Eleven
Now
Well, that was that. Norah wasn’t gonna be able to go back to The Sugar Cube now. If she wanted a lunch out, she’d have to go to the newsagent for a prepackaged parody of a sandwich.
That was annoying. She liked The Sugar Cube. How much territory was she prepared to surrender to Poppy? What if Poppy turned up in Tesco? Would she quit eating altogether?
No. The Sugar Cube was one of those little pleasures that made Norah’s life bearable. She couldn’t let it go.
It was funny that it took a bagel to turn Norah’s thinking around, but that was her red line. She was going to have to figure out how to be a normal person around Poppy. There was no better time to start on that because it was almost time to get Freddie. She was going to see Norah at the school gates imminently.
She grabbed Freddie’s post-school snacks out of the cupboard and headed to the school, arriving at the gates just in time to see Poppy pull up in her car across the road. She got out and jogged across the road.
Norah braced herself. ‘Hello,’ she greeted Poppy.
Poppy looked around her like Norah was talking to someone else. ‘Oh, me? Hi.’
‘Your shift finished?’ Norah asked, trying to do an impression of how normal people sounded.
‘Uh, yeah. How about you?’ she asked anxiously as they headed through the gates and across the playground.
‘Yeah, I work from home.’
‘What do you do?’
‘Customer service online.’
‘Oh,’ Poppy said, a chuckle escaping her.
‘Is that funny?’ Norah asked defensively.
Poppy looked slightly scared, which Norah didn’t hate.
‘Not as such.’ Poppy paused and licked her lips nervously. ‘I was just... I wouldn’t have expected you to do a people job.’
Norah didn’t say anything.
‘I just mean, you weren’t really... You liked your own company, as I recall,’ Poppy added.
‘Not always,’ Norah said, though she knew it was true.
She wasn’t and had never been a Chatty Kathy. The only reason her current job was bearable was that she wasn’t having to speak to anyone using her mouth. Typing on a screen left a gap between her and the customer, which made it less like dealing with an actual human and all that came with that.
‘Sorry, I’m sure... Anyway,’ Poppy muttered, embarrassed.
Norah was annoyed with herself. She was supposed to be developing a cordiality with Poppy. Hell of a start.
‘Sometimes you just gotta suck it up and do something you hate to pay the bills,’ Norah said. ‘You don’t always get to choose. Especially when people are relying on you.’
Poppy gave a knowing nod. ‘You said it.’
They joined the queue at the door, waiting for the kids to be released. They didn’t say anything else to each other, but Norah thought, OK, that was normal. Right? No one would have looked at that and known we’d been what we’d been.
Twenty Years Ago
Norah was a mess. She’d had no sleep. How could she snooze after all that? She’d discovered a new element of her sexuality and been outed all in about the span of half an hour. She couldn’t process it. So she was choosing not to.
She went to school and headed to art. Joy was hard at work, moved on from her last painting of Edgar Allan Poe and halfway through a haunting depiction of Mary Shelley working in a call centre.
‘She looks exhausted,’ Norah said, examining Mary.
‘She’s got to meet unrealistic targets, and she’s completely behind,’ Joy explained. ‘I based it on my mum’s job.’
‘It’s great. Totally depressing.’
‘Thanks,’ Joy said with a rare smile.
Norah got out her latest panel and went to work on it. Unfortunately, the pencils were now linked to what had happened with Poppy, so Norah was distracted straight off the bat. But with a herculean mental effort, she pushed that to the side and managed to crack on.
But then she happened to glance over at the door, and she saw Poppy out there, looking right at her. She gave a little wave. She looked nervous. It was alarmingly cute.
Norah took a deep breath, put down her pencil, and went out to talk to her.
‘Hi,’ Poppy said, sounding different. She was usually so easy and casual about everything. Today, she looked like she was at a job interview. Formal and uptight.
‘Hello,’ Norah said, trying to work out what her mouth should do. She settled on a flat smile.
‘I wanted to check in on you,’ Poppy said. ‘Last night was... Is your mum OK?’
Norah laughed snarkily. ‘Well, she was acting totally normal this morning, put out my breakfast like usual, said bye and went to work.’
‘So, full denial?’ Poppy said.
‘It’s just the Cauldwell way,’ Norah shrugged.
Poppy sighed. ‘Wow. If that had been my mum, she’d have sat down on the bed and demanded to talk it out with both of us there and then.’
Norah snorted. ‘That sounds like a nightmare, if I’m honest.’
‘It’s just the Jennings way,’ Poppy said with a better, more sincere smile.
They laughed together then, and that felt good. Easier.
‘Do you think you’ll talk to her about it?’ Poppy asked.
Norah mulled that over. ‘Going on experience, in about six months, we’ll talk about it for one minute, and then it will never come up again.’
Poppy nodded and then swallowed. ‘Do you think we should talk about it?’
‘I don’t know,’ Norah admitted. ‘I’m all over the place right now.’
‘Me too,’ Poppy said. ‘But I just wanted to say it’s OK. If that’s it, I wouldn’t stop being your friend.’
Norah found herself suddenly even more afraid. Was that all Poppy wanted? Had she tried it out with Norah and decided, ‘Ya know what? That’s about all I need from her. Job done.’ Had Norah been disappointing?
That turned Norah’s stomach because she hadn’t been disappointed. All kinds of crazy thoughts had slipped into her head last night during that kissing session. Norah recalled that she had gotten so turned on that she had made a decision that she wanted to lose her virginity to Poppy. If her mother hadn’t walked in, she would have gone ahead and done just that, if Poppy had been willing.
‘Is that what you want?’ Norah asked. ‘To just be friends.’
Poppy’s brow creased. ‘No,’ she admitted quietly, touching the back of her neck anxiously.
Norah let out a small sigh of relief. She knew this was the moment to stop panicking, or it was going to be over before it started. She needed to make herself brave, or she’d never kiss Poppy again. She couldn’t have that. What had happened was good. In her gut, she knew that much.
‘I don’t think I do either,’ she said to Poppy.
Poppy’s eyes widened in utter surprise. ‘Oh!’
‘You didn’t think I was going to say that?’
‘No,’ Poppy admitted. ‘I honestly thought... I had this feeling that you were going to say you were getting busy with exams coming up, something like that.’
‘God, that is how I would handle it,’ Norah admitted, revolted with herself. She was more her mother’s daughter than she’d have liked to admit.
‘So, is this... Are we...’ Poppy said, gesturing with her hands as though she was going to be able to conjure the exact right word out of thin air.
After watching it go on for a few seconds, Norah decided she’d better lend a hand. ‘It’s... Well, we could... It’s... We...’
Jesus, what word was the word for this? The exact right word that walked the line between wanting to be together without any pressure whatsoever. Nobody wanted to say too much or too little.
But Poppy had her own way around the linguistic hole. She started laughing. ‘Can I just say... the reason I’m bad at this is that boys just... ask you out. Or you snog them, and then they assume you’re their girlfriend unless you tell them otherwise. I’ve never had to do this bit before.’
Norah smiled. ‘Me neither.’
‘I don’t mind it, though,’ Poppy grinned. ‘It's kind of nice to be... nervous.’ Poppy’s grin slid away abruptly. ‘Sorry, that sounded stupid.’
‘I think it’s nice, too,’ Norah assured her.
Easy, breezy Poppy was sweating this. It scared Norah a little, but it also electrified her. She wanted to kiss her right there in the hallway—not that she really would, but the thought was exciting.
Norah couldn’t believe that twenty-four hours ago, she hadn’t known she wanted this. And now she couldn’t stop looking at her lips.
‘What shall we do?’ Poppy asked.
‘Ummm....’
‘I mean, should we... Go out? Together? Date... stuff?’ Poppy asked.
‘Maybe we can just do things like normal?’ Norah said. ‘I like it the way it is.’
Poppy nodded, looking happy. ‘You’re right. It was already good, wasn’t it?’
Just then, the art teacher, Mrs Simmons, popped her head out. ‘Excuse me, but we don’t have drop-in hours, Poppy Jennings. Get along to where you should be and stop distracting my students.’
Poppy rolled her eyes at Mrs Simmons. ‘Jesus, chill. I’m going.’
Mrs Simmons looked at Norah—who was far less inclined to be sassy—and raised an eyebrow.
Norah felt the pressure of that eyebrow intensely. She said, ‘Bye’ to Poppy very quickly and went back in, Mrs Simmons shutting the door behind her with finality.
Norah returned to her table and happened to glance back at the window. To her delight, Poppy’s face reappeared to give her one last wave goodbye. Norah waved back, and Poppy ducked away.
The rest of the session passed without incident. Except that Joy kept asking why she was smiling like that.