‘What songs shall we do, Ribs?’ Griff said, ‘for the John Peel session on the radio?’
Ribs was a big fan of The Boobs. He’d been around since Marc started the band at the age of sixteen, supported them through the garage days when they practised in an abandoned allotment behind the industrial estate. He still went to every local gig, but didn’t know one song from another. He stood in front of the stage, his mouth flapping open and closed like an atheist holding a hymn book at a funeral. He wiped a sheet of sweat from his forehead, a coat of peach-coloured foundation disappearing with it. ‘It’s nearly bank holiday again,’ he said. ‘What are you going as this year?’
Some of the villagers wore fancy dress for the annual August bank holiday pub crawl, because this was Aberalaw and they had to make their own fun. Ribs’s proudest moment came whilst wearing shocking pink stockings and red stilettos, pissing in a litter bin in the High Street, his back to the road. ‘Show us your tits, love,’ a bunch of joyriders had yelled at him through a car window.
‘I’m going as a copper,’ he said, ‘a female copper.’
Ellie was looking at America Place again, and remembering that her grandmother had had wild pansies growing in her front garden, an exquisite purple colour. She had a funny name for them. ‘Johnny Jump-Ups!’ she said, thinking aloud. ‘That’s what my nanna called pansies, Johnny Jump-Ups.’ There, she’d said it. It had been balancing on her lips for a week and now it had slipped out accidentally, like a burp.
‘That’s that English bloke’s name ini?’ Ribs said. ‘Johnny?’
‘He’s a drug dealer he is,’ Griff said. ‘Dai told me, fallen out of favour with some big shot up in England.’
‘Dai’s a prick,’ Marc said.
Ellie was thrilled with the response. If she couldn’t have Johnny there, the next best thing was listening to people talking about him.
She liked the idea of him being some sort of fugitive, escaping Cornwall under the cover of darkness, his passport wedged in his back pocket. That image turned her nipples hard.
Rhiannon snapped her compact shut. She looked at Ellie, brown eyes turning to brass. ‘Very funny, El,’ she said. ‘Johnny Jump-Ups? What did she call carnations?’
‘Carnations,’ Ellie said, playing ignorant, the familiar sting finding its way to the sides of her face. Rhiannon laughed her fat, fake laugh. She dropped her compact into her bag, fastened the zip and pushed the bag aside. ‘Why don’t ewe tell everyone ewer special news, then El?’ she said. She slowly eyed everyone at the table and then after a moment, said, ‘Ellie and Andy are getting married next year, Valentine’s Day. Ain’t that romantic?’
‘No way!’ Siân said, throwing herself at Ellie.
Rhiannon drained her wineglass and put it on the ground, the glass ringing on the concrete. ‘Yep,’ she said, voice saccharine. ‘I take ewe, Andy, to be my lawful wedded husband, to ’ave ’n’ to ’old, from iss day forward, in sickness and in ’ealth, to love and to cherish till death do us part: I ’ere to pledge my faithfulness.’
‘And ooh are ewe callin’ a prick?’ she said turning to Marc. ‘That’s my uncle ewe were talkin’ about. Ewe can buy me a drink for that, butty boy. Dai is a prick, about as much use as a cock-flavoured lollipop, but only I’m allowed to say that.’
Marc nodded, stood up, headed towards the pub.
Rhiannon nudged Ellie. ‘I’m watching ewe, El,’ she said.
The phone at the reception desk was ringing but Rhiannon didn’t move to answer it. She was looking at herself in the giant mirror, staring at the dark fuzz on her top lip. She hadn’t been to the beautician for weeks, not since she’d asked the girl behind the counter, the skinny one with a ski-slope nose, how to go about getting rid of dull skin. Rhiannon’s face was a dingy, grey colour, like a cup of Marc’s mother’s coffee, nasty German stuff from Lidl. Eat more fruit, the girl had said, eat more bloody fruit. Fuck that. Rhiannon didn’t have time to muck around with fruit. She wanted Botox, a chemical peel or something. There was a chrome fruit basket on the shelf, full of fresh green apples. She’d only put it there to complement the colour scheme. She didn’t like apples. They were something she hadn’t grown up with. The only things she’d eaten as a kid came in watery tomato sauce – baked beans, baked beans and sausage, out of a bloody tin. She didn’t know what apples tasted like. Cider probably. She was going to get a new beautician.
‘Ouch!’ the woman sitting in front of her said.
‘Sorry, love,’ Rhiannon said. She pulled the tongs away from the woman’s head and a ginger ringlet jumped out, the scalp underneath glowing red. ‘I din’t hurt ewe, did I?’
Rhiannon didn’t like doing weddings, and this fat woman was a bride. She was from a party of six from the Dinham Estate, all of them wearing chunky gold sovereign rings on their manky, tobacco-stained fingers. It was a wonder they could afford to come here. Rhiannon charged through the nose, but the scum from up there always found a way, nicked money off their parole officers or something. They were all desperate to look like somebody else, would spend their last quid on trying to buy a new identity, something Rhiannon understood perfectly well. She’d spent most of her life wishing her arse was skinny, wishing her skin was white, wishing her hair was straight. From the age of eleven she’d spent her evenings at her uncle’s kitchen table sharing her auntie’s homework from the local Christmas trimming factory, dipping baubles in a vat of glitter. For every hundred she got 1p. She was saving to go to the salon on City Road in Cardiff. It was the only place in Wales with ammonia strong enough to relax her Afro-Caribbean kink. The customers worshipped the woman who ran it, treated her like a priestess; practically curtsied when they gave her a massive tip. With Rhiannon’s head for business it didn’t take long for her to realize that sort of power was worth a fortune.
She’d been a hairdresser for nineteen years and she took pride in her work. She’d only ever had one complaint, from Kylie Beynon, a stroppy little bitch from the top of Gwendolyn Street. She’d sent a solicitor’s letter to the salon, demanding compensation for a couple of hair extensions that had supposedly fallen out. As if. Five hundred quid she wanted. Rhiannon rang the Williams twins; a couple of smackheads from the estate. They’d do anything for a bag of ten. She told them to hand-deliver the letter back to Kylie with a can of petrol and a lighter. They were only supposed to warn her off, burn the letter up in front of her face. Kylie was washing her porch carpet with flammable shampoo. The useless pair of twats dropped the letter on the floor and the whole bloody house went up. Cut a long story, the ambulance rushed Kylie to Morriston with third-degree burns and the twins swapped life in nick for the address of their drug dealer. Kylie’s still wearing a bloody wig. The best form of defence is attack.
Rhiannon checked the woman’s blister. It wasn’t anything special. ‘Ewe’ll be OK now,’ she said, giving her fat shoulder a little squeeze. ‘A bit sore, I’ll just get somethin’ to soothe it for ewe.’
On the other side of the salon, Kelly had tipped tea over the maid of honour. She was a big, no-nonsense peroxide blonde, sitting with her legs wide open, steam rising out of her jogging-bottoms. Lesbian probably. Kelly was on the floor, wiping the tiles with a worn tea towel. Rhiannon kicked her with the toe of her black Mary Jane’s. ‘Clean it up!’ she said. ‘And get the lady another cup.’ Bloody teenagers; all they fucking did was hang around looking young, smoking Lambert & bloody Butler, sending text messages to their pre-pubescent boyfriends. Rhiannon only put up with Kelly because Kelly was too young for the minimum wage; she gave her fifty quid on a Friday and told her to fuck off if she didn’t like it.
Rhiannon noticed a toddler in the corner, drawing on her leather appointment book with a chewed crayon. She crouched down beside her and said,