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.