Five
Norah trudged to school as though she were walking through wet cement. Her pockets were full of snacks for Freddie. He always came out voracious. He seemed to need to be eating every minute of his life at the moment.
She approached the school gates, and now panic was setting in. It was actually ridiculous. Why should she be scared of that woman? She was just a person. A person who broke her heart for the first time and did it so successfully that it remained the worst heartbreak of her life.
So what? Norah had only been eighteen. She’d been stupid. She was older now. Wiser. In possession of a thicker skin. And married, too. It wasn’t a happy marriage, but Poppy wasn’t to know that. For all Poppy knew, Norah was blissful in her matrimony.
Taking all that into account, Norah should have nothing to fear from the grownup version of an ex-girlfriend. Twenty years had passed. So much change had occurred between now and then that they were virtually different people. She didn’t know this woman. She wasn’t that girl. She was just wearing her skin.
Norah came pretty close to convincing herself of that until she locked eyes with Poppy at the gate, and her stomach felt like it was gonna fall out of her arse.
‘Hi,’ Poppy said with a modest wave.
‘Hello,’ Norah said quietly and went in.
They were almost side by side as they crossed the playground. Norah decided to slow her pace to allow Poppy to leave her behind. Unfortunately, Poppy had the same idea, so their paces still matched. They were walking in perfect tandem toward the door of the open classroom. The kids were piling out, flying to their caregivers. Norah and Poppy were among the last to reach the door.
‘You first,’ Norah said, gesturing at the door.
‘No, please,’ Poppy said.
Norah sighed through her annoyance and said, ‘OK, thanks,’ and stepped forward.
Freddie was ushered out by the teacher. ‘Mum!’ he said.
He wasn’t usually so excited to see her, and his shiny, happy face offered solace in amongst the banal horror of the situation. But that was swiftly cancelled when the first words out of his mouth were, ‘I’ve got a new friend!’
No. Please, no.
A little girl ran out, and you couldn’t miss the likeness. She was a mini-Poppy, albeit one with perfect braids. ‘Mum!’ she yelled. ‘Can Freddie come to our house?’
‘Oh!’ Poppy exclaimed. ‘Ummm...’
Norah couldn’t believe it. And yet she could. Her fear had come to pass. It was comforting, in a way. Norah wasn’t paranoid. Life really was as stupid as she’d always suspected.
The one bit of fortune in this was the question wasn’t aimed at her. It was Poppy’s to deal with.
‘Well, maybe not today,’ Poppy said quickly.
‘Why?!’ Luna demanded. She was a mini-Poppy in more than looks, it seemed.
‘I’ve got to get back,’ Poppy asked.
‘What for?’ Luna pressed.
‘The... plumber is coming,’ Poppy improvised.
‘What for?’ Luna kept on.
Norah felt the corner of her mouth slide up infinitesimally.
‘The toilet won’t flush,’ Poppy said.
‘Did you break it?’ Luna asked.
Poppy grabbed her daughter’s hand and tried to coerce her out of the playground. ‘No, well... Well, yes,’ she said, pulling at her hand.
But Luna wasn’t going into that goodnight gently. ‘How? Was it a massive poo?’
‘Oh my god,’ Poppy muttered to herself, pained. She was still trying to pull Luna, whose feet were edging forward, but not nearly fast enough.
‘Why aren’t you answering me?’ Luna demanded.
Norah decided it was becoming a little too fun to watch Poppy’s suffering, and she took Freddie’s hand. ‘Come on.’
‘Have you brought my snack?’ he asked. He seemed to have realised no playdate was forthcoming and was over it, bless him.
‘Yes, of course. Let’s get out of the playground, and I’ll give it to you,’ she told him.
The allure of the snack pulled him from the playground with relative ease. She heard one last snippet of the conversation between Poppy and her daughter as she passed through the gates to a waiting BMW.
‘Yes, Luna. It was massive. OK?!’ Poppy was saying irritably.
Norah worked hard to push down the smirk that was trying to take position on her face as she left the playground and fed Freddie a fruit bar. But only out of propriety. In her heart, the smile was allowed to be as big as it wanted to be—because Poppy wasn’t so perfect.
Twenty Years Ago
Poppy was in Norah’s tiny, cluttered bedroom. That was weird thing, numero uno. Numero dos was that she was looking at Norah’s half-finished graphic novel, her slender guitarist's hands flicking through the pages. She’d just picked it up off the desk without asking. For Norah, it felt like someone had walked in on her in the shower. But what was she gonna do, rip it out of her hands?
After a minute, Poppy looked up. ‘This is cool.’
‘Oh,’ Norah said, surprised. ‘Is it? It’s not.’
‘It is. The drawings are unreal.’
Norah told her face not to even dare blush. ‘Thanks,’ she said, trying to sound casual.
‘The central character is cute. Kind of looks like you, actually,’ Poppy observed casually.
Norah didn’t have a single response to that.
‘How does it end?’ Poppy asked, putting it down.
‘I don’t know yet,’ Norah admitted.
‘Well, when it’s done, I wanna read it.’
‘It’s more of an if than a when,’ Norah admitted.
‘What’s the problem?’ Poppy asked casually.
‘Umm...’
Poppy shook herself. ‘Sorry...’
‘No, it’s fine. I just... I think the hamster has fallen off the wheel,’ Norah said.
Poppy’s eyebrows flew up. ‘What?’
‘It’s something my dad used to say...’ It still felt weird to use the past tense about him, but Norah tried to shake that off. ‘It means something about not running at full function.’
‘Oh. Yeah. I get it. But I mean, you wouldn’t be, would you? Running at full function. When I...’ Poppy stopped. ‘Sorry, I wasn’t supposed to talk about this.’
‘No, go on. Say what you were gonna say,’ Norah prompted.
‘You sure?’
‘Might as well,’ Norah shrugged.
‘OK. Well, when my dad died, I wouldn’t get out of bed for about two weeks. My mum did everything to entice me. She even tried to drag me out once. I bit her.’
‘How old were you?’
‘Ten.’
‘That’s a horrible time for that to happen,’ Norah observed.
‘There’s no great time to lose a parent,’ Poppy shrugged.
Norah was amazed at the way Poppy was talking. Everyone else tiptoed around this subject, and it made Norah feel like she should stay quiet on the subject, too. But Poppy was just talking about it like it wasn’t a forbidden topic but simply a thing that happened.
‘What caused it?’ Norah found herself asking.
‘Heart disease. He didn’t know he had it until it was too late. He was at work; he was an insurance adjuster, and he hated it, according to my mum. She thinks it was the stress that did it for him. That and doughnuts.’ She sighed. ‘He died on the way to assess a house fire.’
‘Did he crash?’ Norah asked, horrified.
‘No, luckily, he was able to pull over, or he might have taken people with him. He flagged down someone passing. They got him to the hospital. But he died there.’
Norah felt her stomach turn. ‘Did you... see him?’
‘No. My mum did, though. She raced straight there. I was at school. She thought she’d have time to get me. But it happened pretty quickly after she arrived.’
‘I’m sorry you weren’t there,’ Norah said with feeling.
‘It was better, I think. My mum said... It wasn’t good.’
‘But you didn’t get to say goodbye,’ Norah said.
‘Did you?’ Poppy asked and made a face. ‘I’m doing it again. Should I shut up?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said eventually, the only honest answer she could give.
‘Alright.’ Poppy paused. ‘You wanna see a movie?’
The tone change threw Norah. ‘Oh. Umm...’ She thought over what her evening would look like. Her mum was due back soon from work. They would eat dinner together and then sit watching TV in a silence so thick you could spread it on bread. ‘What movie?’ Norah asked.
‘It’s called Monkey Killers.’
‘Monkey Killers?’ Norah repeated in disbelief. ‘Are the monkeys themselves killers, or are people killing monkeys?’ she asked.
Poppy stood. ‘The first one. If we go right now, we can just catch it. But I should warn you, the movie won’t be good.’
‘I got that from the title.’
‘The reviews say the plot exposition is so bad that they might as well have turned to the camera to explain. It got one star from the local paper, and the same reviewer thought that the Britney Spears movie was “An underrated gem.”’
‘You know that, and you’re choosing to pay money to see it?’ Norah asked.
‘It’s kinda my thing,’ Poppy explained. ‘I like watching terrible movies and imagining the number of idiots that had to be rounded up to create something so awful. The number of opportunities people had to say, “Are you sure about this?” that no one ever took. Incredible when you look at it like that.’
‘I might have to rethink your review of my graphic novel,’ Norah said with a small smile.
Poppy rolled her eyes. ‘I can tell the difference between good and bad. I can just get pleasure out of either.’
‘That’s a good skill to have,’ Norah noted as she followed her out.
She felt a little nervous about spending an evening with Poppy but also hopeful. Poppy wasn’t uncomfortable knowing what Norah was going through, and she wasn’t scared to talk about it. She knew the experience intimately. Even if they never spoke about it, being around her felt like a relief. Poppy just got it.
‘Hey, if you could choose, would you rather be able to fly, but you can only go twenty miles a day or read minds, but it’s only dogs?’ Norah suddenly heard herself ask as they walked down the street to the bus stop.
Poppy looked at her like she was bonkers. Norah supposed it was a bit silly, but she’d always liked hypothetical. Usually, they stayed in her head. But it felt good to talk about nothing.
‘Cauldwell, are you insane?’ Poppy said with a tut. ‘That’s no question at all. I’d read the minds of dogs.’
‘What?’ Norah said. ‘You wouldn’t fly?’
‘Twenty miles? I’d get as far as what? The next town? Pointless. Might as well get the train.’
‘But you can fly!’ Norah said.
‘Or I could know the mind of a dog and all its mysteries. Clear winner.’
‘You’re nuts,’ Norah said with a shake of her head, grinning.
‘You’re nuts,’ Poppy grinned back.