Nine
Norah clocked off for lunch, slapped her laptop shut and went to look in the kitchen cupboards. Nothing appealing. She decided to treat herself to lunch out. Let someone else make her a sandwich for a change.
She headed around the corner, into the square, straight for The Sugar Cube. It was a small café, cosy and inviting, with warm lighting and mismatched chairs and tables. Norah liked the place and the food, but she was hoping not to see anyone she knew. She just wanted to eat quietly while she doom-scrolled.
She joined the long queue, hoping it would move fast. She only had twenty-five minutes before she had to be logged back in. A minute passed, and she’d get an email from her bloody boss talking about time theft. No one loved the rules more than he, the self-important tosser.
The queue shifted, and she was swept up to the counter. She had a tuna bagel in mind, maybe even a brownie. She was feeling kind of wild. She felt a bit less excited when she found herself eyeball to eyeball with Poppy stood behind the counter—in a pinny, no less.
‘What?!’ Norah exclaimed.
‘Oh, Norah. Hello,’ Poppy said with an embarrassed head dip.
Norah realised her reaction was a bit much. ‘You got a job? Here?’
‘That’s the situation, yes.’
‘Why? I mean, aren’t you...’ Norah began, before realising what she was about to say was inappropriate. You didn’t ask strangers, ‘Hey, aren’t you rich now?’ So she stopped mid-sentence.
Poppy frowned. ‘What?’
‘Sorry, none of my business.’
There was an awkward pause, and Norah decided to fill it with the reason she’d come in in the first place. ‘Umm, can I have a tuna bagel?’
‘Sure,’ Poppy said, nervously writing it down on a pad in front of her. ‘To go?’
‘No,’ Norah said and regretted it instantly. But once the word was out, she was stuck.
What the hell was going on? What was Poppy doing slumming it behind a counter?
‘Anything else?’
‘Umm, a hazelnut latte?’ Norah said, unsure why she’d phrased it like a question. She knew her coffee order, for the love of Christ. She was just so bloody flustered.
‘OK, that’s ￡8.75.’
Poppy held out a card machine, and Norah tapped her phone to it, feeling like she was in the twilight zone. She’d totally forgotten about the brownie.
‘Thanks,’ she said and turned to grab a seat.
The place was packed. The only free space was right next to the counter. Well, that was a relaxing lunch pissed away. She was now going to have to sit within a foot of Poppy while she ate the food she’d ordered from her. Absolutely fucking surreal.
Norah sat down, reeling. She watched as Poppy took orders and worked the espresso machine. Had she been working here long? And why, as a joke? She used to be a pop star, for crying out loud. Surely she’d made good money doing that? She’d had a song at number one for four weeks. Despite not knowing much about her life, she knew that. She knew it very well indeed.
A few minutes later, Poppy called out Norah’s order, and Norah hopped up to fetch it. ‘Thanks,’ she said.
‘Enjoy,’ Poppy replied.
Norah sat down, took a bite of her bagel, and tried to focus on her phone, but her eyes kept drifting back to Poppy. Her curiosity was killing her. She was dying to ask her directly, but they didn’t really talk, even now. Time and again, they bumped into each other at the school gates and yet no ease had developed between them. They were nowhere near chummy.
Norah decided to do something she never did. She googled Poppy.
It was as expected. Old stuff about her girl band. They’d had three albums and then called it a day. Beyond that, there wasn’t much else. It seemed Poppy had kept her personal life private, unlike her bandmates. There was plenty about them. Their dating track records alone were epic. Lots of footballers.
But not Poppy. Very little was known. There was nothing about her daughter, marriages, zilch.
As the queue quietened, Poppy walked by to collect empty mugs from a nearby table. Norah couldn’t take any more. She initiated a conversation for the first time in their adult ‘reunion.’
‘So, how long have you been working here?’ she asked, trying to sound casual.
Poppy paused, looking slightly caught off guard by the question. ‘Oh, um, just a week,’ she said.
Norah nodded. An awkward silence hung between them for a moment before Poppy continued. ‘The coffee machine was a bit of a bastard at first, but I’m getting the hang of it.’
‘Yeah, it’s a good place,’ Norah said.
‘Are you here much?’ Poppy asked.
‘Now and again,’ Norah answered.
Poppy smiled in a way that locked off the conversation before hurrying back behind the counter to serve a new customer. Norah finished her lunch, gave a little wave goodbye to Poppy, and headed home, still deeply weirded out. It brought back a few memories of the last time Poppy had freaked her out.
Twenty Years Ago
The next night, as planned, Poppy texted Norah around ten. The second her phone pinged, Norah came out in a cold sweat.
Hey, practise is over. Still wanna hang out?
Technically, Norah didn’t need to reply, and the issue would go away for the time being.
But for some reason, she found her thumbs tapping out a reply.
Yeah, I’m up. Come over.
The reply was brief.
Cool.
Norah was truly panicked now. What was she going to say to Poppy? She probably had no idea that Norah had heard her song. Maybe it was fine? Maybe they didn’t need to talk about it? And maybe there wasn’t anything to talk about? Maybe the song wasn’t really about Norah. Maybe Poppy had just been looking for some words to put to music, and Norah’s name had merely the correct number of syllables to fit a rhyming scheme.
The only trouble with that theory was that the lyrics felt specific to her as a person. It wasn’t just her name. From what she could remember, it was about a sad girl who drew—which was Norah. And if all that was true, well...
Norah didn’t know what the hell to think. If only she could have talked to someone. The trouble was that the person she’d talk to was Poppy.
Poppy texted again to let her know she was at the front door, their usual system, to avoid disturbing Norah’s slumbering mother. As she headed out of her room and down the stairs, Norah knew there was a choice to make. She could pretend everything was fine, or she could admit she’d heard the song and deal with it head-on.
She slapped on a casual expression and opened the door. ‘Hi.’
Poppy didn’t look casual. She looked terrified. ‘Hello.’
They headed upstairs to Norah’s bedroom. The first thing Poppy did was go into her bag and dig out Norah’s pencils. ‘You left these in my room.’
Norah took the pencils. ‘Oh yeah, thanks. That’s g-great because I’ll need those because I was just doing a panel, and I realised I didn’t have anything to work with, so I was staring at this panel and trying to draw with my mind, which sounds a bit crazy, like I know I wasn’t achieving anything, but it was still—’
‘I know you heard the song,’ Poppy said.
OK, so... Plan B.
Norah sat on the swivel chair at her desk and turned it to Poppy. ‘Yeah,’ she said with a lick of her lips.
Poppy plunked her bum on Norah’s bed, and they looked at each other nervously for some time. Each seemed to be waiting for the other to say something.
Norah chewed the inside of her mouth. ‘Play it for me.’
Poppy looked stunned. ‘What?’
‘I didn’t hear the whole thing.’
Poppy looked alarmed. ‘No, I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
Poppy was stuck for an answer.
‘Is it about me?’ Norah asked.
Poppy nodded.
‘All of it?’ Norah asked.
‘Yes.’
They sat in another thick silence.
Poppy took a deep breath. ‘I want you to know, I never meant for you to hear it. It was just for me.’
Norah wasn’t sure what to do with that. So she just waited.
‘I wish you had just knocked on the door,’ Poppy said eventually.
But there was no reproach in her tone. Only a longing for a time before this had happened. Norah felt for her. She was suffering, knowing the song had been overheard. It took the pressure off immensely. It wasn’t a declaration. It was a mistake.
‘I was going to knock,’ Norah said.
‘Then why didn’t you?’ Poppy asked.
‘Because I heard you singing. I’ve never heard you do that before. It stopped me in my tracks. You were really good,’ Norah told her frankly.
Poppy’s mouth pinched at the corners. ‘I’m not a singer.’
‘Bullshit,’ Norah said. Whatever else she felt uncertain about, it wasn’t Poppy’s singing.
‘I’m just an instrumentalist,’ Poppy said.
‘That’s weird,’ Norah told her plainly.
‘It’s weird?!’ Poppy said.
‘Yeah. I mean, you can do all of it. Why wouldn’t you want to?’ Norah asked her.
‘I just like the guitar, that’s all,’ Poppy said dismissively.
‘Then why did you write a song with lyrics?’ Norah pressed.
‘I... Well, I kind of thought... Look, I want to perform, but if that doesn’t work out—which, let’s face it, is very fucking likely—I’ve been working on my lyrics so I can maybe sell songs to other performers. I’ve heard you can make a good living doing that. But to do it, you have to perform a demo in the first place so they can hear how it roughly sounds. And I know I can hit the notes enough to be able to record demos, so that’s what I was doing.’
‘You want to sell the song?’ Norah asked.
‘Not that one,’ Poppy said quickly.
‘What’s it called?’
‘I don’t know yet. I’ve just been calling it “Norah’s Song”,’ Poppy said, looking at the floor.
Norah couldn’t help but smile slightly. ‘“Norah’s Song”?’
‘Shut up, OK? I know it’s silly,’ Poppy said.
Norah swallowed. ‘I don’t think it’s silly.’
‘What do you think?’ Poppy asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Norah replied honestly.
Poppy accepted that with sadness. ‘Right.’
‘Why didn’t you want me to hear it?’ Norah asked.
She felt nervous asking that question because it was the question. The answer was going to blow this thing wide open.
‘Because I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to tell you how I felt. So I told my guitar instead,’ Poppy said with sincerity.
Norah understood that completely. But what she didn’t understand was what made this whole thing so bloody scary to her. Why was she freaking out? Why couldn’t she just say, ‘Hey, it’s OK. I don’t feel that way about you, but we can still be mates.’ That was what she should say, wasn’t it?
‘You could have talked to me,’ Norah said.
‘You had enough going on. It didn’t seem right,’ Poppy said.
That niggled Norah. ‘You think I can’t talk about anything because of my dad?’
Poppy looked surprised. ‘I, I don’t know. Maybe? It was hard to know.’
‘Well, I can. OK? I don’t need to be tiptoed around. I thought you knew that,’ Norah snapped at her. She didn’t like her own tone, but it had snuck up on her.
Poppy gave her a long look. ‘How could I know anything? We don’t talk about that.’
‘Because I don’t want to. I thought you understood.’
‘Why do you keep saying I should understand everything?’ Poppy asked, irked.
‘Because it happened to you, too. I guess I just thought you got everything without being told,’ Norah said, and they were officially having their first real argument.
‘Well, I don’t! I know the same kind of thing happened to us, but it doesn’t make me a mind reader,’ Poppy told her.
Norah wanted to argue with that. But it was a bit too reasonable.
She suddenly felt silly. She’d thought there was some unspoken agreement. A silent understanding. But maybe it was just a way for her to let herself think she didn’t have to talk about her dad. That it would all be OK somehow without ever having to do anything. Maybe that was stupid.
She wasn’t healing. The grief wasn’t going anywhere. It was just sitting, stewing, waiting.
‘Right. Then let’s talk. Let’s talk about how my dad kept falling asleep randomly and vomiting and decided to pretend nothing was wrong until the seizures started. Let’s talk about how, by then, the tumour in his head was the size of a fucking tennis ball. Let’s talk about how that fucking tumour absorbed all his kindness and spat out a mean stranger. Let’s talk about how his last words to me were, “Fuck off!”’
Poppy’s eyes were wide with shock. And Norah did something then that she had never done in front of Poppy. The balloon had finally popped. She started to cry.
‘Oh Christ,’ Poppy whispered, rushing over to her, kneeling in front of Norah’s chair and putting a hand on her shoulder. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Before Norah knew what was happening, she was leaning over, weeping into Poppy’s shoulder, not just crying but flat-out sobbing.
It went on for an amount of time that was impossible to pinpoint. It could have been seconds; it could have been minutes. But then it ended, and she realised she was on the floor, in Poppy’s arms, released from something.
She looked up at Poppy, and Poppy looked down at her with her electric-blue eyes filled with compassion. Before Norah had time to think about it, she leaned up and pressed her lips to Poppy’s. And it was happening. They were kissing.
A second later, Poppy jumped back. ‘You’re upset. You don’t know what you’re doing,’ she said anxiously.
‘I thought you wanted to kiss me?’ Norah asked nervously.
‘I do,’ Poppy said vehemently.
‘Then kiss me,’ Norah told her firmly.
Poppy did as she was told.
Norah’s confusion was washed away. This felt right—so right that she couldn’t believe it had never happened before. She’d had a few kisses in her time, but not like this. Poppy’s warm, soft mouth was telling her things, secrets she couldn’t learn any other way.
Norah understood what had frightened her about the song now. The fear had just been excitement wearing a disguise. She wanted Poppy to want her. Because down deep, in a place she hadn’t dared go, Norah wanted Poppy too.