Free Animals by Emma Jane Unsworth Page B

up to with everything?’
    Jim produced a list and a pen from his pocket.
    ‘What’s that?’ I said.
    ‘My list.’
    ‘You have a
list
?’
    ‘I find lists very calming,’ said Mel.
    ‘I’ll tell you one that isn’t calming,’ Jim said. ‘The guest list. We’ve been trying to keep the numbers down but every person raises a few others. It’s like that mythical beast where you chop a head off and two others sprout up in its place.’
    ‘Just tell them all no,’ said Julian. ‘If we get married it’ll be just the two of us on a beach. I’m not paying for every piss-taker I’ve ever met to come fill their boots.’ He sat straight and breathed in bullishly through his nose, inflating his lungs to full capacity. It was a way of breathing that said
More Oxygen For Me
.
    I looked at Mel. She didn’t look at me. She didn’t need to.
    ‘I’ve nearly finished your invites,’ my mum said. ‘And I’ve bought the silk flowers for the table decorations.’
    Jim crossed something out on his list.
    ‘Least I can do,’ my mum said.
    Jim’s parents were paying for the wedding.
    My mum raised a finger, reached her other hand down under the table and brought out a magazine. ‘And I got this for you, Laura.’ I looked down.
Bride Be Lovely
. The actor-bride on the front, with her stony whited eyes and rictus grin, looked as though she had been saying BE LOVELY BE LOVELY to herself in the mirror through gritted teeth while getting ready.
    ‘Thanks, Mum.’
    Mel turned to me. ‘Have you picked a dress yet?’
    ‘I’m going shopping with Tyler at the weekend.’
    Julian snorted. He’d first met Tyler at my dad’s sixieth. I could still see his face as he watched her, off her tits on Prosecco, moonwalking across the dance floor to ‘Moves Like Jagger’, shrugging disingenuously.
You know what his problem is?
Tyler said whenever his name came up.
Too much fucking hair gel.
    ‘Where are you going to look?’ asked my mum.
    ‘Apparently there’s some kind of bridal village in Cheshire,’ I said. ‘Tyler’s driving me there.’
    ‘Does Tyler
drive
?’
    ‘You know she does.’
    ‘Well, goodness knows what you’ll end up with if you’re going with that rum bugger,’ said my dad. This was how my dad referred to Tyler –
that rum bugger
– with more than a hint of admiration. Unlike the rest of them, my dad liked Tyler because he knew a grifter when he met one and couldn’t help but be enthralled when she wrinkled her nose and told him to
Get lost
and tell her another.
    The last time I’d brought Tyler to a family meal she’d gone to the toilet and come back and sat on my dad’s knee and started telling the whole table about how she’d stood on a chair in the coffee shop that day and recited
Beowulf
(Medieval Literature MA; she’d got a distinction). She said it had gone down well. I wanted her to shut up – or maybe it was because she was perched on my father’s lap and it was making me queasy. I jerked my head, indicating she should get back in her own seat. She did. Only when the mains arrived and I saw her discreetly slide a cod fillet into her lap and wrap it in her napkin, unable to eat it – flinching as the hot fish burned her thin-trousered thighs – did I understand the real reason behind her sudden eruption of intimacy. Zero appetite. Conversation ramped up to eleven. Busted.
    ‘So we need to plan a date for a rehearsal sometime in August,’ said Jim, pen hovering.
    ‘Second half of the month’s best for us,’ said my mum. ‘Last chemo session’s on the twelfth.’
    My dad was supposed to be giving me away.
    ‘Great. But see how you feel nearer the time, Bill,’ said Jim.
    ‘I’ll be fine, pal, don’t you worry. You just make sure
you’re
around.’
    When we got back to Jim’s I went to the bathroom. As I sat on the toilet I heard him laugh. Rushed wiping, flushing, not wanting to miss out.
    He was sitting on the sofa, the bridal magazine unfurled across his lap. He