LITMIR.BIZ

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snot dribbling out of its nose. Rhiannon turned on her heel and eyed her customers. ‘Tired is she?’ she said, trying to trick one of them into claiming it. None of them bloody moved. Rhiannon hated kids, didn’t understand why anyone would want to replicate their wretched lives; take all the things they despised about themselves and give it to someone else to despise all over again, especially the inbreds from the estate. But those are the ones who multiplied fastest. It was one mistake that she was never going to make. Businesswoman she was. ‘Do ewe want some council pop, sweetie?’ she said, turning back to the kid.

      ‘Give her some Coke,’ Kelly said, leaning over Rhiannon’s shoulder.

      ‘We haven’t got any Coke!’ Rhiannon said. She was fucked if she was going to start giving Coca-Cola away to the losers from the estate; it was over a quid a bloody bottle. ‘Make urgh stop crying,’ she said, nudging Kelly in her flat 15-year-old tit. She went back to the fat woman and daubed a dollop of Vaseline on her head. ‘Are ewe nervous about tyin’ the knot ’en, love?’ she said as she replaced the cap. ‘I would be. I’d be shittin’ my bloody kecks.’

      ‘No.’ The woman shook her head. ‘It’s only a vow-renewal ceremony. I’ve been married for seventeen years. Are you still married? You’re not wearing your ring.’

      Rhiannon bit down on the hairgrip in her mouth. ‘I ain’t bloody married,’ she said. But she was married, to a chartered surveyor from Barry Island. She’d met him there in 1984, in a pub called the Pelican. She’d been sitting in the beer garden on her own, wearing a Kiss-Me-Quick hat, drinking tap water because the boyfriend who she’d gone on the day trip with, some fucking no-mark from the estate, had run away with her purse. A fella in a cream suit cut through her blurred vision, approaching her with two glasses of sparkling wine, a pink handkerchief in his breast pocket. He looked like some bloody film star. Bob Stone his name was. They got hitched a fortnight later. But nobody else knew that. And she was up shit creek without a paddle if Marc ever found out. He’d asked her to marry him again, since Ellie and Andy had announced their date, said it was about time she made a commitment to him, said he fancied a double wedding with his brother. As fuckin’ if. The last thing she’d do was share her wedding day with that couple of Muppets, even if she could get married. The woman was grinning at her through the mirror and there was a tattoo on her bottom gum, beneath her sunken teeth. ‘DEB’, it said. Rhiannon vaguely remembered a Deborah, a girl who had babysat for her a few times when her father went to Wormwood for the post office job. ‘Ooh told ewe that?’ Rhiannon said.

      ‘Your mother told me,’ she said. ‘I saw her last week in the chemist in Penmaes. I asked her if you were still hairdressing. She said she hadn’t seen you since you got married when you were twenty.’

      Rhiannon leaned on the woman’s shoulder, pressing it down with the weight of her whole body. ‘Ewe don’t wanna listen to my mother, love. She’s as senile as a cunt. Don’t know urgh arse from urgh elbow one day to the next.’

      Rhiannon’s mother was a liability, interfering all the time. Cut a long story, she was jealous, because Rhiannon had made it out of the estate. Rhiannon had never had to stand in a queue in the post office to cash a giro and everyone from up there hated her for it. It was like she’d let the team down by having the cheek to better herself. Any more lip from her mother and she’d have to send someone up there to batter her, make it look like a botched burglary.

      She looked around at her shop, at the chrome shampoo bottles and glass shelves, the apples that no fucker ate. This wasn’t Curl Up & Dye on Dynevor Street. This was a proper professional salon, like Vidal Sassoon or Toni & Guy, and she was going to put a sign up in the window that said, ‘No DSS’. She put her tongs in the holster, said, ‘Ang a banger, love. Just going outside for a bit of fresh air.’ As she started towards the door she got an idea and turned around. She looked at the woman, said, ‘Did Kelly mention the price increase? It’s another ten per cent. Cost of the products, love. Iss out of my ’ands.’

      In the doorway of the old ironmonger’s she reached into her tunic, took a quick slug of rum from her silver hip flask, then lit a cigarette. There was a meat wagon parked outside the butcher’s opposite. The drivers were carrying the carcasses into the shop. Ellie’d have a coronary if she could see that. She was a veggie, one of those awkward bastards, had ‘Meat is Murder’ written in felt-tip on her duffel bag. One Boxing Day, at Marc’s mother’s, she’d seen a group of fox-hunters in the street and got up from the table, went screaming blue murder at them, didn’t say boo to a fucking goose usually. But she had a crush on Johnny, Rhiannon could tell by the way her little blue eyes lit up whenever somebody mentioned his name; as if a man like Johnny’d have any interest in Ellie. She was an olive short of a pizza, that one; had some really fucked-up ideas about not taking Andy’s name, about it being the MFI who flew the planes into the big buildings; read too many of those bloody fat newspapers.

      The lorry indicated out of the kerb and Rhiannon dropped her fag butt, crushing it under her heel. She was about to light another when she noticed a blue BMW slowing to let the lorry out. It was only Johnny’s BMW. Well, talk of the devil! ‘Oof,’ she said to herself as a stem of heat ran up the back of her legs. ‘Oof.’ She waved at the car as it pulled up alongside her, music blaring out of the stereo.

      Louisa poked her head out of the window. ‘Is this where you work?’ she said, voice all English. ‘Are you a hairdresser?’

      Rhiannon looked at the chrome nameplate shimmering in the sunlight. She’d named the shop after its own postcode, CF25. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I’m a stylist.’

      Johnny was looking at her tunic, his eyes following the white piping at the edge of her lapels down to the dark pit of her cleavage, fingers drumming on the steering wheel. Something in her chest snapped at the thought of him touching her, long fingers pressing on her buxom flesh. An electrical current shot straight from her throat to her snootch. Oof. There was a man who could turn profit out of cunning, who could afford to buy her a new pair of Manolo Blahniks. There weren’t many men around here like that, not since Rhiannon’s dad had died. Marc thought nicking a muffin from the Services was adventurous.

      She panicked when the car began to roll away. ‘If ewe ever want ewer ’air done,’ she said, pointing at the plate-glass window, ‘on the cheap, like. I own the shop.’ Louisa smiled, but didn’t seem interested. She lifted an apple to her mouth and bit into it.

      What Rhiannon said next was the first thing that came into her head. ‘I’m organizing a picnic on Saturday, at the park in Pontypridd,’ hand curled around her mouth, her voice strained. ‘They ’ave bands down there on the weekend. Ewe’re welcome to come along. We’ll be meeting in the Pump House at lunchtime.’

      Louisa nodded and waved, the wedge of fruit jammed between her teeth.

      Rhiannon stood in the doorway until the car had gone, her blood still pumping ten to the bloody dozen. She took another quick slug of rum and went into the salon. ‘Ewe’re working on ewer own on Saturday, Kel,’ she said. ‘Somethin’s come up.’

      Kelly grunted.

      Rhiannon smiled anew at the woman in the hydraulic chair. ‘So, where are ewe goin’ on ewer ’oneymoon, love?’ she said.

       9

      On Thursday night, Ellie closed her desk drawer on three mugs she was planning to steal later. She walked with Safia along the main road, cutting through the Riverside area, the quickest way back to the city. They passed a schoolyard where children were playing football, little red jumpers tied to the steel railings. There were only two white kids among them, and one little black girl, hair braided into chunky cornrows. Safia stopped to chat to the tutor, a man in a long taupe cloak. Ellie patiently listened to their mysterious language as it ebbed and flowed, hurrying Safia along Wood Street when the conversation had ended, past the Japanese and Bangladeshi shop-fronts.

      At the Millennium Stadium, the low sun was boring down on the commuters

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