‘Mam!’ Marc said, scolding her.
Gwynnie stopped. She covered her mouth with her shrivelling fingers.
‘I don’t expect you to do all the food,’ Ellie said. She didn’t expect her to do any of it. ‘We’ll get caterers.’
‘But it’s tradition,’ Gwynnie said, starting again.
Rhiannon yawned loudly, half covered her mouth with her hand. She ran her forefinger along the rim of her empty wineglass, waiting for someone to notice her, lipstick still in place.
‘Are you going out somewhere today?’ Ellie said.
Rhiannon realized that her wish had been granted. She fluttered her eyelashes. ‘Out?’ she said.
‘Yeah, out,’ Ellie said. ‘Drinking. It’s just that you’ve got make-up on.’
After lunch, Ellie and Andy left Gwynnie and Collin in the carvery. They followed Rhiannon and Marc through the High Street, their bellies stuffed with profiteroles, an ice-cream van playing Für Elise. At the junction, Rhiannon pointed out her new range of professional styling products lined up on the salon windowsill. ‘Fifteen quid for the intensive light-reflecting conditioner, El,’ she said. ‘Only a two per cent mark up for ewe.’ It was the only window in the street not hidden behind a graffitied zinc shutter. Andy tried to catch Ellie’s hand but she brushed him off, reaching into her back pocket for a crumpled packet of ciggies. He watched her as she lit one, his mouth a single chisel-blow in pale flesh, clearly puzzled by her inclination to go out on a Sunday. Usually she sat in bed all afternoon, a magazine on her lap, a bar of chocolate on the bedside cabinet. Sometimes they had sex.
The Pump House picnic tables were set up around the mining statue. Griff was slouched behind a flat pint of lager and lime. Siân was sitting on the kerb, her orange ankle-length gypsy-skirt lying like a sheet over her legs, her hair scraped back from her face. She’d kicked her mules from her feet. One of them was on the pavement in front of the old YMCA, the fish-scale sequins sparkling in the sunlight. When Ellie’d moved to Aberalaw, Siân wore boob-tubes and hot-pants. With every new child, her tastes became more conservative: pastel blouses and woollen twinsets.
It was a shame to think of her smooth skin buried beneath several layers of cotton. A butterfly momentarily hovered at her throat and then danced into the ether, high above America Place.
America Place was a small street, a row of miniature fascias and hanging baskets erupting with tufts of orange pansies; a rare sight in a village marred by broken glass, concrete, used syringes, dog shit. The inhabitants had been having some sort of flower-growing competition for two years on the run. ‘Know why America Place is called America Place?’ Ellie said as she sat down on the kerb. Early in the nineteenth century, the whole street had decided to emigrate en masse. They’d appointed a chairman to book the tickets and collect the savings they’d accumulated over eight years. But he did a moonlight flit. The residents renamed the street, and called the old pub at the entrance to the estate the New York, New York. Siân knew the story. Ellie’d told her umpteen times, and on each occasion wondered why Siân didn’t find it as intriguing as she did. Ellie was besotted with anything to do with America.
‘Yeah, we all fuckin’ know,’ Rhiannon said. ‘Ewe never stop bloody tellin’ us, do ewe?’
‘Have you ever seen a film called In America?’ Siân said, spitting a chewed fingernail out of her mouth. ‘What it is, it’s about an Irish couple who go to New York with dreams of acting on Broadway, but end up in a stinking block of flats. Nobody’s taken it out yet.’ She worked in the video shop and watched each new release when it arrived, sitting at the counter with a packet of chocolate biscuits.
‘Have a good bloody look at it, El,’ Rhiannon said, ‘’cause it’s the closest to America ewe’ll ever get. Like them lot,’ she pointed at America Place. ‘Ewev’e already missed the fuckin’ boat.’
There was another thing that interested Ellie about America Place, something she never talked about: Andy’s ex-girlfriend, Dirtbox. She lived in one of the converted cottages but Ellie’d forgotten which. He’d taken her to a party there once, a few weeks into their courtship, before he’d admitted that Dirtbox was his ex-girlfriend. He introduced her as his ‘friend’, the clumsy air around the word divulging a sense of mischief Ellie couldn’t quite define. The three of them had stood in the kitchen, gazing at her potted herbs. Then Andy pointed through the French doors at the prize-winning Lionhead rabbits leaping around in their pen. ‘That’s Flossy,’ he said, ‘and the other one is Thumper. Shag like bunnies they do.’ Something in that sentence revealed the true nature of his and Dirtbox’s relationship. Ellie hadn’t imagined that Andy’d had a life before she’d arrived, and the realization had hit her like a juggernaut doing ninety. She’d immediately fled, the soles of her motorbike boots bouncing on the cracked pavements of America Place, then Dynevor Street, then the dogtooth tiles of the railway station. Andy’d followed, coins dropping out of his pockets and rolling down on to the track. As he’d reached her, the Ystradyfodwg train appeared, its brakes screeching. Andy fell at her feet, tears streaming down either side of his nose.
‘Don’t leave me,’ he said tugging at the hem of her gingham dress, like a bad actor in a cheap made-for-TV film.
The electronic doors parted with a computerized bleep.
Ellie prised his fingers from her skirt, one digit after the other.
‘I’ll kill myself if you go,’ he said, skin claret.
Ellie stepped on to the train. She didn’t go in for emotional blackmail then; that self-confident, post-Plymouth period of her life which felt like an aeon ago.
‘I’ll get the round in then, shall I?’ Andy said now, ambling into the pub.
Marc picked up a newspaper, opened it to a black-and-white photograph of George Bush. ‘US admit guerrilla warfare,’ the headline said. He quickly flipped the page to a large colour photograph of a topless blonde model with generous, upturned nipples.
Rhiannon sidled closer to Siân, brushing her plump fingers through her long ponytail. ‘Feels a bit dry, love,’ she said. ‘I’ve got some new conditioner. Why don’t ewe pop in the shop this week?’ Her voice the honeyed adaptation she used to flatter people she didn’t really like. Siân pulled her hair away from Rhiannon and smoothed it on to the opposite side of her neck.
Andy came out carrying drinks on an aluminium tray. ‘Dai just told me that Gemma Williams is up the duff,’ he said. ‘Williams the Milk’s daughter. She’s only fourteen.’
Rhiannon opened a compact and stared into the mirror. ‘Stupid likkle slut,’ she said, plucking a hair from her chin with a pair of steel tweezers.
‘Is there anybody else in there?’ Ellie said. She thought Johnny might have been here, smoking his abundant supply of cigarettes, buying beer for his girlfriend, telling the bar-staff that under no circumstances were they allowed to supply her with vodka. She thought he might have been coming here for weeks; that’s why she’d come.
‘No,’ Andy said. He shrugged. ‘Why?’
Ellie ignored him, glanced around the square. The pine trees on Pengoes Mountain stretched up behind the sagging rooftops of the terraces, their branches thick with foliage, their tips piercing a cornflower sky. A car thudded over the cattle-grid, the sound echoing across the valley.
Suddenly Ribs came out of the pub. ‘What the fuck are you doin’ yer?’ he said blinking at Andy. ‘Never see ’im on a Sunday do we?’ Ribs was a closet transvestite. He lived on his own in a house in Dynevor Street. He used to share a flat with Griff in the YMCA. Sometimes he forgot to remove his make-up before he left the house and he’d sit at the