Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
Bren is in a chain café in town, on a hot date with his laptop.
Shooting out emails to different adventure centres, enquiring for the winter season, keeping his leads warm, his options open.
He never usually queries this far in advance, just shows up and banks on availability, but he needs to do something.
Busy his bouncing brain, his bouncing knee.
Fighting what could be some kind of encroaching psychosis, surely, when he can’t sit still, can’t hear his own thoughts through the noise.
He scrolls on the flight app again, between emails; prices have gone up, because he keeps checking, probably. Damn algorithms.
Define stir crazy, he googles, when he closes the app and sees that Nora has still not texted him back.
Define the brain disorder that he thinks about, but never names out loud. Ninety-nine percent hereditary, apparently.
He gets up for his second coffee and isn’t thinking about all that when a girl he used to know – a vague connection from secondary school – joins the queue behind him.
Although vague is probably inaccurate, seeing as he’d lost his virginity to her after a school hockey match one night.
He remembers the pastel curtains in her bedroom.
The soft cotton of her bra. How she’d tasted of spearmint Polos and how, the next day, she’d told her friends he was bad in bed.
Cruel, and humiliating, though he no longer cares.
Does care, though, about how red Nora had turned, when she’d found out.
How she’d gone and lost her own virginity, not long afterwards.
Bren? the girl – now woman – says, from behind him. Brennie Fergs?
Hi, Lisa, Bren says, arranging his face as though he’s pleased to see her.
I thought it was you! God, it’s been so long! I thought you were off nomad-ing, or whatever?
She is wearing a lot of make-up; looks pristine, if you like that kind of thing. Bren has the fleeting thought that she will be thanking herself for putting so much effort in, that morning, in front of the mirror. Her lips are peach-pink and glossy, Julia-Roberts-wide.
I am, Bren says, then, without thinking: I’m just back for Nora’s wedding.
The wedding, he’s sure, that won’t be going ahead.
Nora? Lisa frowns. The girl with the – wiggling her fingers in front of her eyes, and Bren remembers, beyond the bad in bed rumour, why it was they did not stay friends.
You mean her heterochromia?
Oh! Lisa says, her manicured nails fluttering to her mouth. Is that what it was? I’m so sorry. That’s terrible.
They move forward in the queue, one person closer to the till.
Why is it terrible, Bren asks.
She’s not, like, dying, or anything?
What? No! It’s just like, a birthmark, or something. Or having red hair. Jesus.
Red hair is quite the curse, though, Lisa says, regressing to some old banter that was never that funny in the first place. She touches his arm as she says it, and Bren steps away from her, pretending he’s merely keeping pace with the queue.
You hear these things though, don’t you, Lisa goes on, when he doesn’t respond, now that we’re this age? D’you remember Kady Hall? She’s got some auto-immune thing now, bless her. And my cousin Simon, he got cancer, and divorced, all within the space of like, a year.
Bren does not know this person, but pretends to care. Brutal, he says.
So brutal, Lisa agrees, as another person orders their coffee, and Bren squints at the menu, as if trying to decide what he wants. So you’re just back for the wedding? And you’re not the one marrying her?
What?
A laugh, then, from Lisa. She sweeps her fringe to the side.
We all had bets, Lisa says, that you’d get hitched on a beach somewhere, on that world trip of yours. It’s all coming back to me now.
Right, Bren says.
But you’re single?
Why would you assume that, he asks, but rather than deadpan, he realises it might sound as though he’s flirting back. He orders his coffee, taps his card.
I’m going out on a limb here, Brennie, Lisa says, and nobody else has ever called him that but her, this girl who called him bad in bed fifteen years ago, who doesn’t know him at all but is touching his arm again as his cappuccino gets made behind the counter, milk frothing, steam hissing, someone else’s name being called, Elaina?
for an oat latte which is sitting, uncollected, on the side.
Or do you have someone already, Lisa asks, as Bren pockets his bank card. Doesn’t look at her when he says yes.
Ah, well. Can’t blame a girl for trying, she says, unfazed. In our thirties, now, aren’t we? Need to settle down, if I can.
Then I’m definitely not your guy, Bren tells her, and she laughs again, orders her own chai latte. Does he fancy a catch up, anyway?
I can’t, Bren says. I’ve got to get back to – he gestures beyond the window – my mum. For lunch.
Sure, she says, clearly choosing not to comment on how he’d just ordered his cappuccino to drink in, rather than take away. How’s she doing?
Odd question, Bren thinks, when she doesn’t know his mother.
Does she. Prickle of discomfort, then. Old fear, about what people know, what they’ve heard.
Visions of her traipsing in her slippers around Sainsbury’s; talking to nobody on the street; crying in the police station, mouth twitching. She’s fine, he says.
Because I never got the chance to say I was sorry, Lisa says, and Bren assumes she’s referring to the bad in bed thing, but then she says when your dad died, and all.
Bren stiffens. Looks back at the drinks menu on the wall.
Filter.
Espresso.
Macchiato.
We all felt so bad for you, when we heard, Lisa says. And then you didn’t come back for upper sixth, so none of us could say anything, or even … check you were all right.
Someone calls his name. Someone says Bren, or at least, is calling out Ben, and that’s close enough, he’ll take it, he reaches out for the white cup on its saucer, shudder of bone china in his hand.
So are you? Lisa asks him. All right?
And he says course, it was a long time ago, still not looking at her as he says it was nice to see her, and she says you too.
There is a pause between both her words like she is taken aback by his response which is entirely normal, he thinks, he’s sure, and he puts his coffee down on the table he was sitting at and leaves, without drinking it.
Laptop shoved in his bag. Cold sunlight outside.
Long strides taking him out of town and into the countryside, too much caffeine in his veins, already.
_
Hitched on a beach, he scoffs, once he’s miles away.
Along the riverbank, with its reeds and its swans, the underpass with the old graffiti that used to be green but has faded to white.
Ali Cat Is A Ledge. JM LUVS BP. He has a flash of bubble writing back at school, the smell pens Nora loved to use at her kitchen table, the apple flavour, the blueberry, in what world, Freya asked, does this smell like blueberries?
Their world, Frey, his father had said, as he watered her plants through the open back door.
Bren walks so fast he could be running. Pulls out his phone to check the flights yet again, and they’re still there, the two tickets to New Zealand that he could buy right now, if he dared.
He lets his mind wander as he opts for the long way home.
Picturing where they might stay, in Queenstown; Kelvin Heights, maybe.
Or closer to Arrowtown. Good brunch there.
Plenty of trees, Nora would love the colours in autumn.
The way people sieve for gold in the river.
Or maybe they could go somewhere else entirely?
Visit the markets in Delhi or Marrakesh for all the bright fabrics, the fresh oranges, the loose-leaf teas.
Detox, from everything. Maybe she’d want to open her own stall, or shop, or art café, sell her own wares.
Paint or draw again. He could take groups out biking or hiking or rock climbing, help her close up at night.
And they wouldn’t head home afterwards but to the beach, or the local bar.
To the secret spot on the shore they’d make their own.
Skimming stones. Leaning in, her mouth on his, and they’d taste of each other, he is lost and daydreaming and so far gone he walks past the signpost for home and makes it to the next village before he realises, has to double back like a moron.
Bren? his mother calls, when he finally makes it home.
Hi, he says. He has brought her things from the village shop, to make up for the detour.
A bunch of tulips, a bag of hot cross buns, little gifts that show he is a good person, a thoughtful person, not someone who wants to wreck a home or a promise that’s been made that, to be fair, he was not part of.
A person who loves his mother, who loves his best friend, and doesn’t love make you do hard, questionable things, sometimes the hard things are the right things, the things you’re told not to do.
His mother fusses over the gifts he’s bought.
Tells him they’re lovely. That tulips are her favourite, he’s so sweet for remembering; which he hadn’t, but says that he did.
_