People In Love

Chapter 1

ONE

Nora is on the train home when Bren emails her, after months of nothing.

It is the same day that Robin has asked her to marry him, and she is still dazed, and full of celebratory butter cake, and feelings she cannot quite name.

Sugar down her top. Sun already set, because it is winter; dark even before she leaves work.

It is normal to go for such stretches without hearing from him. Why today, though. Why now. LIFE CHANGED, says the subject line, and Nora stares at it for a full minute before she opens the email. Train swaying from side to side as she reads.

His entire message is just a short paragraph.

Something to write home about, he opens with; she can hear his voice in her head, see his freckled hands as he taps out the words.

He’s found a chocolate bar in New Zealand that’s changed everything.

Whittaker’s, it’s called, the Coconut Block.

Big news, is she writing this down, he can’t have her moving through the world for another moment without tasting it.

Then he tells her about the spare room he’s renting, the silhouette of the mountains in the morning, the colour of the water in the lake.

He doesn’t actually describe these things, because he is no poet, pretends there is no sentimentality about him.

But Nora reads between the lines, as always.

Glimpses the lyricism that she knows is there.

He signs off with his name, a single kiss, and Nora reads it three times while the train passes through stations that are not hers. Heartbeat slow, almost stalled.

Bren, she types back, before congratulating him on the chocolate.

While she appreciates his insistence that she try some, an online search shows you can’t buy it here in England, oh well, there will always be Cadburys.

She keeps her message light, as ever. Does not say the things she wants to, does not ask the questions that hang in her heart like dark fruit whenever they exchange messages like this, which is not often, but often enough, before things go quiet again.

She finishes her reply just as the train slows into her stop.

She mentions her mother, and his mother, as fellow commuters file for the door.

Tells him about the workshop she’s running next week.

Tells him, too, about the storm, the train disruption, how three people have died due to the winds and the falling trees.

I don’t know why we give storms names now, Nora types. That Alwen is too charming a name, surely, for something that has killed people in their own back gardens, or while they walked their dogs in the park. Living out ordinary days, until they’re the opposite. Something you’d never see coming.

She does not tell him, in this email, that Robin has proposed to her.

Or, by extension, that she has said yes.

Three times, in fact. Yes, yes, yes.

_

Off the train, she climbs the stairs with the dozens of others alighting for home; jostled by damp coats and umbrellas as they cross the bridge to the ticket barriers.

Into the night air, wet pavements but no rain, making her way across the car park to the small supermarket on the corner.

Taking a wire basket, wandering the aisles as she muses on what to have for dinner.

Has to be Robin’s favourite, surely, after a day like today.

Tomatoes firm in her hand, block of extra mature Cheddar.

Expensive chocolate she’d usually only buy at Christmas.

Hot coffee from the machine, too, which she hands to Joe on her way out, the man with the Staffie who sits by the sliding doors on a tattered blanket.

Who always gives her a smile, says thanks love, with such familiarity it makes her kind of sad, because coffees change nothing, ongoing kindness seems to do nothing, except it’s not nothing, her mother would argue, it’s something.

And the world is built on small somethings.

Her fingertips brush Joe’s as she passes him the paper cup, and he says you take care now, and she says yes, you too.

Lingers, scratches the soft head of his Staffie.

Wanting to tell Joe – or anyone – her news.

Wanting to say, my partner proposed to me today.

Crazy, right. Except it’s not really, seeing as we’ve been together for nine years, lived together for seven.

Long enough that she’d not expected any huge surprises, only small ones, like the text he’d sent her, earlier that day.

Big news, Robin’s message had said, at noon, interrupting her review of the spring events calendar, her tea half drunk on the desk.

I’m on lunch and in the vicinity. And so she met him at the deli, the one they always liked to go to when they were both in London; would order bagels, one poppy seed, one everything, to share.

He was already in the queue when she arrived.

A head taller than everyone else, his dark hair hidden beneath the hat she’d knitted him to stave off the January chill.

Long coat, smart shoes, because he was working for a new client that month.

Or perhaps he’d dressed for the occasion. For her.

Nora thinks about this as she climbs the steady hill behind the supermarket.

Silver light from the street lamps, shopping bag heavy in her hand.

How they’d found a bench by the water, looked out at the boats and buildings as people walked by, on their phones, looking at their feet.

Just her and the man she shared her home with, shampoo bottles and tea bags and a corner sofa they’d picked out with the care normally reserved for children’s names.

Silent chewing between conversation. Crumbs on their coats, brushed from their knees.

And then it happened. He’d said he had to get back to his shoot, so he stood to hug Nora goodbye and she’d put her hands in his pockets because she was cold, and her hands brushed against something so she pulled it out and looked down at this small black leather box, and her heart swelled and her stomach plunged, like she’d fallen off something tall.

She feels that in her, now. As if it’s happening all over again as she crests the station hill and turns down an alleyway. The way everything had slowed. Strangers, passing, by the river. White noise of cars, an overground train.

And she’d flipped the box open – because he didn’t say she couldn’t – and there was a ring, even though they’d always said there wouldn’t be, that they didn’t need one or agree with it necessarily, the cost and the pomp and the paperwork.

But there it was. Untraditional and asymmetrical, like her eyes, an emerald stone set in gold, and she looked up at Robin and he seemed hesitant, as if he wasn’t sure she was going to like it, and before he could say anything or even ask the question she had said yes, three times, and she did not think of Bren as she said it.

Just as she won’t think of him when anyone asks for the proposal story, which, presumably, people will.

She turns now into her street, to the large house split into two-bedroom flats.

Robin is not home yet; their lower-ground flat still in darkness as Nora lets herself in, slips off her shoes, flicks the lights on.

Her own shadow passing the frames on the walls as she heads for the kitchen.

Heating on, windows steamed up as she boils water, slices tomatoes.

A little music at first, but her thoughts are loud enough, so she’s turning it off just as her fiancé – weird, wondrous – is through the door, saying sorry, sorry, there was this one shot we couldn’t quite get, ah, something smells great, as he crosses the kitchen, hands on her waist. Kissing her.

All other thoughts, loud or otherwise, melting away.

What a day, Robin says, his forehead on hers.

It’s about to get better, she says. I’m making pomodoro.

And Robin does an actual little dance right there in the kitchen, says can he do anything, no, a quick shower then, he’ll be back, and Nora nods, keeps cooking.

Scatters fresh basil like confetti once he returns, and they have spaghetti then sex, in that order.

Pasta simmered and devoured, richly red and flecked onto the table as they twirl their forks and relive what has happened.

Bowls abandoned without washing up, slow, full-tummied move to the sofa after they’ve eaten.

Too full for such a thing really, laughing, soft mouths, light breath.

Heavy, dense warmth as he lies on top of her afterwards, her hands trailing along his back.

Small crater of a scar above his coccyx.

Getting married, Robin says, as they break off the good chocolate with their fingers, later, in bed. Yes, says Nora, as she leaves the cocoa on the back of her tongue, not Whittaker’s Coconut Block, but delicious, all the same.

Who’d have thought.

_

Not me, says Shay, the next morning at the art café.

It is a Thursday, and they start early on Thursdays; host a morning qigong class before they open to the public and serve breakfast. I was thinking about it last night, Shay tells her, as she raises the blinds, grey light touching the objects on the shelves.

Ceramics, dried flowers. Bronze writing implements that nobody ever buys but look alluring, all the same; Nora harbours a secret desire for the sashiko needles, gold plated and imported from Hiroshima.

No? Nora says, as she flicks on the coffee machine. Engagement ring gleaming as she does it, a strange new weight on her finger.

It shouldn’t be a surprise, Shay says, but it is because you’ve been together so long. I figured you’d have done it, by now, if you were going to. And Robin’s like, kind of old now.

Nora laughs, knowing that Shay would say that to his face, if he were here, which somehow makes it okay.

Is thirty-seven old?