after she’d licked her first and last acid tab and had seen worms wriggling out of Caitlin’s eyes.

  Marnie did not shake Suranna’s hand. She left it hanging there and then turned to Justin.

  ‘I have no idea what sort of sick game you think you’re playing . . .’

  ‘Marnie, please, just sit down and save my marriage,’ he said, throttling back on the volume when a man passed him carrying two pints.

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Because he nearly wrecked it,’ said Suranna with controlled calmness. ‘And I need to get everything in the open before I can forgive him.’

  ‘I had no idea that he was still very much married,’ said Marnie, with emphasis on the ‘I’.

  ‘I know,’ said Suranna. ‘He told me that.’

  That surprised her.

  ‘Please, give me half an hour of your time – max – and then you never need see either of us again,’ said Suranna. There was a scratch in her voice as if she was upset but trying not to be. ‘Please.’

  Against her better judgement screaming at her to go, Marnie sat back down, but she was ready to spring if Suranna turned back into a nutter. Suranna slid in next to her unfaithful husband.

  ‘You’ve had your baby,’ said Marnie.

  ‘I wasn’t pregnant,’ said Suranna. ‘It was a cushion.’

  The black queen, it appeared, was full of dirty tricks. She’d thought as much. ‘A cushion?’

  ‘I thought it might add to the drama,’ Suranna replied coolly.

  ‘If I’d known at the time it was a cushion, I’d have punched your face in,’ replied Marnie.

  ‘That’s why I made sure I chose one that didn’t look like a cushion.’

  Marnie laughed. She wasn’t amused, but her confused reactions short-circuited to the nearest response, which happened to be a hoot.

  ‘I am pregnant now, really,’ said Suranna, picking up the cola, which had been hers then. So Justin hadn’t even got her a drink in. Marnie found herself quite annoyed at that. ‘Two months,’ Suranna added.

  ‘Congratulations,’ replied Marnie, dryly.

  ‘We’ve only had full sexual intercourse once since . . . since I found him out and that’s all it took.’

  Whoa – too much info.

  ‘But I will leave him, pregnant or not, if I don’t get the answers to my questions,’ said Suranna. ‘And as you are probably aware, Justin lies. It’s not the first time I’ve been here, so when I heard about you, I had a plan of action already in place.’

  Marnie nodded. ‘A cushion.’ And an impressively effective cushion too. It had assured Suranna sympathy, and saved her from a broken conk and very probably arrest.

  ‘Justin covered all your neighbour’s costs plus extra to stop her going to the newspapers,’ said Suranna, as if she were talking to a fellow parent about making reparation for some destructive antics of her wayward child.

  ‘Well done, Justin,’ said Marnie, allowing herself the sarcasm.

  ‘What did he tell you about me?’ asked Suranna.

  Marnie glanced over at Justin and found him looking downwards, probably willing the pub floor to open up and take him prisoner.

  ‘That you and he had decided to part, that you had taken a leaf out of Gwyneth Paltrow’s book of conscious uncrip . . . uncoupling but were taking an age about it. And that if he didn’t dance to your tune, you would stop him seeing his children.’

  Suranna’s mouth opened in an O of incredulity.

  ‘He said that?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Did you, Justin? Did you say all that?’ Suranna’s voice was a mouse-squeak.

  ‘Yes,’ he answered with an Eeyore sigh.

  ‘And that you hadn’t had sex for fourteen months.’ Marnie’s white queen was swaggering down that board and shaking her booty.

  ‘Justin?’

  ‘Yes, I did say that.’ The black king was scratching his neck nervously now.

  ‘Did he tell you that he loved you?’ asked Suranna.

  ‘Yes. Usually after he’d . . . you know what . . . I think it was more of a reaction to his er . . . offloading than genuine emotion. He confused gratitude with love,’ Marnie answered coldly, watching Justin squirm and adding for evil good measure, ‘Didn’t you, Justin?’

  Justin coughed. A mottled pink pattern was spreading over his neck.

  ‘Did he mention his children? Arrange for you to meet them?’

  ‘No,’ answered Marnie and she saw the relief in Suranna’s expression. ‘It was very obvious he loved his children. There was never any mention of me meeting them.’

  ‘One point to Justin,’ Justin said, not quite under his breath.

  ‘It’s a very small point, you bloody bell-end,’ growled Suranna at him, before turning back to Marnie. ‘Did he give you any indication of long-term plans?’

  ‘He asked me what size ring I took. I did get a little excited at that. He hinted at holidays, we talked about what sort of house we’d like to live in. It was all bollocks though,’ – Marnie swept her eyes over him, head bowed, saw how he’d nudged his hair over a small bald spot on his crown – ‘he had no intention of doing any of it. But he was very good at creating an illusion.’

  ‘Did he ever put strawberries on your pubic area and eat them?’ asked Suranna, wobble in her lip.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh God,’ Justin’s head fell into his hands.

  ‘You’ve led me to this, Justin, so shut up.’

  For all Suranna’s waspish tone, Marnie knew she must be in a terrible place to have to wash this sort of linen in public. It wasn’t so much dirty but putrid. And very possibly stained indelibly.

  ‘Well, did he?’ Suranna asked again.

  Something intimate that she thought he only did with her, obviously. There was hope for her then if Justin gave her some foreplay, which Marnie thought about saying but was glad afterwards that she’d overridden the impulse.

  ‘No. There was no love-making, just rushed, urgent, horny, sex between two people – one with an insatiably large ego that constantly needed feeding, and the other grateful and stupid enough to believe the bullshit was true.’ Crazily, she hadn’t realised that until she’d said it. She’d thought it was passion, when in reality, he was simply emptying his balls expediently in the allotted timetable slot.

  Marnie saw a single tear land on Suranna’s skirt and stain the material dark. The black queen was folding and the white queen was starting to feel a little sorry for her.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Suranna, no trace of the aggressive harpy now, just a sad little woman trying to patch up her marriage. ‘It can’t have been easy to come here and face me.’

  ‘I didn’t know that I was,’ replied Marnie. ‘I came here expecting Justin to try and worm his way back into my life and wanted the satisfaction of telling him to go fuck himself.’ Which he probably would if he could, she added to herself with a snort.

  ‘You didn’t tell her I was coming?’ shrieked Suranna. She picked up the half of lager and poured it over his head and he merely sat there and dripped, saying just the one word.

  ‘Sorry.’

  It was time for Marnie to go. She stood up and left them to it. Suranna would make it work for the sake of their children, but she would always be waiting for the next Marnie to appear. She would be the one in their disparate relationship who loved more, the one surviving on a knife edge, the begging end and it would eventually exhaust her. Break her. This, Marnie knew, would have been her destiny if she’d been led to the altar by any of her exes. She would have spent her life building a family then desperately trying to hold it together, to keep intact what she craved most of all: security and love. And she would have failed.

  Marnie opened the pub door. The white queen had left the board, and the building. This game was better
conceded than caught up in an eternal stalemate.

  *

  Marnie walked into Little Raspberries, kicked off her shoes stripper-style and flopped onto the sofa. She had no job, no man and yet she felt ridiculously happy, as if she were an animal that had just spotted a trap in the undergrowth and avoided it. She hadn’t thought it possible that she’d feel sorry for Suranna, but she did. She hadn’t thought it possible that she could look at Justin and feel nothing but contempt and stirred in with that, a smidgen of pity. Where did all that love go, she wondered. How could it fill you so much, inflate you like a big balloon enough to make you float over the ground and yet the next minute drain away through a hole that no one knew was there.

  But not always.

  There were some lovely templates of what marriage should be like, even in a village as small as Wychwell. Cilla and Griff laughed a lot together, Dr Court and his wife walked everywhere arm in arm, David at the pub and his missus, Roger and his wife, the Rootwoods. When it worked well, it really worked well. Then she wondered, not for the first time, who had mended Lilian’s heart and why they had never married.

  There had been a disparity in every one of her relationships, the scales had always been tipped against her, but it wasn’t as if she’d surrendered easily. Aaron had chased her for weeks, in fact he’d been a borderline stalker and she hadn’t batted her eyes once at Justin before he’d made a move on her. She’d always hoped that this time it might lead to a trip down the aisle, not a garden path. She wanted the little girl’s perfect dream – a church, a white dress and a big cake, a honeymoon, a relationship stable enough for a family to nest in. She wasn’t so stupid that she hadn’t done all the self-analysis and realised that she was probably drawn to life’s arseholes for the most warped of reasons. You’re not fit to be a mother, love. So best we fall at the first hurdle and not at the last, eh?

  That’s why Herv Gunnarsen getting close terrified her, because her receptors didn’t know what to do with him. He wasn’t her usual type: he was decent, thoughtful, kind and as gorgeous on the outside as he was on the inside. And he fancied her and was she mad turning down the chance to have his lovely hands caressing her face again and his soft lips falling onto hers?

  So, as Marnie drove from Leeds back to Wychwell, she made a brave decision: she was going to let Herv Gunnarsen in. She couldn’t go through life denying what her heart craved. Maybe she’d been right to keep hope alive after all. He had nothing to fear from her, she would never let him down and betray him like his wife had done. Most of all, she wanted to undo the mis-knitted pattern of her life and start it again. She wanted to love and be loved in equal measure and be the kind of mother who always let her children know that she was on their side and would never blame them for what others had done. And that it was okay for them to have imperfections and make mistakes.

  If Herv Gunnarsen tried to kiss her again, she wouldn’t push him away. It was time to show her mother’s voice the door.

  Marnie put the kettle on and whilst she waited she wondered what she should do with all the flat-pack Tea Lady cheesecake boxes that were taking up too much space in the corner of her kitchen. She had really enjoyed making the orders for Mrs Abercrombie and she knew they had gone down well with her customers. Was it so important that they were outsourced and not baked on the premises? She toyed with the idea of ringing her and talking through an idea that had come to her between putting the water in the kettle and the steam coming out. Why not call herself ‘the Little Tea Lady’ who made cheesecakes for the (Big) Tea Lady in her country kitchen? She knew it was good and Mrs A just might buy it.

  Then a stop sign flashed up red and brightly in her head.

  Actually Mrs Abercrombie didn’t deserve them. She was making a ridiculous profit on the cheesecakes and yet hadn’t had the decency to ring Marnie to discuss it when a couple of customers started shouting their mouths off in her shop. And to take them at their word, too. She’d let her carry on baking a fridge-full of cheesecakes, all to go to waste, as far as Fiona Abercrombie knew. Yes, the old bat could sod off. Marnie’s cheesecakes, complete with Mrs McMaid’s secret ingredient, were way too good for her over-priced, overhyped, up-themselves cafés. Marnie hadn’t a clue where her fabulous cheesecakes did belong, but she’d figure it out. She was an ideas person and a bloody good one at that. And if she didn’t realise her own value, what chance had anyone else of knowing what she was worth. She couldn’t remember where she’d heard that before, but it was flipping true.

  She settled down with her book, shutting out everything but Penelope Black’s words. She was six chapters from the end with number three – Black Manors – ready and waiting to be opened and the tension had really cranked up.

  It was only when a character made an appearance in the last chapter that Marnie’s senses really began to sit up and take notice. Emma Tybalt, an old lady who lived in the woods, descended from witches. Eunice Prince, Titan Sonnett, Kate Sowerby? Penelope Black knew Wychwell intimately or Marnie was a monkey’s uncle.

  Chapter 38

  Marnie was on her way up to the manor the next morning when she saw the woman coming out of Herv’s house, closely followed by the man himself, his hand gently on her back. The woman was very tall, very slim, very blonde, very glam – and clearly wearing the clothes she had been out in the previous night. She was very everything Marnie wasn’t. Herv caught Marnie’s eye briefly when he was holding his car door open for the blonde woman, but looked immediately away. The blonde reached up, pulled down his head and kissed him on the mouth before getting in and Marnie knew that they’d spent the night together. Tears pressed at the back of her eyes like acid and a heavy weight of disappointment landed with a thud in her stomach. Well, what did she expect? That he’d wait around for her to honour him with her assent? Become a monk? She’d had her chance and blown it. C’est la bloody vie.

  Emelie was in her garden hanging out washing on her line. Or rather standing by the basket, holding her side. She waved to Marnie, who conjured up a smile from somewhere as she heard Herv’s car turn left behind her.

  ‘Good morning,’ Marnie called, fighting the tremble in her lip. ‘You all right?’

  ‘Damned arthritis,’ grumbled Emelie. ‘It’s a nuisance.’

  ‘Here, let me.’ Marnie opened the gate and walked over the grass. ‘I’ll peg them up for you. Go and have a sit down.’

  ‘Have you got time for a tea?’ asked Emelie.

  ‘I have,’ replied Marnie, though it was company she could do with rather than tea. She missed Lilian. She would have given anything to have sat down with her over a big pot of tea and let it tumble out that she’d been an idiot and allowed Herv Gunnarsen to slip through her pathetic fingers. She felt stupid-cow tears push out of her eyes and she flicked them away as if they were irritating insects crawling down her cheeks. She hung out the sheets and towels; then she took a deep breath and walked into Emelie’s house where that pungent smell once again worried her nostrils.

  ‘That damp can’t be doing your arthritis any good, Emelie.’

  ‘It’s a very old house, Marnie. Damp happens.’ Emelie brought in a tray of tea and Marnie took it quickly from her because she looked as if she barely had the strength to carry it. The cups were delicate china, light green with hand-painted edelweiss.

  ‘Emelie, are you all right?’ she asked, as the old lady dropped heavily onto a chair.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she replied, with a trill of laughter. ‘It isn’t that much fun getting old. If you aren’t visited by one pain, you’re visited by another. I don’t want any fuss nor do I like to think about anything going wrong with me.’ She leaned close to Marnie as if whispering a secret: ‘I don’t want to turn into Una Price.’

  ‘You are about as far from Una Price as it is possible to be,’ smiled Marnie.

  ‘Maybe, but I do have a bone to pick with you, young lady.’ Emelie pretended to frown. ‘You gave so many people a cheesecake, I hear, but not me.’

  ‘I’m s
o sorry, Emelie,’ replied Marnie. ‘I shall make you a special one, I promise. Name your flavour. Apple strudel?’

  ‘I’m joking,’ said Emelie. ‘I heard what happened.’

  ‘But I’d like to anyway. They were lovely as well. I ended up burning boxes of them. I was so angry.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ nodded Emelie. ‘Una and Kay have both changed so much over the years. Kay didn’t used to be so bad, but she’s protective over Ruby and since she became friends with Una, she’s absorbed her personality. Una has been spoilt, Derek should have stood up to her more. He helped to make her the way she is. They can’t force Herv Gunnarsen to put his affections where they don’t want to go. Besides, I think he has his eye on you.’

  ‘No, he doesn’t,’ said Marnie bluntly. ‘I’ve just seen him leaving his cottage with a stunning woman who seemingly didn’t bring a change of clothes with her.’

  ‘Oh,’ Emelie looked confused by that.

  ‘So you’re wrong.’

  ‘I’m very surprised. To Lilian and me it was always so obvious.’

  ‘Was it?’ Marnie wanted detail, but there was no point in asking.

  ‘Lilian said she could see it in the way that he looked at you and how his ear cocked when your name was mentioned. Herv is a man who wears his heart on his sleeve.’

  ‘I turned him down. I made it plain that I didn’t think of him in that way,’ said Marnie, dipping her head to sip the tea and give those rising tears in her eyes time to settle. ‘It’s for the best.’

  ‘For whom?’

  ‘For him.’

  ‘Why would you say that when it isn’t the truth?’

  ‘Because he’s lovely and uncomplicated and he deserves the same,’ said Marnie.

  Emelie muttered something in her native tongue that Marnie didn’t understand but the inference was clear from her tone. She thought Marnie was daft. She was right.

  ‘I wonder . . .’ Emelie began, then stopped. Then she cringed, then she shook her head ‘Oh, nothing.’