CHAPTER 34
“Mum, this is Jen, my fiancée”

We had had to make all sorts of allowances for the extreme time difference, staying up past midnight, and god knows what time it was in Christchurch, but there was Mrs Meads on screen, and she seemed to be smiling.

“Hiya Jen! Call me Raewyn, eh?”

Her accent was much stronger than my lover’s, and her face darker, with some tattoo lines under her bottom lip.

“Raewyn, then”

“I got the postcards, love, eventually. How many frogs didja eat?”

“No frogs, Mum, but we did have snails, ey? And loads of seafood. Had to show Jen how to deal with it”

“Putting it in yer mouth is usual way, love”

I laughed.

“Getting it out of the hard bits first was the problem, Raewyn”

“Fair point, girl. When are you coming over to say hello properly?”

I looked at Ange, who wobbled her head, and I replied for us.

“When we have the money. Looking for somewhere of our own first”

“You can save on rent, though?”

“One of our problems. Both landlords have a thing about extra tenants, so we’re looking around. Another rental for now, but we both want somewhere of our own. Oh, and thank you, really, for your gift”

“Ey?”

“The hotel. The nice hotel. In Nice”

“How long you took to work out how to fit that joke in, Jen?”

“Ages. Sorry”

“Well, when my girl wrote to me, and she says ,‘Really think I’ve found The One, Mum’, what else can a mother do?”

“She said that?”

“Didn’t she tell you?”

I looked across at Ange, who was now blushing.

“No, she didn’t. But, well, we got there anyway”

“Yeah, so she said. Congrats and that, and more congrats for having sense, Jen. Made me smile, but more than that, it let me know my little girl was right about you. Any stuff about the holiday you couldn’t put on a postcard?”

I started laughing, remembering Amina’s question about ‘smut’, and that set us all off, before I topped it with the threat to eat the Americans.

“Oh, bit close to the truth, that, love. I mean, her twice great granddad, ey? He’d have eaten people, and I’m not that sure her once great didn’t. Then again, my own granddad was a bloody scary bloke, so you never know. Anyway, they were probably all mouth and trousers. Eight XL trousers at that, I bet. In tartan”

I liked the woman, and could see where her daughter had come from. There’s an old saying that before you marry a woman, you should look at her mother to see your future, and if that were true, mine would be a happy one indeed.

“We spoke to the owner, you know? He picked up on the…”

Ange was blushing again, and I stumbled to a halt, as Raewyn looked puzzled, then comically shocked, then guffawed.

“She bloody didn’t! Not about eating…”

“Mum, I was angry, and it just, you know”

I held up a hand.

“What I MEANT was that she used the word ‘fiancée’, so the restaurant staff were all over us, free fizzy wine, all that stuff. Anyway, the menus were massive things; the same menu, but in lots and lots of languages, translations. One of them was Russian, and Nice even has a mini cathedral, all coloured onion domes and that, for the Russians. They started coming back after the Soviets fell, but he, the owner, he said they were all arseholes---er, all unpleasant now. No class, no manners, just loads of money. So he says, ‘And I want some of it’, just like that”

Ange took up the thread.

“Place we were at before then, it had a bloody Michelin star, and the chef was lovely, but she serves the food, which is amazing, her way. No quick meals, no fast food. You have a full meal, properly served, French style, or eat somewhere else. This bloke, he says he’s got a great kitchen, and it was, ey, but he stops worrying about what happens to his food once it’s on the table and the money’s in the till. I mean, that first shout from the Yanks, it was for bloody tomato sauce! And he had some!”

That was the first of our chats with Raewyn, but far from the last, and we stepped up our search for somewhere to share. The word was out, of course, and when I turned up for work one day, there was a poster on my locker door congratulating us, as well as cake in the meeting room, and more cake from Connie via Tom, with strict instructions that The Wrapped Piece was for Ange.

A happy time indeed.

Marlene tried to be a bitch about it, stating that she didn’t give a shit how many women went off in pairs as it left more men for her to nibble on, but she couldn’t keep it up, and yet again, on our first night back in the Smugglers, we got a free bottle of fizz, even though it came with five glasses, as Lil, Amina and Marlene herself ‘helped us out’.

Debbie and her girls were in that night, and I noticed there were a couple more this time. She was either breeding them, or someone was collecting them for her. I guessed it was either a support group, or that her ‘home’ was taking off. Maisie was one of the ones who came over to congratulate us, which was sweet, and then, after that evening, we really had to buckle down with house hunting.

The new term for the universities and colleges was fast approaching, and possible landlords were sharply focussed on student debt and their role in creating more of it, which meant a lot of single-occupancy stuff. I had tried with my own landlord, seeing as I had been given the flat as a favour to Hira, but I really believe that his tolerance to Ladies In Comfortable Shoes was limited to one at a time. Nevertheless, without moving in, Ange spent a lot of time at mine, mainly because her place really was boxy, with a single bed, and while cuddling up is lovely, two in a bed for one gets old very quickly, especially if you’re a lanky sod like me.

We were also having a little issue with the Home Office, which led to all sorts of difficulties looking for a joint mortgage. The Home Office had issued her a time-limited visa, we needed to change that to what they called a marriage visa, not a spouse visa, as one of their drones, who looked about twelve years old, explained. If we had married elsewhere, say New Zealand, then it would be ‘spouse’, but we were doing it in Wales, so it was different, which meant…

He stopped short of suggesting we were on the fiddle with ‘his’ visas, but only just, and I pointed out that NZ was the sort of country people queued up to enter, rather than leave, which might have helped. I couldn’t tell, and then he astonished us both by actually being helpful.

“Are you a Maori, Ms Meads?”

“What difference does it make if I am?”

She was clearly sensing a little bit of racism, so I stroked her arm beneath the desk to try and calm her.

“I mean no slurs, Ms Mead, so please hear me out. From your appearance, your family is mixed race---no, please hear me. There is another type of visa that might be applicable, that of UK ancestry. From your surname, that might work for you. Are you able to supply details of where your parents and grandparents were from?”

It was like turning a switch, as she went from attack mode to surprise in nothing flat.

“I dunno. I’d have to ask Mum”

Please, love: no cannibalism jokes right now.

“That would be useful, along with a list of any documents she might be able to access. I think, to be honest, that is as far as we can take things today. I’ll find you on of our public notices on ancestry, and then await your message re that info, when we can properly assess the best route for this”

We went for a coffee at Angela’s insistence, because she claimed to be in shock.

“Was he actually trying to be bloody helpful, love?”

“I think so. Did you clock his lanyard?”

“What do you mean?”

“Thing he had his security badge hanging from. It was rainbow-coloured”

She managed to swallow before snorting a laugh out, which was fortunate and welcome.

“You know what this means, love? Every time we’re at Marlene’s, we’re going to be checking all the twinks out in case he’s there”

“He might be a leather bear, love”

“Yeah, and bloody pigs are on the runway. Anyway, where are we eating tonight, yours or mine? I’ve got a shift tomorrow evening, but off tonight, and I know you’re on mids tomorrow. So shall we go for the more luxurious accommodation?”

“Where?”

“Yours, you idiot. Bigger bed”

“I thought you were going to treat us to some posh hotel again”

“Well, I was actually looking at something like that. The Celtic Manor do spa packages, and I have the website saved on my phone”

She paused, just for a second, then smiled in the most melting of ways, and I was lost.

“We haven’t properly celebrated things, love. Traditional stuff is a bit, you know, straight people’s shit, rings and that. Like branding cattle. This, this would be for us. Package I saw is two nights bed, breakfast and set menu evening meal, plus a couple of spa treatments and all-day use of the pool, sauna and shit”

“How much?”

“My secret. You can think of something else for us, but this one’s mine”

“You realise I’ll see the price when you show me the website”

“Shut your bloody eyes, then!”