Free The Making of Minty Malone by Isabel Wolff

ever again.
    ‘Penalty!’ shouted Pierre.
    ‘Would it be all right if I took your number, Minty?’ Joe asked me again, as he passed the ball back.
    ‘No.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘No, it wouldn’t ,’ I repeated tersely. I struck the ball, hard, and a shout went up.
    ‘Own goal, Minty!’ everyone cried.

August
    ‘’Ad a nice time, luv?’ enquired the driver of the cab I flagged down outside Waterloo. Helen had gone to Holland Park to see her parents.
    ‘Sort of. Well, not really.’
    ‘What was it, ‘oliday?’
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘Honeymoon.’
    ‘Where’s your ‘usband then?’
    ‘I haven’t got one.’
    ‘You ain’t got one?’
    ‘No. He ran away.’
    ‘ ‘E did a runner ?’ said the driver incredulously. He turned round to face me and almost crashed the cab.
    ‘Yes,’ I confirmed. ‘During the service. So I went with my bridesmaid instead.’
    ‘’E did a runner!’
    He was chortling and shaking his head.
    ‘Bleedin’ ‘ell. I ‘ope you never catch him.’
    ‘I shan’t even try,’ I said.
    My spirits drooped like dead flowers as we drove through the dusty streets. My brief holiday was over; reality was rolling in. I could have wept as we passed the Waldorf. And the sight of a church made me feel sick. I thought, sinkingly, of work and dreaded having to return. How would I face my colleagues, and what on earth would they say? I would be an object of pity and derision, I decided as we bounced north. I would be suffocated by their sympathy, choked by their concern.
    We drew up outside my flat and I saw the ‘For Sale’ sign.It would have to come down, I realised; I wouldn’t be going anywhere now. And for the first time I felt a flutter of something like relief, because Clapham Common isn’t really my scene. And I knew that the one thing I wouldn’t miss about seeing Dom was that twice-weekly fifteen-stop trip down the Northern Line. Then I realised, with a stab of dismay, that I’d have to retrieve my stuff from his flat. There wasn’t much; very little, in fact, considering that we’d been engaged. Just my toothbrush, an old jacket and some books. Dom said he didn’t want me to leave too much there in case Madge thought we were ‘living in sin’. And I was just wondering how I’d get my things back, and thinking how agonising this would be, when I noticed two bulging Safeway bags leaning against the front door. Stapled to one was an envelope marked ‘Minty’ in a familiar backward-sloping hand. I turned the key in the lock, picked them up, and went into the silence of my flat. I grabbed a knife from a kitchen drawer and opened the envelope with a pounding heart.
I thought this would make it easier for you, Minty. Sorry, but I just knew it wasn’t right. No hard feelings?
Best wishes, Dom.
    Best wishes! Best wishes? The man who just four days ago I was set to marry; the man whose children I was going to have; the man whose boxer shorts I had washed – and ironed – was now politely sending me best wishes ? And actually, if you don’t mind my saying so, I do have hard feelings, Dom! In fact, they’re as hard as granite or flint. No hard feelings? They’re as hard as an unripe pear. And look how quickly he’d returned my things! Hardly am I back from my honeymoon before I’m bundled out of his life in two plastic bags. Outrageous! After what he did. Outrageous ! For all he knew, I might have thrown myself in the Seine.
    Fired up by a Vesuvius of suppressed anger, I tore off my jacket, threw open the windows, and put on my rubber gloves. Others may drink or take drugs to relieve stress. Personally, Iclean. So I hoovered and dusted and tidied. I mopped, and polished and washed. In a frenzy of fastidiousness, I even scraped the gunge out of the oven, and wiped the grime from the window panes. Only then, when I’d spent three hours in a state of hysterical hygienicity, did I feel my blood pressure drop.
    Now I felt sufficiently calm to confront the wedding presents. Dad had