Thirty-Two
Jesus, this was what you got for making even a slight effort. Unwanted male attention.
‘I need to go. Catch you later,’ Norah said, taking two steps back from the random guy with a dad goatee who was trying to engage her in inane chitchat.
‘Can I get your number?’ he begged.
‘I don’t have one. I’m a Luddite,’ Norah lied. ‘Never touch technology.’
‘So, how does anyone contact you?’ he asked suspiciously.
‘I’m psychic. I sense that someone wants to talk to me, and I find them. See you around,’ she said. She’d have preferred to simply say, ‘No’, but you never knew how they’d take it. Better to be weird.
Norah looked over at Poppy, who was busy with some pretty young woman at the counter. She watched Poppy giving the woman a genuine smile she couldn’t seem to summon for Norah. She felt a pang of jealousy, which was extremely stupid. All was well now. They’d had a silly moment, but they would move past it.
Norah walked briskly away from the café. She walked back to Orchid Street and let herself into her mother’s house, the familiar scent of her mother's plugin air freshener wafting up her nostrils aggressively.
‘Norah, is that you?’ her mother’s voice blared from the kitchen.
‘Yeah, Mum. Just got in,’ Norah replied, picking up her laptop from the table and opening it. She had about a minute to get logged in.
Her mother appeared in the kitchen doorway. ‘I didn’t see you come in last night. Must have been a long guitar lesson.’
Norah sighed, already feeling the fatigue from dodging her mum's probing. ‘I guess so.’
Her phone buzzed. Max again. Hi, how’s it going? She muted him and stuck her phone back in her pocket. They’d already put together a Freddie custody schedule. What more was there to say? Norah had no interest in being buddies.
‘You and Poppy seem to be spending a lot of time together,’ her mother tried again, her tone sly.
Norah forced a laugh. ‘We’re friends, Mum.’
Her mother’s eyes narrowed. ‘Of course you are,’ she said.
Norah sat on the pull-out sofa, now in day mode, and logged in. ‘I’ve got some work to do, so I need to focus.’
‘What is it you do, again?’ her mother asked, following her to the sofa and plonking down next to her.
Norah groaned inwardly. ‘I work for an online flower retailer, Mum. I have said.’
‘Of course, of course. But you can talk to me while you work, right?’ her mother pressed, budging closer on the sofa.
Norah’s screen lit up with a barrage of customer inquiries. ‘Mum, I need to concentrate.’
Her mother peered at the screen. ‘Who are all these names?’
‘Customers,’ Norah replied, trying to maintain her patience. ‘People with flower-related questions and complaints.’
‘Like what?’ her mother asked, not getting the hint.
Norah sighed. ‘Like delivery issues, wrong orders, stuff like that.’ She cued up the next customer and pasted in her form opener.
Her mother nodded thoughtfully. ‘Interesting. So, what’s this one about?’
Norah glanced at the complaint coming up on the screen. ‘It’s about a missing bouquet. I need to check the tracking and get back to them.’
As she started typing a response, her mother was practically sitting on her shoulder. ‘Why would a bouquet go missing?’
‘Mum, please,’ Norah said, her tone edging towards desperation. ‘I need to do this without distractions.’
Her mother huffed but stayed put. Norah tried to focus on the task at hand, but her mother’s presence was like a persistent itch she couldn’t scratch.
She clicked through the order details, trying to make sense of the tracking information. She cued up another complaint, identical in nature, moving between them for speed. She could feel the pressure to get the cue down mounting.
‘Looks like it was delivered to the wrong address,’ she muttered, more to herself than to her mother.
‘Maybe you should have used a different courier,’ her mother suggested.
Norah gritted her teeth. ‘Mum, I really—'
Her mother’s landline rang. ‘Hold on, dear, I need to take this,’ she said, stepping away to answer the call.
Norah let out a sigh of relief and quickly typed up her response to the customer. In her haste to finish, she accidentally sent them the tracking information for the other customer. She realised her mistake a second too late.