Chapter 16 #4
Freya lets out a hollow laugh, and Nora can’t believe she has the audacity to act so righteous, here.
So we won’t talk, she says, ever again? Even after our family gathering?
But we’re not a family, Nora says, slamming the jars she’d been holding onto the side – so hard, it’s surprising they don’t smash. We never have been! And what you did, how you pretend it’s nothing, that’s not normal, Freya.
Who ever said any of this was normal?! I’ve wanted to explain myself for weeks, but you wouldn’t let me, and now, Nora, it’ll have to wait. Can you reach the gravy boat up there? It seems I’ve shrunk a few inches, since our fight.
Nora glares at her, reeling. But before she can retort, Bren walks in through the kitchen door.
She hadn’t heard the porch open, or the wind chimes jangling in the hall.
She sees him, and he sees her. Sees his crooked half-smile as he says Nora’s never been able to reach the gravy boat, Freya.
I don’t know why you keep it on the top shelf.
You get it down, then, Freya says, without greeting him.
You’re hardly taller than me, is all Nora says, when he turns away.
Just about, he says, stretching for the jug – T-shirt rising, showing the hint of a tattoo – and passing it to Freya who has finally closed the fridge door.
All righty, she says, with a sigh. Let’s – wait, Bren. Is that what you’re wearing?
Bren glances down at his usual white T-shirt, a little less stained, now, presumably because Josie has washed it; his cargo trousers, though, flecked with dried mud.
Didn’t Josie ask you to dress smart? Freya asks him. Drag a brush through that barmy hair of yours?
I don’t own anything smart, Bren reasons. And my hair is my hair.
My condolences, Freya says, but neaten up, please, before you join us.
Why?
Just do it, won’t you? Honestly, you two, it’s like trying to talk to a pair of teenagers.
And with that, she bustles from the room with some chutneys, leaving Bren and Nora alone.
Barmy … hair? Bren repeats, watching her go.
Your hair’s fine, Nora says. He looks back at her then, and something passes between them.
Or maybe nothing does. Nora can never tell, with him.
Can never see through the emotions that rush through her when he walks in, the tides in her turning like they always do in his presence. Cresting waves, a swell of feeling.
Knowing what she needs to say to him, when it’s time.
D’you think I actually need to get changed? Bren asks.
I guess so?
They both stand there, not moving.
Want to come? he says. Not to see me get changed, obviously. Just to help me choose a shirt, or something.
I should probably, Nora says, nodding to the back door.
Because Robin is out there, and she should get back.
She should not put herself in a bedroom with Bren, right now, with Josie’s special, strange day laid out before them, like the good plates and paired cutlery.
When they should just get through this meal, just be polite, and maybe after pudding she could take a moment, tell Robin that she needs to –
My mum said you didn’t book the venue, Bren says. So the twenty-second of April’s not happening.
Stillness, between them. Just the lucky cat, waving, from the window sill.
No, Nora says, her throat dry. It’s not.
Were you going to tell me that, at some point? Am I no longer your best man?
He doesn’t seem standoffish, about this; it’s more like he’s teasing. His usually shuttered face wide open. Which breaks her, a little. Flicker of dread. She says they shouldn’t discuss this now.
Then when?
When we’ve not got Robin and our mothers sitting outside, she says. As if everything’s not weird enough, as it is.
What’s weird about it, Bren says, and she opens her mouth with a jilt of panic, because she forgets sometimes – for dangerous, blinding split seconds – that he does not know about Freya and Jon. That she has kept it from him.
Just being together, like this, she says, to cover herself. For the first time since your dad died.
And at this, his wide, open gaze retracts. Like she’s yelled. Like he’s shielding himself. The things they have not said hanging heavy in the room, like the smell of cooked meat and hot oil, her resolve melting, when she sees him melting, too.
I can help you choose a shirt, if you want, she relents, after seeing his face.
Because he’s hurting. Because she needs to put things straight.
Needs to jump, because she always thinks too much, acts too little, and Bren, who usually acts first but says nothing, looks straight at her as he says yeah, he’d like that. Yes please.
_
They choose something black. The shirt he wore on his sixteenth birthday that Nora finds shunted next to his school uniform. Very Jeff Goldblum, she says when she hands it to him, turning away as he pulls off his T-shirt.
His tattoos are less shocking to her, now.
But still she averts her eyes, looking around this room she has not set foot in since he left.
It is familiar and yet so affronting, the way it’s still exactly how she remembers it.
The world map pinned to his ceiling. A drawing she made him, on the wall.
Framed photographs on the window sill, faded from years of sun: one of him and her with Jon at a barbecue; Bren on the hockey pitch, another with school friends, his parents, in their garden.
More of her and him; two others, in fact, three total.
At the beach, when they were twelve, and in a photo booth, a few weeks before he left.
There are six pictures here, and she makes up a half.
Small pain, in her heart, at that.
How’s this, Bren says, and she glances round at him, says good.
Good, Bren echoes, and she can tell they are both playing for time, both waiting for the other to talk first. She turns back to the window while he searches for a comb.
They can’t hear their mothers from this side of the house, nor Robin, whom she’d messaged, said she wouldn’t be long.
He hasn’t replied, though he’s read it. Two blue ticks.
And that photograph of Jon, looking out at her.
Which is what pushes her to stop resisting; spill the truth.
So we didn’t book the venue, she confirms.
Bren is adjusting stray locks of hair in the mirror.
Slows his movements.
It didn’t feel right, Nora says. She can feel him looking at her in the reflection of the glass; can see his reflection in the window.
And as their eyes meet, that heart pain turns into a hairline crack, because they’ve always been dancing around something, but it’s a dance she’s never quite known the steps to.
I don’t want to walk away, she tells him.
She turns to face him. He keeps his back to her.
I am going to marry Robin, she says, if he’ll have me. Just not on the twenty-second of April, and not in that fancy venue in the woods.
A leaf blower starts up, somewhere, from the green.
I don’t want a big wedding, Nora goes on, I never did. I hate all the fuss and expectation, the drama and … insincerity of it all.
She thinks of Jon saying his vows to Josie in a church somewhere. Thinks of Freya, teaching her that marriage was a box, instead of something you could step into with someone, a place you were excited to go.
It’s one of the reasons I never wanted to do it, she says, because Bren isn’t responding; still shaping his hair.
When we got engaged we said we’d keep it small, but Robin got excited.
He does that. Gets an idea, and runs with it.
And I really love that about him, so I didn’t want to …
rein that in. But I’ve had to interrogate why it felt wrong, which was hard, when everything was so … accelerated.
Her voice is wavering, slightly, as she says this. Desperate for Bren to say something – anything – back.
And then you came home, she says, when he remains silent. And we found out what really happened, when you left, just as my wedding morphed into this huge thing with a best man and a discounted package deal if we rushed it through and I just felt so … mixed up.
She thinks about the accidental proposal.
About the list of surprises she’d found in Robin’s notebook that meant he knew her, saw her, that what they have is real, as palpable as the ink on the page.
That it wasn’t the wedding itself that felt wrong, not the union or the person, just the circumstances, the confusion of it all, and she knows Bren had asked her to come away with him, she knows he’d sensed something was off, and she loves him, for that – can she say that, out loud – because he knows her, too, and she is so grateful.
So lucky to have him holding up a mirror, like that, forcing her to think, slow down, recalibrate.
So she knows what’s wrong, now. What’s right.
Though something is not right, she can see, in the set of Bren’s mouth.
I was going to tell you, she murmurs, but it’s all been so strange, at home. After we didn’t secure the venue. I’ve been taking some space, sorting out my next steps. So I’m not … coming with you, Bren, when you leave. But I really appreciate that you offered. I know that was … major, for you.
She swallows, her mouth dry, her heartbeat slow.
Slower than she thought it would be, now that she’s said what she’d meant to.
And she’d known it might be painful, telling him this, after what he’d revealed – that she was more than family, to him, but he is, too, to her; that can’t ever be taken away.
So she moves towards him, arms out for a hug – but then he speaks, and his voice is cold, and hard.
So that’s it then, he says.