Reprise

“I had him hooked that quick. Two weeks’ time! No worries. Course, it wasn’t me like you see me now. And, I had my tricks. That’s the Romany side. My gran could just walk up to a woman in the street and get her rings off her. It’s sheer mesmerism, you have to see it to believe.

“Thing of it was, he couldn’t marry us, yet, account of some bother with his daughter I weren’t ever good enough to meet. So, but, he meant to all right, and we just went ahead and told everyone like we was. That was like the same thing, really: it’s what people think. Only then Peter pulls that he’s not coming to our reception do, he’s got work. Well, that looks wonderful, doesn’t it, the bridegroom not shown up to the reception? But, Mandy stood by me, she was our ‘witness’ to the wedding had there been one to witness. Oh, I can be harsh on her, but she was solid for me then.

“We had a lovely lovely do on the roof of her block, King’s Cross, where you can see the gasworks. Real champagne and that for fifty, it was proper. We had heart-shaped balloons for it, Karen Ann and I killed ourselves blowing them up all that morning.

“Well, I thought it would be a bit of dosh for us for a change. I thought, you’d have a father, everyone was always giving me grief, you without a dad. Dosh, mainly. I was tired, pulling rabbits out of hats. I couldn’t pull any more rabbits out of any more hats.

“I did love him, though. Who knows what makes you feel things? He’s like a horrible dried-up lizard, isn’t he? Peter. Well, they say love is blind, don’t they? I’m the living proof. I loved that horror like the last man on earth.”