remote cards

Three women sit in the corner of the cinema bar. It’s about half full, but you can hear the three pretty clearly, they are being quite loud. The girl in the middle is first to draw attention, she is the focus, on a rare night out. Checking her phone every five minutes to see how her partner or baby sitter or whoever is getting on with the kid. Perhaps I should cancel, she suggests, skinny and full of anxiety, smartly dressed. The other two tell her off, every time she pulls out the phone they tell her to put it away. The one of the outside has short dyed hair, a heavy cream coloured woollen cardigan that looks thick, but still describes a lumpy kind of figure. The other, sits with a t-shirt, pale blue, a larger woman, heavy arms and a big round face. The two are dirty, teasing the mother about how naïve and innocent she is – how on earth does she have a four year old daughter? She used a turkey baster, one of them guffaws loudly. The innocent makes a comment about handcuffs. The one in white says about how the problem with that is, you have to do all the work. The one in blue moans about how boring that gets. They both laugh, loud, and filthy. The one in white confesses last time she got fed up and left him handcuffed while she went to sleep in the other room. The conversation continues in this vein, you need to watch all of that show Benidorm! The one in blue agrees with the one in white, now that’s an education! The woman checks her phone again, looks embarrassed, wonders aloud – how do I not know all these things?