‘Nice husband,’ Ash says.
‘He was the best of the best.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ Ash has caught the use of the past tense. She’s read somewhere that when somebody tells you of a death close to them, one must not shy away. People want to talk about the ones they’ve lost, and if we don’t ask we’re robbing them of a chance to keep that person’s memory alive. ‘Has he been gone long?’ Ash asks.
The woman hoots a laugh. ‘He’s not dead,’ she chuckles.‘Just a dickhead. He was the best of the best until he ran off with a twenty-five-year-old, got her pregnant, became daddy to a set of twins. Then he became a cunt. The child bride got to make an old man a father, and I got fifty-five per cent of everything and a sour taste in my mouth. Got these as a way to remind myself that as long as there’s shoes on my feet and love in my heart, I’ll end up just fine – your feet and your heart can carry you a bloody long way, I say.’
Ash’s jaw drops, in spite of her good breeding, and she blinks rapidly. ‘That isnotwhere I expected this conversation to go. Whoa,’ she says. ‘Well – here’s to you then, ma’am. With the thousand-dollar shoes on your feet, and all that love in your heart. Good for you.’ She reaches for her wine glass but then remembers it’s empty. She pulls anoopsyface. ‘Shit. Can’t cheers with an empty glass. It’s bad luck.’
‘I can sort that out,’ the woman decides, gesturing to her table. ‘If you’ve got the time?’
Ash doesn’t have to think twice. ‘Lady, I’ve got nothing but time.’
‘Not got a girlfriend or boyfriend waiting for you at your hotel?’
Ash shakes her head. ‘I’m here alone,’ she says, adding, for the avoidance of doubt, ‘happily so.’
The woman studies her, takes in Ash’s Breton striped T-shirt and knee-length navy culottes. ‘I’m Mona,’ she says.
‘Ash,’ says Ash.
‘Ash,’ Mona nods. ‘Do you fancy getting pissed?’
‘I couldn’t think of anything better, Mona. Rack ’em up!’
Mona laughs and goes to her table to get her significantly fuller wine bottle, and her handbag – also Chanel.
‘Right then, sweetheart. You seem like a woman with a story to tell, and I’m a gal who wants to hear it.’ She sloshes white wine into Ash’s glass and then tops up her own. ‘Go on. Spill.’
Ash tells Mona everything – she tells her about the two five-year-long relationships, first with Miles, aged twenty-five to thirty (ended so he could go to Australia for a year … where he met an Aussie girl and got married) and then aged thirty-one to thirty-six with Simon (as addressed, married to a girl from his work now, and a new father to boot). She relives the horrific egg-freezing process of her thirty-seventh year, a ‘journey’ that yielded depressingly low results and fucked up her hormones for what felt like a year. She divulges how perfect the lives of her parents and sisters are, and how inferior that makes her seem. And she explains how she helped Willow start up Midnight Whispers, the lingerie company now so big that Ash gets a six-figure annual income from her salary and shares, and how said best friend Willow is currently working through forgiving her husband for having cheated, how Ash suspected he was for a while, but never knew how to bring it up to her friend, and the guilt she feels about that.
‘Oh, honey,’ Mona says. ‘That one you can put down. That’s too heavy to carry – it’s bad enough if the cheating little shit has one woman wondering what she could have done to stop him, let alone you as well. Cheaters are alwaysgoing to cheat, and that’s the end of it. I’m not a big enough person to forgive shitty behaviour without extreme apology, though – not that my Charlie asked for forgiveness, of course. He was off like a shot for the younger pussy, couldn’t scarper fast enough. If you want my deep dark secret, it’s that I probably would have forgiven him, I would have taken him back, even if he didn’t say sorry. How’s that for pathetic?’
It’s worth establishing that the women are on their second bottle of wine, which could be Ash’s third, considering the solo half-carafe before, or maybe it’s actually her fourth after she helped Mona finish her initial bottle. Either way, they’re slurring their words and talking decibels louder than they were two and a half hours ago. Early evening diners have started to drip into the restaurant – tourists, of course, the Portuguese wouldn’t be caught dead eating at 6.30 p.m. – but the waiters have insisted the women stay as long as they want, not least because Mona slipped two of them fifty-euro notes as a tip.
‘I’m devastated with myself that I ever thought he might come back to me, that’s what I can’t say to anybody else at home. I’m supposed to be the strong one,’ Mona continues, doing a voice Ash assumes is supposed to signify ‘female strength’. ‘But then, she’s got tits that sit up here …’ With this Mona puts a hand under her chin, and Ash gets the point. ‘And these old men, Ash, let me tell you. They start to sail at half-mast after forty-five, sticking some squidgy little half-chubb in you like it’s your fault they’re not twenty and packing wood like …’ She looks around for the right simile, deciding instead to knock her fist on the table. Ash creasesinto hysterics. They haven’t covered Mona’s age yet – she’ll offer it up if she wants to share, Ash theorises – but she’s got to be as old as her parents, which means well within spitting distance of seventy. But Ash wouldneverhear her parents talk this way, never in twenty million years.
‘Squidgy half-chubb!’ Ash hoots. ‘Mona, stop! I can’t!’
‘It’s true!’ Mona laughs back. ‘He probably thought it was all my fault, the flaccidness of him, and that’s why he strayed, but I know for a fact it gets as soft for her as it did for me because I read his texts and she was reassuring him she didn’t care when he could use his mouth like he does, which – anyway. I’ve said too much there. He was always a demon with his tongue, but I’m not in the business of giving him compliments any more. Apparently she still found a way to fuck him, semi and all, because those twins didn’t come from nowhere. But forty years, Ash, breaking my heart after forty years? You build your castle with someone and you never think that with one stupid affair the whole thing will crumble to rubble. Shag about, sure, go eat a burger so you realise there’s steak at home, butleaving? He’s a bastard.’
Ash shakes her head. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, blinking slowly. In her pursuit of love she forgets that even married women with their happily-ever-after can suffer heartbreak.
‘I’m rambling, and it’s because I’m drunk.’ Mona pours herself a glass of water, as much going on the tablecloth as into her glass. ‘It can be easier to tell a stranger these things sometimes, though. I might never see you again, so what do I care what you think? You’re my priest today, Ash.’
Ash takes the water jug and pours herself some water as well. After a beat she says, ‘Mona? I’m not judging you.’
‘We all judge one another, honey.’
‘OK. Yes. Fair. I’m not judging you harshly, then. I don’t mean to overstep by saying this, but maybe we’re both a little alike? Maybe we both judge ourselves so harshly that we think everyone else is too?’
Mona blinks. ‘Fuck off with your wisdom.’ But she’s smirking, as if she agrees.
‘Here,’ Ash says, handing Mona her phone. ‘You said you’re here another month, right? Well, give me your number. Then I’ll text you so you have mine. If two scorned women can’t get together and drink themselves stupid a couple of times, then what’s the point in anything?’
‘Persuasive argument.’ Mona takes the phone, squints, and says, ‘I can’t see a fucking thing on this screen, love. Let me get my glasses.’
As Mona ferrets around in her Chanel, Ash drinks more water and resumes the people watching that got interrupted by this whirlwind of a Kiwi (New Zealand has been confirmed as Mona’s country of origin. Herne Bay to be precise, just outside of Auckland, not that Ash’s grasp of New Zealand geography is anything beyond rudimentary), the loitering tourists and few locals ambling about. The pause allows Ash to recognise that she’s cold now the sun is lower in the sky, her skin prickling in a thousand goosebumps suddenly, right as she watches a woman across the way pull on a sweatshirt as if to remind her that it is indeed cooler now. But, the woman pulling on the sweatshirt … Ash knows hersomehow. She’s dressed in tennis whites: white shorts, white socks, white trainers, and now a white sweatshirt over her white sports top. She’s got short brown hair and she’s laughing at whoever she’s with, a guy not much taller than she is, also dressed for tennis, bag with racquets slung over his shoulder and, implausibly, like he’s in fancy dress as ‘Tennis Guy’, an actual sweatband too.
