Not at first, Josie says, and she picks up her fork, finallyeats some of her own cake. There was chemistry there, and so once we’d decided as a couple, Jon went to her, one day. In her greenhouse. She wanted to talk to me separately, afterwards, to be sure it was all legitimate. It was, to this day, the strangest conversation I’ve ever had.
Stranger than this? Nora says, and Josie nods.
And then things happened, Josie says. Organically, after that. I didn’t want to know the details, so they were always discreet, but it was all above board, shall we say. It was an uncommon but remarkable thing, Nora. What it brought us, as a three. Such closeness. Such an understanding, between friends.
Nora swallows, can’t even imagine.
But she tries. Her mind opening, a little. Letting in a sliver of light.
Freya and I became even closer after Jon died, Josie says. Because of this private history between us, I suspect, which we never planned to share with anyone. Until we found out you already knew.
Josie sits up straighter in her chair.
I wanted to intervene weeks ago, she says, when you told Freya what you’d seen. That you’d been carrying that, all these years! Oh, Nora, we wanted to sit you down right then, but you were so determined to stay away from her – and I didn’t know how I’d broach it, alone, with Bren in the house. This isn’t something he could stomach, I don’t think. Not with everything else still so – raw, for him.
No, Nora says.
Maybe I’ll tell him someday, Josie muses. When he’s more settled, or made his peace with his past. Though I have wondered, over the last few weeks, if you’d told him yourself.
But Nora shakes her head.
Never. I was so … ashamed, she says, and her voice sounds strange to her own ears; muffled, like she’s underwater. Ididn’t know what to do. And I was so sure that something like that would make things worse for you, Josie, and I knew you were – she is going to say fragile, or unstable, but she knows it is wrong to say such things, so instead she says I didn’t want to break your heart. Or Bren’s. And I was trying to figure out what to do, confront Freya, or him, and then soon after I saw them together, like that, he died.
Josie looks bereft.
I never raised it with Freya because I just wanted to forget it. The whole thing. But I was soangrywith them, Nora whispers, and hedied, like that, with me angry at him –
And her voice catches, and splits. The full revelation crashing over her, like a wave.
I’ve beensoangry with him, Nora says, for so long. I sat through his funeral and thought about karma and couldn’t say a nice word about him, and I was glad, in a way, that Bren was gone, because I couldn’t face him, I – I didn’t know how to be around him, with this huge, awfulthing–
And there are not tears, now, just dry sobs through the shock of it as Josie reaches over and takes both her hands and does not say another word. Just squeezes Nora’s palms in her own. So tiny, but with such assuredness. Such control Nora had never conceived of.
They hold hands across the table, like that; as the wave settles, retreats.
And when Josie lets go, it is like Nora can breathe again. Like she can float, if not quite swim; just lie back, and look at the vast open sky. Josie somehow pours more tea, they somehow finish their cake, and then they talk because Nora has questions, and Josie, it seems, wants to provide answers. She talks with a fervour Nora has only seen in her when she’s talking about koala bears or seabirds or the settings on her bread machine. About the past, their shared barbecues, Christmasdinner, Easter weekend. Jon’s love of bobble hats and Guinness and gravy, and his laugh, so hoarse when it first came on, he sounded like Muttley the dog; Josie asks who; Nora shows her a clip fromWacky Raceson her phone; none of this is normal, Nora muses, and yet when did life ever promise normality; when did she ever want that, even, or expect it, being raised by a woman like Freya.
She feels calmer as the hours wear on.
On the wall, clear evening light, like water. Like she could drink it down.
She could have tried harder to tell me, Nora says, when they have drained the teapot. Freya, I mean. These last few weeks.
I’m not sure she really wanted to, Josie says. Think of it from her side. All those years of strong, independent womanhood. Warning you against weddings and rom-coms, banning you from watching Disney, and then she went and fell in love with a man, in spite of herself. Or at least, she thinks she did. And pride is a prickly thing, pet. For all of us. Her softer side is not one she is used to sharing.
Nora nods. Knowing, too, that on some level, if Freya had told her – broken down her door, forced her to listen – she wouldn’t have believed her, anyway. It had to be like this; had to come from Josie.
And, she asks her, you really won’t tell Bren?
For the same reason you didn’t, Josie says. I’d hoped to find a quiet moment to tell you all this, without him, and Nora nods; understands.
But something is sticking to her, like a burr. What do you mean, she says, Freya onlythinksshe was in love with Jon?
Josie, who was reaching for Nora’s teacup, shrugs with one slender shoulder. Like Bren. Because she wasn’t, she says.
How do you –
I just know, she says, and for the first time, there is an edge to her voice, but maybe Nora imagined it, because she is as softly spoken as ever when she goes on. Now, I’m hardly going to correct her on that, pet. She was devastated when he died. Shocked at herself, I think, by how attached she’d become. But Jon and I?
