want to go to the bathroom anyway. Try not to kill each other, I mean especially Bette since I don't suppose Helena... just don't kill Helena until I get back," she instructed faintly.
"Why? Do you want to watch?" growled Bette.
Alice fled the scene towards the safety of the bathroom.
"Coward," Bette hurled after the scuttling Alice at the same time as Helena said quite clearly "Wimp!" Alice ignored their epithets.
"That's Alice, big mouth, no follow-through," Bette said moodily, staring after her.
"Sometimes but she's also funny, sweet and wonderful. She's reckless too. I mean not many people would 'rescue' their best friend's ashes. She's easy to love."
Bette's face softened in agreement.
Helena added cautiously "Hard to believe you two ever dated though."
"Why?" Bette asked without raising her voice, though she managed to imbue the monosyllable with a touch of contempt.
"She seems a little frivolous for you."
"So? Flaky bisexual blondes are my thing. Apparently."
"Is that really true. Tina doesn't appear to be flaky," Helena wondered aloud. When Bette said nothing but just gazed at her from pained dark eyes, the Briton added gently "I suppose she has her moments."
Bette took another sip of her rapidly diminishing martini before saying sharply "You know what I cannot understand and I don't think I ever will. I don't know why she took me back when she clearly didn't love me anymore. Was it just so she'd have a home for Angelica? Was I just the best option she had at the time?"
Helena shook her head firmly. "No, she loved you. After all if the only thing she wanted was security, she could have chosen me and my millions." The Briton grinned self-deprecatingly and then said "She still loves you I think."
Bette uttered a sound of disbelief.
"Somehow Ms Peabody I find that hard to believe."
"Do you mind if I offer a possible theory about you and Tina - strictly amateur psychology of course - I have thought a lot about this over the last eighteen months...from several points of view."
"Including Alice's no doubt."
"She may have supplied some background colour."
"Go on then. Go for it. Enlighten me."
"Tina is angry with you."
Bette laughed sarcastically, "I think I got that Helena."
"No I don't just mean the sort of angry that comes when one partner cheats on another though that is devastating enough. She changed her life for you, chose the harder path, gave up the world, or at least her expectations of it, for love if you like. You didn't just cheat Bette, you threw her willing sacrifice back at her."
"That is not the first time I've heard this Helena, not least from Tina."
"Yes but I think her fling with me after you separated was an attempt to prove to herself that she had not changed her whole life simply for you, that she had made a real choice to be gay but instead she discovered that you really were the reason. She loved you, not women. She really had no choice but to take you back."
"She had choices. She could have gone back to men or stayed on her own. She is not that passive..."
"She is pretty accepting and she was still in love with you - she had to fall out of love first. She needed to take you back and find you wanting so she could move on."
"What the hell are you saying? That she took me back so she could dump me? Tina isn't like that."
"Not consciously maybe but falling out of love with you was surprisingly easy once she managed to be disappointed by everything you did or said. You weren't the same powerful woman she had loved: you needed looking after, to be supported. You weren't fulfilling the rest of your unwritten contract: that you would both effectively live your lives like a straight couple with you firmly in the male role. I expect she thought you would swing back into action for her, allowing her to look after Angelica which was her dream wasn't it? Instead she was responsible for the family support and you stayed at home with the baby."
Bette looked close to tears. Helena started to take her hand.
"Hi," said a cool deep voice interrupting their conversation. "Am I interrupting?" Both women drew back quickly, they had been leaning into each other to hear over the music.
"Shane," said Bette with obvious pleasure, her smile not quite disguising the tell-tale wetness in her eyes. "No, I'm glad you're here - Helena is just expounding her dubious theories on why Tina has returned to men. Apparently Tina and I were engaged in some kind of butch/femme role play and I wasn't butch enough."
"I didn't put it quite like that. You were playing a role that you hadn't even acknowledged and didn't really want and were not in fact as comfortable with as you might have appeared to a straight woman like Tina. I don't expect either of you had ever discussed your relationship in terms of the roles you played; it's not the sort of arrangement that two sophisticated twenty-first century lesbians would admit to is it? You may not have married because it looked to be aping the straight world, yet in every other respect you could have been the ultimate heterosexual couple."
Bette wasn't impressed.
"Psycho-babble" she said dismissively.
"I think not - thousands of dollars spent on therapy and fucking my psychiatrist - a little wisdom must have rubbed off."
Shane was still feeling uncomfortable at the mere mention of marriage.
"I don't know Hel. People and relationships are not easy to figure. Bette's a strong woman but I never saw her as butch."
"I did," chimed in Alice. She placed three drinks on the table before flopping down in her chair and addressing Shane. "Thank God you're here at last. You can help me stop the top dogs from peeing on the furniture."
"Lovely image Alice," Helena complained. She finished the remains of her current drink, and looked around with an evil glint. "Don't tell me that neither of you have ever wondered why Bette cheated?"
"You're drunk," Alice asserted calmly.
"Very" Helena agreed. "But I stick by what I said, whatever it was. Umm...I know...
