46
‘Hello! Evil H, I presume? Enjoying an evil latte. Evilly.’
Harriet looked up from her cup to see a young woman with dark brown hair split into two bulky knots above her ears, which Harriet believed were colloquially called space buns, and a belted tweed coat with faux-fur lapels.
Nina was great. From what Harriet could glean from their social media acquaintance, she was a good-natured, ex-art-school stoner who taught night classes on how to draw seagulls and had signed up to a community scheme where she took infirm pensioners around on outings on a rickshaw.
Nina sent Harriet funny memes every few days, as if they were now mates in general and Scott Dyer was merely an incidental method of introduction. After all the torment of the man, someone who simply hooted at his memory, what a fucking nob, was an absolute tonic. Nina was the human equivalent of when golden autumn sun breaks through the clouds on a cold windy day, unexpectedly warming your chilled face.
‘Evil H, that’s me,’ Harriet said, standing up to greet her in Waterstones caff. ‘Nice to meet you in person! I don’t know why I’ve stood up.’
They guffawed and hugged.
‘I’ve got to say, bit disappointed you’re not wearing a Hamburglar-type outfit with the black mask across your eyes,’ Nina said. ‘You need to lean into your online alter ego.’
‘I’m going incognito as a regular human woman.’
Nina dropped her coat and went to get herself a drink, returning with a pot of loose-leaf tea and round wafer biscuit on a tray.
‘There’s still no actual plan for this awesome Avengers Assembling of his nemeses, yet?’ Nina said.
‘Nope. Only we agreed more tit-for-tat Facebook outing isn’t the way,’ Harriet shrugged, and felt a little guilty she’d obliged Nina to get a train from Prestwich on a Wednesday for ‘yeah, dunno’.
An unbothered Nina nodded, unwrapped her Stroopwafel and balanced a tea strainer on her cup.
‘I know I said I wanted to him to suffer, but I hope she’s not going to suggest hardcore Dragon Tattoo shit, because it’ll be hard to resist but also, I’m not going to prison for him,’ she said.
Harriet laughed. She was also starting to sweat a little at what was coming next. Ouija boards were supposed to ‘work’ because everyone pushed the glass as a collective effort and yet didn’t detect the pressure they were individually applying. What if they in their own way ended up egging each other on, pouring their joint energies into a plan they’d separately recognise as insane?
In a small flurry of jasmine-heavy perfume, Marianne took the third chair at their table, wearing no coat and holding a phone. Gone was the bedraggled urchin in the cagoule. She was in a black work uniform bearing the Estilo logo, and her butter-coloured hair hung in immaculate, hot-tonged ringlets, the sort only an expert could achieve. Harriet believed her when she said the old Marianne was on her way back.
‘Hi, sorry I’m late,’ she said, at a careful volume.
‘Marianne, Nina; Nina, Marianne,’ Harriet gabbled under her breath, and they said hello to one another.
‘I’m not going to get a drink. I can’t stay long, sorry. I’ve got a client in foils.’
‘Of course,’ Harriet said. Marianne glanced from side to side, no doubt making sure there were no faces she recognised here.
Sensing her inhibition, possibly a reluctance to even be present, Harriet paused.
‘You know if you’ve changed your mind and want to get married, we won’t hold you to anything? We can go away and never mention this again, if that’s what you want.’
There was a pause which lasted for a couple of weeks.
‘That said, don’t fucking marry him,’ Nina said, with a hiccupping laugh, pouring out her tea and breaking the tension beautifully, in a Nina way.
‘I’m not going to marry him,’ Marianne said, calmly, as if she was dismissing the idea of whether she’d have time to go to the big Sainsbury’s later. ‘Also, I’ve got it. I know what we should do. If you are both up for it. Though I won’t mind if you don’t want to do it.’
She spread both hands flat on the table, for a sense of focus up. ‘I worked out why posting online feels a bit lame. We’d only be telling strangers. Maybe they’d believe us, maybe they wouldn’t. To be honest, who cares?’
Harriet’s eyes widened. ‘Go on.’
She felt like she was in a courtroom drama, they’d been on the ropes, and now the hotshot maverick attorney was explaining how, against the odds, they were going to switch tactics and win.
‘The people who need to know what Scott’s like are his friends and family. The ones who take his side and cover things up and think the sun shines out of his harris.’
‘His enablers,’ Nina said. ‘Then there’s us, demonstrating the Missing Stair theory.’
‘What’s that?’ Marianne said.
‘We secretly warn each other to avoid him. We manage the problem but we don’t expose it or fix it. Which I guess makes us enablers too? I don’t know.’
‘His friends and family don’t know they’re his enablers, that’s how good he is at compartmentalising,’ Harriet said.
‘Yeah. And when are they all going to be in one place? The Queen’s Hotel, four p.m., this Saturday,’ Marianne said.
‘Your wedding?’ Harriet said, in awed half-whisper.
‘Yeah,’ Marianne said. ‘My big fat bleak wedding. To which you both have scored an invite, haha.’
She sat back and crossed her arms, and were it not for modern restrictions, Harriet felt sure she’d be sparking up a Marlboro Light, in Lauren Bacall manner.
‘We declare Scott’s a shit, on your wedding day?’ Harriet repeated.
‘Preferably before “I do”, or I’ll be in a fix. What do you think?’ Marianne tucked a curl behind her ear. No wonder she’d got up this morning and fancied a power ’do blow-dry.
Nina let out a low whistle.
‘As a concept, it’s got impact,’ Nina said.
‘You’d be gathering everyone together though, wasting all your money on going ahead …?’ Harriet said, and as soon as the words left her mouth, she saw Marianne’s point. There was nothing to be saved by cancelling it, not even face.
‘Oh, that expense is gone.’ Marianne huffed a laugh. ‘And it was my savings. I made a killing on my flat when I moved in with Scott. Always been good with money,’ Marianne said, with a wave of her hand as if swatting a fly. ‘Until now, that is, hahaha. But yeah, dress, venue, the honeymoon in the Caribbean. When I decided to use the wedding instead of calling it off, it was the most massive brainwave moment,’ Marianne continued. ‘Instead of ringing every guest and explaining to them why it’s not happening, one by one, in a race before Scott can get to them, I tell them all at once. The truth.’
The three of them looked at each other.
OK, maybe Harriet was having the ouija board ‘communication from the Hereafter’ heightened delusion she feared, but she could actually see a magnificence to this.
‘I know it’s a lot to ask of you,’ Marianne said.
A pause.
‘You in?’ Nina said to Harriet.
‘I’m in,’ Harriet said, even if her stomach was cramping.
‘I’m in too.’
‘Well you ladies didn’t need much convincing. Legends only,’ Marianne nodded, as if this was religious catechism as opposed to social media lol-speak.
Harriet was glad Marianne had suggested this, because it could have only come from the bride-to-be.
‘There is that bit in the wedding vows when the person marrying you says, “If anyone knows any reason why these two should not be lawfully joined …”’ Harriet said. ‘Which I always assume must be an archaic leftover from when bigamy was rife, or something. We could use that as our cue. I don’t know. Has anyone ever done that?’
‘Fuuu— That’s it. Harriet, that’s it!’ Marianne hissed, leaning forward in excitement.
‘Is it?’
‘Yeah! The only thing I couldn’t work out was how and when. You stand up and say: “I know a reason.” Then Nina could stand up and say “So do I.” Then I say, “Scott, I’m not marrying you.”.’
Marianne mimed a mic drop.
They were briefly silent as they took in the enormity of the proposition. This did not feel within the scope of things that could or should reasonably happen, yet they’d arrived at a place where it not only felt inevitable, but vital. They’d never have this opportunity again.
‘That said, they often leave that line out of the service nowadays,’ Harriet said. She knew her cautious nature was showing, appointing herself the problem finder.
‘It’s definitely in ours because I was so antsy about forgetting things or speaking at the wrong time, the celebrant gave me a printout of her whole speech, with X marked for my bits,’ Marianne said. ‘I can double-check, but I remember it was there.’
‘Are you really, really sure you want do this?’ Harriet said. ‘Once you’re in your dress and your guests are arriving, the jitters kick in …’
‘Yes, I really do. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared …’ Marianne’s gaze strayed to Nina’s plate. ‘Is that a Stroopwafel? I love them.’ Then her gaze became focused once more. ‘It’s such a once-in-a-lifetime chance to put a man like him back in his box, isn’t it? If you speak, and Nina speaks, then everyone knows who he is, and why I’m doing it. He has to come up with a reason why all three of us are lying. Dodge this.’ She mimed aiming a sight upon him.
She hesitated. ‘I can move out to my mum’s while we sell the house. I wish I hadn’t come to my senses the week before our wedding, but … As my boss always says, we are where we are.’
Marianne flipped her phone over, face up, and checked the time.
‘Shit I’ve got to go, sorry. The only person I’d worry about upsetting on the day is my mum, but she’ll be over the moon. She’s begged me not to marry him. Only I’m not going to warn her in case she gives us away without meaning to! She can’t keep a secret, haha.’
This was where Marianne got her steel backbone from, Harriet guessed. With her mum in her corner, she could do this.
‘If you’re both around this Saturday?’ Marianne said, and Nina nodded.
‘Funnily enough, I’m free because a wedding couple cancelled on me, due to Scott’s post,’ Harriet said.
‘If that’s not a message from God, I don’t know what is,’ Nina said.
‘Let’s do this then, ladies,’ Marianne said. ‘How do we stay in touch? I can’t get WhatsApps in case Scott sees.’
She glanced at her handset in embarrassment.
‘Are you on Facebook? The Messenger thing?’ Nina said.
‘Yeah.’
‘I’ll set up a group chat, look out for the request in the Other Messages folder. Change your password and delete the messages whenever you’ve read something. Then, if he’s nosing around, there won’t be any notifications or way of him getting in to check it.’
‘Cool! Thanks.’
In another waft of perfume, Marianne was gone.
‘She’s got the looks of Tinkerbell and the nerves of a cold assassin,’ Nina said, approvingly. ‘If Scott’s not going to marry her, then I will.’
Harriet considered that right enough: Scott’s kink was a sweet face, and a salty attitude. He had chosen the members of the resistance well.