Chapter 5 #4
But to me, Nora, friendship IS all that stuff. The nothing that makes up your days, or how your life looks, like the Polaroids you printed, or like your Monday swims, or the pastry you bought me at lunch.
Three waving dots as he deletes, and then types, for a prolonged moment.
And they might seem insignificant over email or a video call but they’re actually THE significant bits, to me, the real things. Shark bites aren’t real, I don’t think. They’re not representative of my life out there, or who I am. Or what I want to know about you.
Because I do still want to know you.
(Better. I want to know you better.)
Thanks for the swim, and the coffee, and sorry if I ruined your lunch break
and yes
I’ll be leaving soon.
Nora holds her breath as she stands in her dressing gown, watching the screen domino down with message after message. Robin still singing next door. Onions caramelising by now, in the pan.
So I know I’ve screwed up but it would be nice to see you again, if you wanted.
For dinner, maybe.
Three waving dots, for another half a minute, but then nothing else appears. He’s done. So Nora picks up the phone just as Robin begins a deep baritone of I Don’t Care by Ed Sheeran in the kitchen and she replies, before she can decide not to.
Dinner, yes, is all that she types back. At mine?
_
Which is how Bren ends up on Nora’s doorstep, almost a week after the time before.
It’s early March, now, the sky an antiseptic, English grey.
In the daytime he wastes hours in a Costa Coffee in town, avoiding his mother and that house, that shared driveway he does not think about.
Night dark and damp by six in the evening as he rings her doorbell, a bottle of wine under his arm.
It’s been six days since the party. Four since the cold swim and noticing how long and pale her legs were; four of wondering, between his meandering walks and mindless chat with his mother and single-line emails to the outdoor centre – back soon, yes, zero-hour contract, still fine – whether her legs had always been so long.
Hard to tell, over video call. Over traded emails and unsent texts.
Not that he wants to think about her legs. Not that he makes a habit of that.
It is a Friday. He’d showered and put on aftershave, hated how it made him smell of teenage boy and so showered again to get it off.
He has a jolt of a moment where he realises the Robin guy might answer, but before he can arrange his face for such a meeting, the door opens and it is just Nora, like last time, and she looks pretty, and nervous.
Here’s the chocolate, Bren says, before she can say anything.
He pulls it out of his back pocket, the slab he’d bought as a last-minute thought at the airport. Weighty in its green sleeve and gold foil.
It really is life-changing, he assures her. Even if you don’t like coconut, it’s like. Really great.
I do like coconut, she says.
Great, Bren says, again. He says, too, that he brought wine – doesn’t tell her this was because his mother insisted, you don’t go for dinner at a friend’s, Bren, without wine (like she’d know) – but Nora ignores this and does something he is not ready for: steps forward and puts her arms around his neck.
It is the first time they have hugged since he got home.
The first time they have touched, properly, since he left.
The wind lifts his hair, and hers too.
He puts his own hands on the small of her back.
It’s just an acknowledgement, he thinks, that he is here, as he said he would be; pre-planned, pre-arranged.
Bringing chocolate and wine after a string of apologetic texts; he does wonder when she is going to apologise to him, too, but that dissolves as he breathes her in, scent of clementines, bright, and alive.
Stupid, Nora whispers, and she sounds breathless.
What is, Bren asks, but she steps back, small shake of her head, says to come in, that Robin’s in the shower. And then they’re in the kitchen and there are crisps and beers on the table but she can open the wine, if he’d prefer.
Beer’s fine, he says.
Great, she says; that word again, so limp and lifeless. Like lovely, his mother’s favourite.
Your flat’s really nice, Bren says, as she takes a bottle opener from a drawer. I didn’t say that to you, at the party.
I didn’t give you a chance to say much of anything, she concedes. And then when I did, I jumped down your throat.
She must mean the upset in the café, post-swim, and Bren realises that they’re both on the back foot, here; both apologising without actually saying it.
It relaxes him, somewhat. He takes the beer from her.
They hear the creak of the shower tray from the next room; a thud and a bounce, as if Robin has dropped the soap.
He was late home from work, Nora says.
It’s fine, Bren says.
He’s really keen to meet you, she says. Bren drinks some more beer, says yeah. It’ll be good to meet him, too.
Great. Lovely. Good.
So what’s – Bren says at exactly the same time that Nora says how’s – and they break off, saying no you go, no – what were you –
How’s your mum, she asks him.
Don’t you speak to her, pretty often?
But I mean how are you finding it? Being home, with her.
Which is vague, he thinks, and yet all-encompassing. He puts his beer down on the table, takes a crisp from the bowl. It’s fine, he says. Nora is by the kitchen island, uncapping a beer for herself, or for Robin, maybe.
She’s the same, Bren answers.
I think she’s doing really well, Nora says, for what it’s worth. She hasn’t had any episodes, or anything. For a long time.
Do we have to talk about this?
Nora looks across the island at him, the beer bottle poised in her hand.
No, she says. Not if you don’t want to.
Well I don’t want to, if that’s cool.
All right. I just thought it was really nice, how happy she was, when you got back.
Was she?
Of course she was. She called me, the morning after you got home.
Saying what?
Nora opens her mouth, closes it again. Turns to the sink, fills a jug with water from the tap. She thanked me, she says, over her shoulder, but the tap water drowns it out so that Bren has to check when she approaches, sets the jug down.
Thanked you?
I know, she says. It was sweet, but senseless. I said it wasn’t me that brought you home.
Except it kind of was, Bren says.
Well she was beside herself, Nora says, as if breezing past what he’d just said. He is confused by this, by how she wants to talk about real things, but if he tries, it seems she doesn’t want to hear it.
Mm, Bren says. Well. We went to bed ten minutes after I arrived, so she didn’t seem that happy. And day to day, things are pretty muted, I’d say.
That’s the medication, Nora says. It … mellows things, for her.
I know that, Bren says. I did grow up in that house.
Silence, then. Stretched, for several seconds.
And I know that, Nora says. But I’ve also been here for the last twelve years, Bren. And I’m trying to tell you there’s nothing to be scared of, any more.
I’m not scared, Bren says, and Nora says you know what I mean, but he does not.
Who is she to claim, after a brief weekly phone call, or shared neighbourly dinners with Freya there too, that she has any idea what it’s like, to grow up like that?
To hear your mother wailing through your closed bedroom door, to pray for the soothing sound of your father’s voice, to dread the silence more than anything, that deep, still-bodied silence, because that meant shutdown, the person inside lost somewhere, for hours at a time. Days, even. Weeks.
I just, Nora says, and Bren says well don’t.
His heart is beating like the grandfather clock back home. A heavy, slow clunking, too loud for the room.
Nora turns away from him, towards the hob, and Bren drinks more beer. Remembers what she said, at the coffee roasters after their swim: why is this so hard.
So you missed me, then, he says, forcing his voice into gentle mockery; easier than sitting in the awkwardness of whatever the hell they’re tiptoeing around. That’s what you’re saying, right? That I should come home more often?
She glances round at him, a paring knife in her hand.
Josie would like that, she says. Yeah.
And is she really talking about his mother here, he wonders, and Nora is blushing, now, which perhaps means she is wondering the same thing.
Or maybe the flame on the hob is just warm as she’s heating the oil, scraping some pre-crushed garlic into the pan, and can he help with anything, no, she says, no thank you.
Silence, again, just the steam from the wok.
And Bren is just reaching for his beer and asking if she’ll go swimming again on Monday, when she turns to him, her cheeks definitely red, there’s no hiding it, and she looks like she’s full of emotion, words or regret or something else he half recognises, but then she says Bren. Please don’t.
Don’t what, says another voice, before Bren can respond, and it is then that Robin walks in.
_
Bren had not paid him much notice at the party.
Robin had been a little drunk, surrounded by friends, and Bren himself had got talking to some people who had seemed interesting enough; distracting, at least, when Nora was giving him such a wide berth.
But now, freshly showered and with his shirt unbuttoned, Bren sees, for the first time, that Nora’s fiancé is real.
More than just a photograph, or a line in an email.
Which means that Bren can no longer pretend that he’s no one.