Chapter 4 of Payback for the Gold-Digging Vipers

Six:

Faith was so furious she could barely get a word out, stammering into silence. In the seventies an indecency charge really did exist, and if she refused to play along, it would prove she'd been faking all this time.

So she didn't dare speak. She just kept crying.

But that wasn't enough for me. Without a trace, I signaled the people I'd planted in advance.

It didn't take long.

They rushed up with rotten eggs and spoiled cabbage leaves and started pelting and battering Phil.

Phil's relatives and friends jumped in at once to stop it, saying I was making a scene.

I turned to the crowd and raised my voice.

"An offender like this deserves to be denounced."

"Don't any of you forget what you promised me just now. It's 1970 right now, so hurry up and keep playing your parts. If you upset my mother-in-law, I'll bring her to your house to make a scene and throw black dog's blood all over your door."

"And don't forget, when my mother-in-law has one of her episodes, it's no joke."

The ones who'd wanted to intervene froze on the spot.

Everyone knew about Faith's episodes.

Her first one came the night of our engagement. She dumped out the candlelit dinner I'd carefully prepared and ladled out a whole pot of pig slop for me to eat.

I couldn't take it, so I held up my phone and told her it was 2026.

She calmed down, then turned with the bowl of slop in her hands and made for the balcony to jump. It took us everything we had to talk her down.

After that, we understood. You couldn't expose her when she was having an episode.

So after we'd registered our marriage and moved in together, when she had an episode and ordered me out to the collective for the predawn shift, I didn't call her out. I just pulled the covers over my head and stayed put. But the next second she mistook Phil for her father-in-law and me for a "loose woman," and came after me with a rolling pin until I was covering my head and scrambling for cover...

And every last one of these stories, Phil eventually turned into dinner-table gossip and told to everyone. Nobody dared cross her, all of them terrified that one wrong move would land them on Faith's list.

So one by one they climbed up onto the stage too, copying the people before them, pelting and battering Phil.

Seven:

This time Faith really looked ready to drop dead from rage.

She hadn't stopped me from hanging the shaming placard and the filthy shoe on Phil because she'd assumed it was just a couple of laps around the square. She never imagined I'd actually rile the whole crowd into denouncing him.

Watching Phil with the filthy shoe stuffed in his mouth, unable to cry, unable to shout, was worse for her than being killed.

But she still didn't dare tell the truth. She only clutched my hand and cried.

"Millicent, save Phil, quick. They can't keep hitting him."

"Crawling into bed before the wedding was your doing. How can you pin it on Phil?"

"I already begged the collective boss, and he said there's no need for a denunciation, just the walk of disgrace. If you carry on like this, are you trying to get your own husband killed?"

I put on a troubled face.

"Mom, I know the collective boss is looking out for you."

"But a widow's doorstep breeds gossip. If we don't set the example, how are we ever going to work in this village again?"

"Don't worry. A denunciation doesn't kill anyone."

Of course Faith knew a fake denunciation wouldn't kill anyone. But how could she bear to watch her own son bullied at his own wedding?

So she picked up the old prop dinner knife again.

"If you don't get Phil out of this, I'll kill myself right now."

Of course I knew she wouldn't.

But I didn't try to stop her.

I just clicked my tongue a couple of times.

"Mom, if you kill yourself now, there's nobody around to see it."

"And besides... you can't die right now. If you die, who's going to take care of Phil?"