CHAPTER 33
Ange and I looked at each other, clearly weighing up the conversation that evening in Nice, and then I answered for both of us.

“Neither, woman”

“Yet! Admit it!”

Ange sighed, theatrically.

“You getting paid as a matchmaker or something?”

Amina slumped a little.

“Yeah, well, I can try. Not got a great record so far”

Oh.

“You and Lil okay?”

“Oh, tickety-boo and so on. So tell me about the trip”

Ange was deadpan.

“Oh, we went to France. Then we came back”

“Bloody kiwi cow! I want details. Smut, if there’s any”

Ange shrugged, still keeping that straight face.

“We ate lots of garlic”

“Argh!”

I took over, giving my girl’s hand a squeeze.

“We covered a lot of ground, and most of it was not just good, it was superb”

“How was Gay Paree?”

“Um, a bit crap. Full of arseholes”

“Really?”

“Really”

Ange wriggled free and popped into our bedroom, returning with the cameras, and as I chatted, she downloaded the SD cards to my laptop after I’d logged in.

“Let Ange sort the pics out, and I’ll give you an overview. We started in a really scenic place, all mediaeval walls and that, then took the train out to the coast, right on the Spanish border, then back up a little to just past the mountains. Bloody lovely stay there—they did amazing food. Up the coast to another seaside place, a bit ugh, then a long ride to Nice”

“Was it nice, or was it just Nice?”

“Groan. Made that joke more than enough, us two, already”

Ange muttered, “Nearly had a fight there”, and Amina’s eyes widened.

I added that we had also had an issue in Argelès.

“Pervy man on the beach, getting as close to women as he could, big camera”

“Really?”

“Oh, indeed. We moved away, so he went and sat next to a group of Danes, all blonde, topless, and they took the camera, threw it in the sea, kicked him in the arse”

Amina cackled happily.

“And in Nice?”

That started me laughing.

“We were having a really nice meal, all the French stuff, pavement café, little birds flitting around, pink wine, garlic everywhere, and there’s this Yank family, obnoxious to the core, and they start yelling to the waiters to stop the perverts from corrupting their children. Right arseholes they were”

The wine was vanishing, it appeared.

“So Ange here, she tells them their fortune, and the only thing missing was a haka”

I took a slug of the prosecco; no work the next day.

“She rips them a new arsehole each, then says ‘Me Maori. Me eat long pig of enemy. Come here and me eat you. Then… “

I looked at Ange, who was now blushing.

“Then she says, ‘Anyway, going to eat my fiancée later, so…’. Er. Oops”

Amina was preening.

“I bloody KNEW it! So who asked?”

I waved a thumb at Ange, who was just finishing downloading our snaps.

“I asked, but Jen had her sensible head on, and she’s right. It was, well, doesn’t come much more romantic, and she said that she would wait, and if it still made sense in pissing Welsh rain, then yes”

Amina was suddenly in tears, so I moved over to hug her.

“Wow! Just, wow! So, so happy for you two. Does anyone else know?”

“We haven’t confirmed it yet”

“You will, you will… I just… Not now. Piccies? Got any more booze; this has evaporated. Hang on”

She pulled out her phone, rattled off something in Urdu, and fifteen minutes later her Mam’s friend with the corner shop was knocking at the door with a paper bag holding three more bottles. Amina slipped him the cash, and we settled down to the traditional slideshow as three women cuddled on the same sofa.

It was only later, as the wine bit, that she opened up, and it was painful.

“Yeah, so Mam, well, she got used to things, me being, you know, this way, years ago. I’ve never hidden it, even when Dad got threatening, and, well, she’s been a bit mother hen, all ‘You should meet a nice girl, settle down’. Sometimes tried to do the matchmaking shit, which is weird”

She took a number of slow, deep breaths.

“Then there’s Lil, and, well, not saying anything I’d like repeated, okay? Mam thinks she’s a bit old, not a great job, aye?”

Ange quietly asked, “And what do you think, Amina?”

“Oh god, I don’t know, but I do know, and Lil is lovely, aye? Not a bad bone in her, sweet as anything, but… It’s you two, you know. Rubbing it in---no, nothing you’ve done wrong, but I can see you, and it is so bloody sweet, real hope-for-the-world stuff. And I know Lil can see you, but, well, every time I try to take things that little bit, well, higher, further on… Commitment, yeah?”

Ange kept her tone as soft as possible.

“You could ask her, love”

“I bloody did, and she changed the subject. More than once, as well. I think what it is…”

She took a real guzzle from her glass, and I started to worry about how upset she might really be.

“What it is is lack of confidence. No. Self-worth. I don’t know who she’s been with before, but she puts a good front up, all cocky, then as soon as it’s doing something, you know, adult, she runs and hides. Even that trip we did, it took ages to get her to agree, so many excuses, and excuses for excuses. A holiday like yours, no chance”

Ange answered her with, “Imposter syndrome. Very, very common”

“Yeah, I know, but, well, I want, I NEED, more, and Mam’s on my case, because my mother is far from stupid, nor blind. And then I feel guilty, because I know she’s only doing the pushy thing for my sake. What do I do?”

Ange was shaking her head.

“What it needs is for her to be told to piss or get off the pot, but that’s being a bit blunt. Still the bottom line, though, cause if I’m reading you right, you can’t hust keep on keeping on the same way, am I right?”

Amina shook her head, and Ange continued.

“To answer your first question, it was me that asked and Jen who said no, but she made absolute sense. Still made our trip a bit like a honeymoon, though, and yes, it was that magical. Problem now is where we go on our next hols, because there were all those other ideas we looked at, like Rome, but we have to go back to some of those places again, especially that place in Argelès. Anyway, I would say that me or Jen going up to Lil and saying something like it being time she made you an honest woman would just backfire big style. All we can do is keep on doing that rubbing it in thing. Let her see what’s possible, and keep including her. Best we can offer, right now”

I passed Amina some tissues, and then we got the photos going once again.

“This is---no, sod it. Can you see what that is?”

“A broken roof?”

“The green stuff. Enlarge it, love”

Amina twitched, then started to laugh once again.

“That’s wacky baccy! Cannabis, am I right?”

“Yup. Hidden in the attic where nobody can see it”

“Well, blue skies like that, needs no sunlamps or shit”

“Um… hang on…”

I found a shot Ange had taken from inside our Digne café, a lightning flash caught to one side of a silvery curtain of rainwater.

“Not always sunny”

Ange said, “When it was sunny, though…”

A shot of our ‘beach’ in Nice with Leatherskin Woman on her front on a reed mat. Amina gasped.

“Is she bloody naked?”

“No. That’s a string, but the back part’s disappeared right up her arse cleft, and if you look carefully at her armpits, you might see her nipples”

I coughed.

“She wasn’t THAT floppy, love!”

“Just about, love! Anyway, there’re these blokes, wander about the beach with eskies selling cold drinks and doughnuts and shit, and one of them offered to do her suncream for her, and I wanted to ask him if he was using Coppertone or Cherry Blossom shoe polish”

We called a taxi for Amina in the end, as she was a little wobbly to walk home, and then it was a very quiet night for two of us in my bed. Poor, poor woman.

Both of us off the next day, I insisted we head off down the waterfront, and then onto the Penarth ferry. We ambled along the barrage for a bit, before grabbing lunch, sausage and egg sandwiches, by the marina. A stroll back took us to the locks, in typical Welsh weather. I stopped by the Pink Hut, where we could see the mixture of shingle and shitty mud that edged the Bristol Channel, and turned Ange to face me.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Does it still make sense, love?”

“Does what---oh! Fuck! Yeah, yeah, it still makes all the sense in the world, my love”

“Then my answer, my love, is yes”