Chapter 1 #2
Old enough that I figured that ship had sailed for him, Shay says. For you, too. All the hen parties we host, here? All the wedding invites you make? And you’ve always said you’re not the least bit interested.
And I’m not, really, Nora says. She takes a duster to the shelf and sweeps around the ceramics, careful not to nudge them out of place. But I felt something, when he asked me. Out of nowhere, it just felt … right.
She turns on the spotlights, then, and the pot plants throw shadows around the room.
I had that with Horace, Shay says. All those years insisting I was a cat person, and then there he was, with his spindly legs and his slobbering chops and I was the proud owner of the Greatest Dane in all the land, buying squeaky toys and butternut boxes and a mattress bigger than mine.
I remember.
So soon you’ll be floating down an aisle in a frothy white dress, Shay says. Throwing tantrums about seating plans and lobbing a bouquet at me, your last single friend –
None of that, says Nora, but Shay says just you wait! Everyone says they want something casual and then gets swept up in diamond shoes and hand-embroidered napkins and salmon babies on crumpets.
Blinis, you mean.
So you were thinking about hand-embroidered napkins?
That’s hardly off brand, for me, Nora says, just as the door dings open and the qigong master, Colleen, walks in, stamping the slush from her boots.
What’s off brand? she asks, and Nora offers her a cappuccino; Colleen says she’s a gem.
She has a gem, Shay declares. On her finger.
Thanks for sharing, Shay, Nora says as she pours milk into a jug, and Shay says well you wouldn’t have said anything, and Colleen looks like she’s not following, so Shay points at her own bare finger and then at Nora, who is hiding behind the coffee bar.
Glint of gold, as she raises the steamer wand; a gasp, then, from Colleen.
No, she says.
Yes, says Shay. Colleen claps her hands, her leather gloves making a light smacking sound before she strides across the room, pulling Nora into an embrace.
To Robin? she says, and Nora blushes, both thrilled and embarrassed to be rammed against Colleen’s breast pocket, as Shay laughs, says come on, who else?
_
Quite the normal Thursday ensues. Coffee-making, a calligraphy class.
Nora sells a Jesmonite vase and some soy candles and a bouquet of dried flowers that cost more than the flowers she won’t be having at her wedding.
None of that, she repeats, to Shay. No white dress, no chair covers or family drama.
And then it rolls round to half five, and she knows the actual drama she’ll have to deal with is imminent.
Robin is shooting on location, won’t be back for dinner, and she has to face her mother sooner or later.
Good luck, Shay says, as she pulls on her hat and gloves, just as Robin texts her the exact same thing. Thanks, Nora says. I’ll need it.
Outside, there are still Christmas lights strung above the traffic despite the fact that it’s the end of January.
She dawdles the short distance to the train station, buys a different ticket to usual and gets on a different train.
Puts her headphones in, chews her thumbnail as she watches the lights of London melting into suburbia, going over what it is that she’ll say.
Then half an hour has passed and she’s off the train, over the bridge, past the pub she used to get served in, underage.
Flash of the time she sat so close to Bren his thigh was wedged against hers.
Smell of stale smoke in the upholstery. Bag of crisps shared, salt on the film of the open packet, their friends, his friends really, laughing and joking.
Salt-vinegar of their breath as they all talked until closing, the two of them alone, still talking, on the last bus home.
This same bus, right here. She sits in her preferred seat at the back and watches as the kebab shops and traffic lights give way to a mass of fields and night sky, a place with no street lights, cottage windows glowing gold.
And then there is the duck pond and the village hall, the cottages she knows by name.
Nora wants to stay sitting on the bus, loop back into town.
But instead she thanks the driver, steps off and heads across the grass, barely acknowledging the memories that rise as she passes the swing set on the green.
Summers spent scuffing their shoes on the tarmac, too grown up, then, for swinging back and forth.
Watching the sunsets and the house martins.
Stretching out the hours before Josie would call Bren inside, and she herself would go back to Freya, because there was no point sitting there without him.
Edge of the green, now, where there are two semi-detached cottages standing separate from the others.
Shared gravel driveway, hanging baskets.
Both living room windows with their curtains drawn, pink-patterned on the left, velvet on the right.
Shadow of Jon in the driveway with his buckets and rags, there she is, he’d say, as she crunches past the two parked cars.
Dirt and grime visible now on both bonnets in the moonlight, because he was the only one who ever cleaned them.
At the door, she lets out a long, steadying breath. Then pushes open the unlocked porch, so that her mother calls out, Josie?
It’s me, Nora says, as she steps over the gardening magazines piled on the floor.
Darl! her mother cries when Nora enters the kitchen.
The oven is on, the fan whirring, and the usual jam jars are everywhere, filled with pulses or pebbles, spider plants sprawling from the shelves.
A lucky cat waves on the window sill as Freya glances round from her place by the sink, dressed in a carmine tracksuit, her hair tied up with a head scarf. Just you?
Robin’s on location, tonight.
And to what do I owe this impromptu visit?
Oh, you know, Nora says, her heart pounding in her throat. Boredom.
Touching, Freya says. Make yourself useful then, will you?
Good haul today. I nabbed some velvet shanks, would you believe!
Winter chanterelles, too, and some other interesting specimens that I can’t quite identify …
could be delicious, cooked in a bit of garlic butter, or they could temporarily blind the poor sod who decides to eat them.
Risky, Nora says.
Worth it, I reckon, Freya says, as she holds one up to the light. They’ll go nicely with dinner, if they’re safe.
Oh yeah? What’s cooking?
Turkey dinosaurs, her mother says, which makes Nora snort and say wow, what a throwback.
That’s the second time I’ve heard that term this week, Freya says. Romi says it’s something we should do at the hospice. Throwback Thursdays, or some such nonsense. Remind the residents of the good times.
What’s wrong with that?
What’s wrong is all they bloody do is sit in their beds and throw back! They’re dying, for Pete’s sake. Lying there just waiting for death. We don’t need a day marked for throwing back to the good times; we should make this day, this very moment, a good time.
They both reach for the same mushroom, fingers touching; her mother’s scratched from foraging, Nora’s calloused from her sewing.
Seize the moment, Freya goes on, as Nora chooses another. Let them live, because lord knows people don’t, before they realise they won’t be able to. Eat the cake. Drink the champers. Fart long and recklessly between the bed sheets, which some of them do, mind.
Nora knows this is funny; knows she should laugh. Instead she scrubs harder at her mushroom so that it comes apart in her hand, splits the soft cap from the stalk.
On that, Nora says.
Farting between the bed sheets?
No, she says, and she does laugh at that, a little; Freya too, the sound fluttering, like a shuffle of papers. I, uh. Have something to tell you.
Freya doesn’t look at her; keeps scouring. Nora takes a breath, but then her mother cuts across her, says she’s sensing that this is a moment for the greenhouse.
No, it’s not, Nora says. It’s fine.
Don’t fight it, darl. Sanctuary awaits.
Freya, I –
Your wellies are where you left them. Let’s go and be with the tomatoes.
I don’t need to be with the tomatoes! Nora says, but Freya is already out of the kitchen, pulling on her gardening shoes in the utility room and wrenching the door open. It’s ruddy freezing, she calls out. Grab your coat!
Nora looks at herself in the dark glass of the kitchen window and sighs.
Her mother had always insisted on having emotional conversations somewhere grounding – somewhere you could step outside of yourself, be at one with the earth.
Feel your emotions, yes, but only somewhere sealed off, and appropriate.
So she shrugs on her coat and follows her out, pulling on her once-fuchsia, never-before-cleaned wellington boots.
The oak tree looms at the end of the garden, fanned black against the night.
The river flowing beyond it, silent and unseen. Stars out, now. Rain threatening.
Nora braces herself, ducks into the greenhouse – which is heated, through the winter – and Freya slides the door shut.
Now, she says, taking her hands. Close your eyes, daughter of mine, and breathe with me. In through the nose, out through the nose, that’s it. And again. Now, isn’t that better?
Nora knows it is best to go with it. Keeps her clammy hands in her mother’s rough ones, breathes as she is told to. The sodium lamps are off. The greenhouse smells verdant, a little damp. The tomato plants are –
Frey, Nora says. What’s wrong with your tomatoes?
You’re supposed to have your eyes closed!
But they look –
Like a Kandinsky painting, I thought? But don’t be taken in by aesthetics, Nora. It’s Spotted Wilt. A killer, if you don’t step on it post-haste.
So have you –
Nora, her mother says, an edge to her voice now. The tomatoes are fine. I am fine. Are you not fine? Because I’m sensing something’s off.