Chapter Three: Marjorie

Chapter Three

Marjorie

MARJORIE HUGGED HERSELF AND tried to prevent shivering while sitting on the cold concrete ground. She felt numb and sick and sore. She ached from head to toe and wondered if her pain came even close to the suffering her best friend had endured during her four-year cancer battle. How did she do it? How did she keep going? I can barely breathe. She couldn’t stomach anything; even water seemed to choke and burn her. A woman passed her and did a double take.

‘Are you all right, love? Did you have an accident?’

‘No.’

‘Are you sure? You look like you’ve taken a beating.’

‘No.’

The woman walked on and Marjorie pulled out a small mirror from her bag. SWEET JESUS! Usually pretty, lovely, tidy, dainty, blonde, curly, doll-faced Marjorie Shaw’s hair was flat on one side from having slept on her jacket on the floor. Her mascara was halfway down her face; despite being waterproof, and maybe because of it, it appeared as black balls of residue resting on her cheeks. Her eye shadow was rubbed away and her eyelids were red and sore. She’d bitten her lip, so that part of it was swollen and a slightly off-purple colour. Her usually pristine clothes looked slept-in and crumpled. She had a coffee stain on her white collar, and she smelled of sweat and something sour.

She didn’t know why she’d come here. She’d just left the hospice and saw a bus with a familiar number on it. She got on and rode it to her mother’s house. It made no sense; Vera Shaw was the last woman on earth to offer anyone comfort but there she was, staring at her mother’s perfectly manicured gardens and her imposing red-brick Victorian house. It looked dark inside, but that house always seemed dark. Her mother’s car was parked outside. She was in. Maybe she’d even noticed Marjorie had been sitting on cold concrete across the road for half an hour. Her mother wouldn’t appreciate seeing her in this state. She’d have something cruel to say about it. What the hell am I doing here? The last time they spoke it had ended in an argument. Marjorie made a difficult courtesy call to her mother to let her know that her ex-husband Neil was having a baby with a woman called Debbie.

‘Well, that’s what you get for sleeping with that Davey Hayes fool – your husband having your baby with another woman.’

‘It’s not my baby, Mother.’

‘Now it never will be.’