Saving Missy. Beth Morrey

across the face. She fell back with a short cry and there was a collective gasp from the customers; one of the row of laptop-workers stood up, as if to protest, then thought better of it as Hanna the waitress hurried forwards and pulled Angela back a step. The other woman watched them for a second, chest heaving, hair askew, then wrenched the door handle and stumbled out into the street.

      There was a barely perceptible sigh of disappointment as she exited – the fun spoilt when it was just getting going – but I’ve always found such public displays sordid. Leo and I once had an argument at a party, sotto voce out the sides of our mouths, lifting our glasses and nodding to passing guests. People have no standards nowadays; they just let it all hang out.

      Angela, a livid mark on one cheek, sank into her seat, took a cigarette packet out of one pocket and lit up right then and there. Hanna went back over to remonstrate with her. Grimacing, Angela stubbed out the cigarette in a saucer. She sat with her head in her hands for a while, then picked up her bag and made her way to the door. As she passed my table she caught sight of me and raised her eyebrows wearily.

      ‘Oh, hi, er …’ Unlike Sylvie, she’d forgotten.

      ‘Millicent.’

      ‘Hi, Millicent. You OK?’

      ‘Fine, thank you. Um … you?’ To my dismay she suddenly hefted her bag on to the floor next to me and took the seat opposite, beckoning Hanna over to take her order.

      ‘I’m fucking awful, as you can see. I’m just gonna sit here for five minutes if that’s OK, stop me doing something stupid.’ Pulling the bowl of sugar cubes towards her, she crunched one between yellow teeth. She was very pale, with dark circles under her eyes. Probably all that hard drinking with Sylvie.

      ‘Of course.’ I hoped this didn’t mean I would have to pay for her coffee.

      We sat in silence for a few seconds as she picked at the skin around her fingernails, which were bitten to the quick and flecked with chipped nail polish. Hanna delivered her coffee and she slurped it, wiping her mouth on her sleeve.

      Eventually she looked sideways at me. ‘You married?’

      I caught my breath. ‘Yes. But he’s not … he’s not …’

      She waved away the question. ‘I’m not,’ she said grimly. ‘And sometimes I’m so fucking relieved, you know? More trouble than it’s worth.’

      I was intrigued enough to venture a question of my own. ‘What about your son? Is his father … around?’

      She snorted. ‘Didn’t want to know. Better that way, trust me. Anyway, I’m not talking about me. You got children? Grandchildren?’

      ‘Yes, two children. And one grandchild.’

      ‘Boy or girl?’

      ‘A boy. Arthur.’

      She grinned. ‘Bet he’s a terror.’

      ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘A terror.’ But she’d drifted off again, staring into space, drumming her fingers on the table in time to the jazz playing in the background.

      ‘She’s got to get the kids out. And Bob. That’s the trouble,’ she mumbled, more to herself than to me.

      I sat in silence, waiting for her to work it out. Women like her always have some drama or other. Just as I was wondering if it would be rude to signal Hanna to bring the bill, Angela leaned back in her chair, rubbed her face and heaved a great sigh.

      ‘You’re right, I can’t get involved,’ she said.

      I inclined my head, and caught Hanna’s eye.

      Angela pinched the bridge of her nose and huffed again. ‘Fuck.’

      The expletives that pepper today’s conversations are particularly unsavoury, so ugly and unimaginative, although it was more the repetition that bothered me than the word itself. Angela’s curses were so frequent that they were like punctuation points, each one provoking a twinge of distaste, a sourness in my mouth and hers. Her speech was as sloppy as her scuffed shoes. I picked up my bag and put it onto my knee, ready.

      Hanna brought over the bill. As she put the saucer down in front of us, she briefly squeezed Angela’s shoulder, but before I could decide what the gesture meant, Angela tweaked the paper between her fingers. ‘I’ll get this.’

      I shook my head, ‘Oh no, please don’t,’ fumbling coins out of my purse. Angela waved them away, ‘No, go on. I barged in on you, it’s the least I can do.’ She slapped a five-pound note on the table and gave a hovering Hanna the thumbs up.

      ‘Well, there was no need. No need at all. But thank you.’ I stood up, feeling awkward as always, on the cusp of conversations. Beginnings and endings, I’m never sure how they should go. ‘Er, goodbye then. Hope you manage to … sort it out.’ But as I backed away, she grabbed her bag and slid out of her chair. ‘I’ll walk with you, I could do with the fresh air.’ I muttered an oath of my own.

      Angela lit up again as soon as we were outside, inhaling her ‘fresh air’, head back and eyes closed, the bruise on her cheek already darkening. She turned to me, smoke curling out of her flared nostrils.

      ‘Where is Arthur?’

      I nearly stumbled, so discomfited – and offended – by the question that for a while I didn’t reply. There was something disturbingly direct and intense about her.

      ‘He lives with his father, my son. In Australia. They moved out there three years ago.’ The words had to be choked out, everything in me rebelled against them. Angela stared at me for a second, then turned and kicked a fallen leaf.

      ‘That’s some tough shit,’ she said. ‘What’s he like?’

      The marble was back in my throat. ‘He’s four. He likes Lego, and football, and Batman, and all the usual things a boy of his age likes, I suppose.’ I stopped, then found I couldn’t. ‘I don’t see them often, but when I do … He’s busy. Always playing, running, fighting. He hardly ever sits still, he’s just fizzing with energy all the time, so when he does stop, you want to … pin him down, moor him somehow. It’s so hard to keep up with him. But I want to. I want to keep a version of him at every age. He just keeps getting better and better. But I miss all the babies and boys he was, and want them all back.’ I tailed off, embarrassed.

      Angela nodded slowly. ‘Yes, it’s like that, isn’t it?’

      ‘What’s Otis like?’

      ‘Such a sweet boy,’ she said. ‘Nothing like me. Nothing like his father either, thank Christ. There’s no side to him, no edge at all. I get scared sometimes, by the love. I used to be hard as nails – had to be, doing what I do – but he’s taken it out of me, made me soft. Like when you bash a steak.’

      ‘Tenderized,’ I said.

      ‘That’s it. He’s tenderized me, the little sod. I’m no bloody good at my job any more.’

      I still didn’t like her much, but she had Otis and I had Arthur. ‘Sylvie said you’re a journalist?’

      ‘Yeah, but freelance, so you’re always hustling for the next thing.’ She switched into interrogation mode again. ‘You’re retired, right? What did you do?’

      ‘I was a librarian. Before I had children.’

      ‘They’re closing all the libraries now,’ she said glumly.

      ‘Well, this is me,’ I said, my hand on the gate.

      Angela looked up. ‘Fuck me, the whole house? I’m just down the road, but in the top-floor flat. Postage stamp. You’ve got the whole house?’

      ‘We bought in the sixties. The area wasn’t quite so gentrified then.’ I thought of the riots, the strikes, the burglaries. The rubbish piling up in the street. We’d been pioneers.

      Resigned to the fact