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Marina

Marina had put the dueling pistols in the bomb shelter along with Barry’s skeleton, locked the door, and pulled the shelf shut in front of it. She used rags to block up the back of the niche with the secret latch and then placed a jar of distinctly unappetizing preserves in the front. To her murder-addled mind the contents of the jar looked like chunks of flesh swimming in magenta blood, but she thought it was probably beetroot.

She was combing the house for the third time, making sure there were no traces of blood or weed anywhere and putting anything remotely breakable out of harm’s way, when the doorbell rang. Her heart lifted in the way it only could when she was going to be reunited with her children—but just to be safe, she checked the peephole.

To her surprise, it wasn’t Jake standing there with the children. It was Freya.

“Hi,” she said, opening the door. Archie flew to her, and surprisingly, so did Lucy Rose. She embraced them both, tight tight tight, and took Ewan from Freya.

“Everything good?” asked Freya awkwardly.

She wasn’t going to try to be friendly, was she, this woman who’d stolen her husband?

“Fine,” Marina said with a distinct chill. “Where’s Jake?”

“He went to the races.”

Marina blinked. “What?”

“Yeah, he had plans with his mates, so.”

“ You looked after the children today?”

“And yesterday, mostly. He was a bit under the weather.”

“Hungover?”

“We had fun, didn’t we?” Freya said brightly to Archie and Lucy Rose. “We played games and went to the park. And today we also played games and went to a different park.”

She sounded exhausted.

“Jake got you to look after his children all weekend,” Marina stated.

“Oh, it was no trouble. It’s good practice for me.” Freya lay her hand on the swell of her stomach and smiled a feeble smile. “They really do have a lot of energy, don’t they?”

“Yes. Well. I didn’t mean for you to have to do all the looking after. The children need to spend time with their father, which was what I expected to happen.”

“I really don’t mind,” said Freya. But Marina noticed that she wasn’t wearing any makeup, and her hair was shoved into a rubber band.

“We did have a lot of fun,” said sweet, peacemaker Archie.

“I didn’t bite,” added Lucy Rose.

“Because you are excellent children,” Marina told them. “And I missed you very much and I’m glad you’re home. Look in the kitchen, I have a surprise for you.”

“What is it?” Both Archie and Lucy Rose zoomed into the house. Freya stood on the step, arms empty. Marina didn’t invite her in.

“Okay, well,” said Freya. “I should be getting back. Work tomorrow, and I haven’t made dinner. Bye Ewan. Bye Lucy Rose! Bye Archie!” she called, but the two older children were already gone, and Ewan was busy playing with Marina’s hoop earring.

Something about the way that Freya walked back down the path to the gate, alone, seemed familiar.

* * *

She deleted all her pictures of herself and Xavier, obviously, and in the following two weeks she filled up her Insta grid instead with photos of pies. It was their new after-school-and-nursery activity: baking. Archie liked measuring flour and sugar, Lucy Rose liked tasting everything and doing the decorations, and Ewan liked sticking his hands in dough. What they made was far from perfect, and sometimes it didn’t even taste that good, but it was some of the most fun Marina had ever had cooking.

She had everything that she needed right here. A quiet life with her children. Well, as quiet as it got with Godzilla in the house. Her mother even invited them over for Sunday lunch and although she pointed out as many of Marina’s faults as ever, Marina was doing her best to reset her mind to try to understand that her mother thought criticism was a compliment.

And then she tried twice as hard to tell Lucy Rose how great she was, to address the gender imbalance.

“I know,” said Lucy Rose, and Marina picked her up and covered her with kisses as she squirmed.

Life was back to normal, but a little bit better. Also, she bought herself a really excellent vibrator online.

So why was she finding herself lying on the sofa by herself again in the evenings, drinking a solitary glass of wine and scrolling through Instagram?

She checked out Opal’s feed. They’d had to block each other’s numbers but that didn’t mean that she couldn’t see how she was doing on social media. Opal had been pretty quiet. There were some reposts of old material, and only one new reel, with Opal speaking to the camera about optimal nutrition and the importance of getting enough sleep. Marina thought about leaving a comment about ice cream and staying up all night smoking dope, but she knew that would be stupid.

It felt nice to watch Opal, though, and notice the ways that her online persona was different from her real life. The tough exterior was much glossier online, charming, authoritative. Whereas Marina had learned that in real life, it was armor to protect what was vulnerable inside.

It also felt sad to watch Opal. It made her lonelier.

A message pinged into her Instagram and she read it instantly. To her surprise, it was from Nancy—the PTA mom, she of the many #blessed posts, who she’d avoided on the street.

Hi Marina! It was so nice to see you the other day! How are you doing? Your bakes look a-MAY-zing! I wondered if you wanted to get the kids together for a playdate? It’s been so long! How about this Saturday morning, if you’re not busy? I would love to catch up with you and chat! Nxxx

She hovered her finger over her phone, ready to send a passiveaggressive reply about being far too busy with a-MAY-zing bakes to meet up with an overly competitive parent who’d ghosted her after her divorce, but then she paused.

She was not too busy. Her calendar yawned with empty days. And her kids and Nancy’s had always got along.

Hi, she texted. She might be giving Nancy another chance, but she was not going to give her any exclamation points. Saturday morning sounds good. How about the park?

* * *

The older children squabbled over the slides while Marina and Nancy pushed their toddlers on the swings. They’d spent the first twenty minutes making small talk about mutual acquaintances, schools, and the ins and outs of potty training, and they’d fallen silent. Although Nancy was wearing a fluffy pink sweater and that magic foundation that was meant to make you look well-rested and slightly sparkly, she looked tired, dulled, as if little Jocasta had been keeping her up nights. She also looked as if she wanted to say something.

In the past, Marina would have filled up the silence with accommodating chatter. Now, she stayed quiet, and kept one eye on Lucy Rose to make sure no one was being injured. It all looked good so far.

“I saw your Instagram posts about finding a new fella,” Nancy said at last. “I think it’s great. You’ve got this glow about you, like you’re really happy.”

“Oh. That didn’t work out, actually.”

“So it’s not love that’s making you look so good?”

“No. I think it’s...”

And she didn’t know the correct way to finish the sentence. Being independent? Reveling in revenge? Mopping up bits of brain tissue?

Finding friends?

“I had some help from some really fabulous women.”

“Wow. You’re really lucky. I wish I had that.”

“You’ve got Naomi and Nina, right? The three of you are tight.”

“I do. We are. But. I just feel like...I don’t know, I feel like I have to impress them all the time. It’s tiring.”

Hearing this out loud from Nancy, the queen of performative parenting, was something like a bombshell. Marina stopped pushing Ewan, who immediately clamored for more.

“I don’t think you have to impress them,” said Marina. “Everyone parents differently, and that should be okay.”

“You’ve heard how they talk about the other mothers at the school gates.”

“You talk about the other mothers too.”

“That’s how I know.”

“Did you talk about me when I left the neighborhood?” ventured Marina, pushing again. “That night you all went out for drinks without me?”

“We did.”

“Relieved that there wouldn’t be a divorcée around to steal your husbands?”

Nancy laughed self-consciously.

“After one cocktail, yes, someone did say that. But after the third we started talking about how we envied you.”

Marina knew better than to stop pushing, but she stared at Nancy. “ Envied me?”

“Yeah. You went through the worst thing. You lost your husband and your house. And everyone knew. And you kept on going. I don’t know if I would be able to do that. I don’t know if I...if I will.”

Nancy started crying.

It took some juggling of toddlers and a lot of bribery with snacks before Marina heard the whole story, though some of it was spelled out so as not to be comprehensible to little ears. Jago had been having an affair for the past five years, starting almost on the day that their eldest child was born. Nancy had found out when Jago’s other woman had turned up at their door and accused her of giving Jago, and therefore the other woman, gonorrhea. This was, additionally, how Nancy found out that Jago had been paying for sex workers.

“Are you okay?” Marina asked, alarmed.

“Yes. Thank God. Since Jocasta, I’ve made him wear c-o-n-d-o-m-s. Not that there’s been much of that anyway. At least that is a small mercy. I’m allergic to antibiotics.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. I literally do not know. It’s better for the kids if we stay together. And we’d have to sell the house and move to somewhere terrible in a suburb. Everyone will talk, I mean everyone . He’s the one who did something wrong, but I’m the one who looks like an idiot. Like how terrible a wife must I be if he had to do all that? He swears he’ll never do it again. But how can I ever trust him?” She turned a tearstained, haunted face to Marina. “You’ve been through this.”

“I have. And it’s hard. Really hard. I’m so sorry, Nancy. I feel for you. I hope you can find the strength to discover what it is that you want to do.”

“You were the only person I could think to talk to. And you look amazing, you look so happy. You’ve got it all together. Please, Marina, tell me: what should I do?”

Marina, was, to say the least, flabbergasted.

But, she realized, it was true. She did have it all together—or as much as anyone ever did. Not just from an outside perspective, but from her own perspective. She had a wonderful home and three healthy, happy children; she didn’t have Jake around to belittle her; she was working on her relationship with her mother; she’d learned to take it slow with any new man in the future; and she knew, finally, how to stand up for herself, and if that didn’t work, she knew how to joint an entire man.

“You could always kill him,” Marina suggested. And at least that made Nancy laugh.