Chapter 9
NINE
They leave the shop without buying anything. Without speaking to the beige woman, even, who is still on the phone in the back room. And then they’re out on the street and it is dusk, and Bren feels warmed through, and spaced-out, like he’s knocked back a shot of whiskey.
Thanks for coming, Nora says to him. Which feels formal, he thinks.
Like she, too, senses what has passed between them, and is trying to pretend nothing has.
A taxi drives past; a runner with a reflective headband, puffing into the early evening air.
Bren watches these things moving fast, wonders if he should tell her what is rushing through him, as well.
If he should stop her on the street while she is still wedding-dress-less – wedding-ring-less – and tell her what just happened. What he’s realised.
He is just drawing breath to say her name, when she makes a noise of surprise.
Well, she says, looking at her phone. Looks like we should go back.
Back where?
Twelve years, he thinks. Or even further. The moment I met you, or you gave me my St Christopher; the moment I got on that plane or made that phone call at the airport, whichever moment I could go back to and change this, just tell me, and I’d do it.
To the dress shop, she says, so I can buy something, after all. Seeing as we’ve now set a date.
It is not raining, but there is white noise all around, traffic and footfall and a roaring in his ears. She doesn’t even pause, or soften her words. Just holds her phone up, shows him a blur of messages from Robin.
They had a cancellation, she says. For the end of April.
Insides spinning, blurring, like the reflectors on a bike that goes by.
That’s so soon, Bren says, and she says she knows; sounds taken aback, like him. But she is looking back down at her phone, already. Tells him Robin’s paid the deposit.
And despite what she’d said before, she begins to walk away from the dress shop, down the street. Bren follows, the movement helping, like it always does, so he can at least form a full sentence.
So, he says, how do you … feel, about that?
Great, she says, too quickly, he thinks – that word, again. Great! I’ve not seen the place, obviously. I was hoping we’d have that planning day, before we … locked in. It is stunning, though. And Robin loves it.
But is this what you want, he says, and it comes out of him like that kettle water, scalding, but she either doesn’t hear it, or doesn’t want to. Doesn’t answer, as she taps back a message to Robin. And that scald starts to blister, now, all the way down.
We’ve got to get the legal bit done separately, she says, reading Robin’s message aloud. Before, or afterwards. It’s not licensed, is the only thing.
The only thing?
Bren stops walking, pulls out his own phone. Starts searching for the nearest tube station. Jabbing the app that won’t respond, like it’s frozen, got some kind of damn bug.
Hey, Nora says, doubling back. What’s wrong?
I’m just trying to find the route home, he says.
I know the route home, she says. I was going to stop back at the café, first, though. D’you want to come?
Not now, he says. That damn app. He swipes up, shuts it down, reopens it.
Are you all right, Nora asks, frowning now, and that question dampens the heat and the hurt, inside him, like sand thrown on a fire. Because it’s the sort of question his mother would ask, without really caring. Without knowing how to deal with the answer.
I’m fine, he says. Just conscious of the time.
Four thirty? Nora says, glancing at the clock on her own phone.
I said I’d be back for dinner.
All right. Let me just give Robin a ring, and I’ll come with you.
No need, Bren says, but she’s shaking her head, says she should tell Freya and Josie about April, but Bren says no, he can tell them. Why doesn’t she just head home.
Walking again, after he’s said it. Along the kerb, past the potholes filled with rain.
More cars in the road, another bike. He wishes he had a bike right now.
Like he did in Oaxaca. An aluminium frame, two wheels, covering miles without any effort, so much distance, all that space, new views to wipe all other thoughts away.
His feet will have to do, though, but he isn’t tall enough to outstrip Nora’s stride. She keeps pace easily enough, trotting by his elbow. Bren, she says, then again: what’s wrong?
Nothing, he tells her.
It doesn’t seem like nothing, she says.
It seems like you should go home to your fiancé, Bren says, rather than getting on the train home with me, don’t you think?
She does stop walking, at this. He hears the what, in her mouth, even though she does not say it, knows it’s what she’s thinking as he reaches the end of the street and turns onto the main road.
There are more cars here, rainwater sprayed by fast-moving tyres, sundown seeping to the grey-blue of night.
City lights, like noise. Like the rushing, cold wind.
Things he tries to outstrip, as he strides on, leaving Nora somewhere behind.
_
What happened, some girl asked him once, on a beach in Bali.
It was dark, like now, but there were no traffic lights or headlights or gold-lit shopfronts: just the moon, as big as her pupils.
There were a few people not far from them, smoking and shouting, enjoying themselves, board shorts, braids in their hair.
Bren had got his first tattoo, that day.
He was not sure how he felt about it, but he was fine with that; fine with her, this girl; fine with her question that was meant to show an interest and make him feel seen but instead washed over him, like the sea on the sand at their feet.
Life, he replied, because he would not say death, and because her question was so huge, he could make his answer the same.
It comes to him now, like the shuttering billboards above the old car wash he’s passing.
Her gaze, vacant. Stoned. His father’s face looking up at him, almost pleading, as his heart stopped beating in the driveway.
His mother’s shock. No tears. Nora, holding him afterwards, and he walks faster and gets out his phone, checks the flight scanner app instead of the route that’ll take him to the tube station.
Close, balmy air, he craves. So different to the cold, colourless March of right now.
Sand soft and white as talcum powder, as the girl on the beach fingered his then-long hair.
Asked him, in her breathy voice, if he wanted to talk about it.
Like nobody had ever tried to unpeel the layers of him, like this, as if Nora hadn’t done that already – didn’t even need to, in fact, and so he’d laughed at her, this girl in her bikini and sarong on that beach.
Properly. Three years after he’d left. He hadn’t laughed in so long, and he told the girl this: I haven’t laughed in so long.
Like she’d healed him, somehow, not because she’d pried him open with that question, but because he knew the answer to it on some deep, molecular level, no, I do not want to talk about it, that is the last thing I will ever want, to talk about all the things that won’t change if I do, and so they did not talk and they did not touch or fuck or trade phone numbers.
She left, he thinks, sometime before sunrise, as he fell into an exhausted half-sleep there on the sand, and the next day he felt like a shell, like what made him a real, feeling person had upped and left from the inside.
Just like the light in his father’s eyes.
And right now a car blares its horn at him because he has crossed the road without looking, still fixed on the flight app, so he throws his hands up, sorry, shit, blood racing, everything too bright and too dark and that old sparking wire in his gut, it’s this place, it’s being home, it’s breathing the same air as his mother, even, which does something to him, makes him emotionally unstable, and he’s scared he’ll end up like her, her stuff is hereditary, after all, but he doesn’t need to think about that, he refuses, keeps moving.
_
He finds a burger place, seats himself at a booth.
Music playing, wooden forks, the menu laminated and half the size of the tabletop.
He lifts it to look, not absorbing any of the options, not sure if he’s even hungry.
And when he finally lowers it, Nora is sitting across from him; Bren jumps at the sight of her, and swears.
What was that, she asks him, thudding her phone onto the table, the screen alight with his tracked location.
You scared me!
No, she says. Before, out there. What’s going on with you?
But Bren can’t answer. Flips the menu over, looks at the drinks. Nora keeps staring at him, her concern changing to confusion, then anger.
I thought you had to get home?
I changed my mind, he says. Fancied a burger.
Which, now he thinks about it, isn’t a lie. He needs carbohydrates and salt. Something solid and grounding, hot chips, some kind of kick back into the present, sriracha mayo, maybe, some sliced jalapenos.
I don’t understand, Nora says.
Bren is still scanning the menu. Doesn’t understand, himself.
You were the one who offered to come dress shopping with me. You were the one who said you wouldn’t up and leave, or bungee jump out of my life again. But you’ve just pissed off, for no reason.
He is not sure he’s ever heard her swear before, and it throws him. He lowers the menu and almost laughs, mainly because pissed off means being angry, to him, it’s not a verb, but she’s so cross, he knows he shouldn’t laugh at her right now. And it’s not funny. Not really.
That’s not how this works, Nora tells him, gesturing between them.
And what is this, again?
What does that mean?
It means, Bren says, that sometimes you’re not over something when you think you are, for Christ’s sake.
He regrets it as soon as he’s said it. Tries to cover himself.
Like the fact that I got on that plane, he says, and you didn’t.
Nora’s mouth opens, just slightly, at that.